The article examines women’s pilgrimage texts of 1850–1917 as a distinct phenomenon within pilgrimage literature. Based on an analysis of publications from the Russian periodical press of 1850–1917, the study identifies the specific features of representing women’s experiences of travel to the Holy Land, as well as the relationship between the social and gender dimensions of pilgrimage. Particular attention is paid to the efforts of authors from privileged social estates to overcome the traditional image of women as a “silent majority” and to create a new narrative mode in which the female voice emerges as an autonomous element of the narrative. The article demonstrates that women’s texts reflected not only the spiritual and everyday aspects of pilgrimage but also incorporated social concerns, including issues of inequality, violence, and personal freedom. The author traces changes in the perception of women’s pilgrimage in the press between 1850 and 1900 and records the gradual formation of a new social and regional focus in the early twentieth century. It is concluded that women’s pilgrimage writing became one of the forms of women’s self-expression and symbolic presence in the public sphere of late imperial Russia.
Palestine; Holy Land; pilgrimage; pilgrimage notes; women’s writing; Russian Empire.