"Nieko negaliu nuveikti be tavo, širdele, valios..." Teresės Rachelės Sapiegienės laiškai vyrui Antanui Kazimierui Sapiegai
LTRemiantis nedideliu 1727 m. balandžio-spalio mėn. rašytų 22 Teresės Rachelės Sapiegienės (Teresa Rachela Sapiežyna) laiškų vyrui Merkinės seniūnui Antanui Kazimierui Sapiegai {Antoni Kazimierz Sapieha) kompleksu, straipsnyje siekiama aktualizuoti Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės moterų korespondencijos tyrimus. Daugiausia dėmesio skiriama T. R. Sapiegienės laiškuose dominuojančioms temoms: Sapiegų dvaro kasdienybei, valdų administravimo reikalams, sveikatai. Laiškų turinys rodo, kad T. R. Sapiegienė buvo susipažinusi su sutuoktinio reikalais, gerai orientavosi jo aplinkoje: bendravo su sutuoktinio kreditoriais, teisės patarėjais, kitais jam artimais asmenimis. Todėl ji galėjo ne tik įvertinti įvairias situacijas, bet ir patarti sutuoktiniui, o išskirtiniais atvejais imdavosi veikti pati - į pagalbą pasitelkdavo ne tik giminaičius, bet ir A. K. Sapiegos klientų ar kreditorių žmonas, taip formuodama savo įtakos ratą. Reikšminiai žodžiai: Teresė Rachelė Sapiegienė, moterų korespondencija, Antanas Kazimieras Sapiega, sveikata, bajorų dvaro kasdienybė. [Iš leidinio]
ENOfficially “excluded” from public and political life, women left little evidence of their activities or attitudes in legal or political documents, but their opinions and often highly personal statements have been preserved by epistolography. Although the circle of women correspondents was rather narrow, the subject matter, the form and the content of their correspondence, and even their writing style did not differ much from those of men. On the one hand, womens letters were less focused on warfare or political issues par excellence-, on the other, the addressers took a lively interest in public life, wrote extensively about family life, children, health, economic worries, or shared rumours. In their letters, the addressers not only conveyed the facts they had seen or experienced, but also formed a distinctive image of their intellectual abilities and personalities. The article is based on twenty-two letters written by Teresa Rachela Sapiezyna to her husband Antoni Kazimierz Sapieha, an elder of Merkine, between April and October 1727. The article provides the context in which this correspondence arose as the letters reflect a period during which the A. K. Sapieha couple spent most of the time apart. Therefore, the letters were not only a means of maintaining an emotional relationship, but also a means of sharing updates on the work accomplished. The themes of the letters vary considerably. In her letters from Zelva from April to June, T. R. Sapiezyna writes about the daily affairs of the manor, her efforts to settle some of her husband’s debts, and her concern about his health. Meanwhile, the letters she wrote during her visit to Vilnius mostly inform her husband about her meetings with lawyers, the deputies of the Supreme Tribunal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and about the fulfilment of her husband’s instructions.The content of the letters shows that T. R. Sapiezyna was familiar with her spouse’s concerns: she was well acquainted with his milieu and maintained contacts with his creditors, legal advisors, and other persons close to him. Therefore, she could not only assess various situations but also advise her husband; in exceptional cases, she would act on her own, resorting to the assistance both of the relatives and the wives of A. K. Sapieha’s clients or creditors, thus forming her own circle of influence. The article has two aims: (1) to actualise research on women’s correspondence in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and (2.) to define the spheres of women’s activity in the first half of the eighteenth century on the basis of the content of their letters, to define their relationship to the public space and the ways of functioning in it, and to reveal the potential of the correspondence for the reconstruction of the horizons of the female worldview. Keywords: Teresa Rachela Sapiezyna, womens correspondence, Antoni Kazimierz Sapieha, health, daily life of a manor. [From the publication]
