This paper analyses narrative strategies used in the autobiography of Yekaterina Dashkova, an unusual public figure of the 18th-century Russia. Due to the nature of her performance within the gender normed context construction of textual identity becomes a series of narrative compromises between the public and the private roles, which is here presented with a special emphasis on the issues of gender and relationality.

Yekaterina Dashkova; autobiography; private and public; gender; identity