“Yunosti Chestnoe Zertsalo” (“The Honorable Mirror for Youth”) belongs to the signif-icant cultural phenomena of Peter the Great’s epoch with its orientation to innovations. The more interesting is the connection of this book with the tradition, clearly exposed in gender asymmetry. Having analyzed its manifestations (in architectonics, composition, semantics of the key notions, presence/absence of the prescribed types of behavior), the author of the article tries to explain the causes of the existing disproportions, and his viewpoint differs from the solutions already suggested in special literature. The observations made and the interpretations offered lead to the final conclusion that “Yunosti Chestnoe Zertsalo”, claiming to the creation of a new model of the Russian world and having a prescriptive character, actually recorded gender asymmetry, leaving the woman at the religious and moral height but at the same time limiting her opportunities in the society.
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