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A Brief Discussion of Feminism and Women Writers in Hungary

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A Brief Discussion of Feminism and Women Writers in Hungary Undoing the Collective Amnesia: A Brief Discussion of Feminism and Women Writers in Hungary Agnes Vashegyi MacDonald, University of Woman authors in Hungary in the British Columbia, was born in Budapest, early part of the twentieth century made a Hungary, and she moved to Canada in 1991. significant impact on Hungarian literature, Her PhDs is in Comparative Literature and culture and society. Many of them were her research interests include twentieth affected by and also influenced the early century Central European culture with a feminist movement in that country which special interest in women authors. emerged as a result of rapid social and political change triggered by industrialization Abstract and urbanization. Following the 1867 This paper expands on current studies that Compromise between Austria and Hungary, examine the history of Hungarian feminism which placed the two powers on more or less while making links with the discourse of late equal political footing within the Habsburg nineteenth and early twentieth century women Monarchy, the women's movement and writers. Issues of suffrage, public health, women's literature began to bourgeon in the prostitution, and the challenging of patriarchal region ushering in cultural modernity. As ideologies and structures were key subjects Judith Szapor explains, "women's for feminists and women writers in Hungary. movements, including a full-fledged feminist Résumé movement, were an integral part of the rich Cet article élabore sur les études courantes and colorful political spectrum of qui examinent l’histoire du féminisme turn-of-the-century Hungary" (Szapor 2004, hongrois tout en faisant des liens entre les 191). However, neither then nor during the discours d’écrivaines de la fin du dix- following one hundred years have scholars neuvième siècle et du début du vingtième paid much attention to the many and rich siècle. Les questions de suffrage, de santé documents and sources available about publique, de prostitution, et les idéologies et women authors and feminism in Hungary: les structures patriarcales compliquées "the history of women's movements is a sadly étaient les sujets clés pour les féministes et neglected field in Hungarian scholarship" les écrivaines en Hongrie. (Szapor 2004, 189). The few noteworthy studies about Hungarian women are exceptions to the rule. As Agatha Schwartz explains in her book, Shifting Voices, an ongoing prejudice in Hungary proclaims "feminism [as] foreign to the Hungarian tradition" (2008, 13). Hungarian feminists' and women writers' contributions have been undervalued or misinterpreted in terms of quality, aesthetics and reason both in Hungary and internationally (Schwartz 2008; Szapor 2004). In accordance with Szapor and Schwartz, the Hungarian feminist scholar Judit Acsády elucidates that feminism as a social movement was considered to be a 108 Atlantis 35.1, 2010 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis "brutal attack on respected traditions in more recent feminisms that have more Hungary" (Acsády 1999a, 59). During her directly addressed questions of class, race research in the 1990s, Acsády met several and sexual orientation, the project of scholars in Hungary who denied the history feminism historically and contemporarily is to and existence of a women's movement in connect theory with practice. Hungary, or who argued that feminism should Women's literature and canon not be considered part of mainstream formation have been hampered by women's Hungarian history. These perspectives, based imposed social position, sex-role stereotypes, on the legacy of over forty years of and the widespread notion that they are less communist dogma, which alleged women's creative than men. They have had the equality and consequently afforded no special formidable task of overcoming their role as recognition, and of patriarchal traditions of the objects of art and subjects of literature, past centuries, have all marked and damaged produced by men, and taking charge of feminist efforts. Thanks to the research of writing about their experiences. Western Szapor, Schwartz, Acsády and their feminist criticism considers Virginia W oolf's colleagues in and outside of Hungary, several literary work probing the idea of women's important documents, periodicals and books difference as inscribed in their writings as a dedicated to Hungarian feminism and women touchstone of modern feminist thought. authors have been uncovered in library Following Mary Jacobus and other archives and private collections in the past Anglo-American contemporary feminist decade.1 This paper endeavours to scholars I pose the following questions about complement these scholars' works by Hungarian women's literary works: "what is bringing attention to the interconnectedness the nature…of women's writing?" and of Hungarian feminism and women writers furthermore, "can women adapt traditionally during the late nineteenth and early twentieth male dominated modes of writing and centuries in order to stretch the boundaries analysis to the articulation of female and seek a forum of diversity in feminist oppression and desire?" (Jacobus 1986, 30, history. 32). To this effect, I see Hungarian women's We ought to understand the literature between the late nineteenth and development of the Hungarian women's early twentieth century as diverse and movement in the context of Western sometimes contradictory in its affiliation to feminism and also as specifically situated in feminist ideology, for which a conceptual order to foster the desire for diversity and to framework that allows for gaps and respond to the issue of omission within inconsistencies ought to be further developed. feminist inquiry. Exposing the structure of Most of the material available concerns the patriarchal society, its oppression of women, lives and works of Hungarian bourgeois and and finding ways to overcome women's noble women authors and feminists of the late subjugated position, thereby (re)constructing nineteenth and early twentieth centuries women's history and participation in society, without including the existence of working- politics, sciences, arts and literature, have class and Roma women's efforts and been the chief aims of both Western and contributions. While the middle- and Hungarian feminists. In this respect, Western upper-class women authors most certainly feminist critique investigates biological represent a privileged group and an elitist determinism vis á vis the social construction culture, we ought to acknowledge their of gender, along with androgyny, language, struggle in breaking through the androcentric and cultural imperialism as some of the main barriers of Hungarian patriarchy and literary tenets in order to seek out an alternative modernism. feminist epistemology. From the first wave of In the late 1800s, access to and the feminism that fought for universal suffrage improvement of women's education became and demanded the equality of the sexes, to a priority for many in Hungary and this issue www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 35.1, 2010 109 was contextualized in a rhetoric of national they can nevertheless be considered the independence from the Habsburg House. In forerunners of women's political organizations her weekly journal, Családi kör [Family in Hungary. Circle], established in 1860, Emilia Kánya, a Three main branches of the women's middle-class writer and divorcée, spoke out movement had formed in Hungary around the against women's oppression and lack of turn of the twentieth century: bourgeois education. As Schwartz explains, Kánya feminists, socialists, and Christian "without challenging women's role of wife and conservative women's organizations (Szapor mother...demanded the opportunity for 2004, 192). Besides making way for ideas of unmarried or widowed women to make an suffrage, they also addressed social income" (2008, 14). At about the same time, problems, workplace conditions and the progressive Hungarian education reformer educational opportunities for women (Acsády Count József Eötvös urged the establishment 1999b, 246; Szapor 2004). The first of teacher training colleges for women. generation of Hungarian feminist leaders However, he also expressed conservative came from the Association of Women Clerks views about girls' upbringing and training in who formed the Magyar Feministák accordance with "the feminine vice" (Szegvári Egyesülete [Hungarian Association of 1981, 126). Also, several women's Feminists] in December 1904. The majority of organizations formed in an effort to fight for them were middle-class educated urbanites women's education, such as the Mária from assimilated Jewish families, some Dorothea Egyesület [Maria Dorothea married and others single, and included such Association] in 1885, Országos Nõképzõ prominent leaders as Rózsa -Egyesület [National Association for Women's Bédy-Schwimmer (1877-1948) and Vilma Education] in 1868, Országos Nõiparegylet Glücklich (1872-1927) (Szapor 2004). They [National Women's Employment Association] believed in an "új tipusú nõ," that is, a "new in 1879, and Nõtisztviselõk Országos type of woman," an educated and Egyesülete [National Association of Women independent person with a professional public Office Workers] in 1897. Due to the efforts of livelihood (Szapor 2004, 198). Socialist Pálné Veres major improvements were also women were associated with the Social made in women's educational opportunities Democrats who were active among factory by the late 1890s, resulting in women's workers. Tied to party and union rhetoric, their enrollment in
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