Shaping the New Croatian Woman?: on gender, modernity, and intimacy in Jagoda Truhelka's novel Plein air
Abstract
In the Croatian society of the 19th century, the concept of women was both marginalized and mythological, heavily under the influence of essential religious and conservative androcentric intellectual ideas. As a result, Croatian female authors, similarly to authors from neighbouring regions, that had been a margin of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Europe, were rarely acknowledged within the respected literary canon.
The negative assessment of their works was often prevalent because of their focus on the private sphere, domestic family life, and expression of intimate sensibility had been considered to be of lesser literary value. That is the reason why Jagoda Truhelka (1864-1957), author from Osijek, the multi-ethnic cultural center of the Slavonija region and her works, had been overlooked.
In the blended feminist and family romance novel Plein Air (1897), Truhelka offers an intriguing portrayal of modern intimacy and female artistic production that could be understood as the answer to the concept of New Croatian Woman. As the heroine Zdenka, working artist in Vienna requests from moneyed gentry hero Hinko different forms of intimacy as well as new ways of joint emotional activities, the novel anticipates the shift toward shared equality and modern perspective on creating family life.
Truhelka's artistic bluestocking heroine advocates the concept of a woman's right to live a public as well as private life on her own terms, yet happily opts for marriage and motherhood, the conclusion that is not surprising considering author social status as a teacher that must stand for middle-class morality and pro-patriarchal catholic values.