Mezi úslužností a revoltou: "Střelný prach právě nevynalezl(y)"? : korespondence spisovatelky Heleny Dvořákové Zdeňku Wirthovi

Abstract

The functional emancipation of the professional status of women became one of the pivotal social themes of the first decade of building state socialism in Czechoslovakia. A newly discovered fragment of correspondence between the writer Helena Dvořáková (1895–1970), author of neorealistic psychologizing women's novels, and the Nestor of Czech art history and conservation Zdeněk Wirth (1878–1961) points retrospectively to this gender-oriented debate also taking place in an informal form between representatives of the post-war cultural elites. In her letter of June 1954, Dvořáková refers to a social gathering at the Olympia Café, where she witnessed a discussion between the leading art historians Zdeněk Wirth and Emanuel Poche (1903–1987), in which they questioned the contribution of women in the field of intellectual culture. In the fifty years that women have had access to higher education, "they never invented gunpowder", someone said during the discussion. As an unintended witness to the event, Dvořáková sets herself against similar accusations not only in the correspondence under review, but above all in her literary work, the leitmotif of which became the fortunes and social status of – among others – educated, academically established – women.