The Lithuanian National Intelligentsia and the Women’s Issue, 1883–1914

Abstract

The paper discusses the gendering of the Lithuanian national movement during its formative stage, 1883–1914. It concentrates on the intelligentsia’s debate on the women’s question, which served as one of the most significant cultural battlegrounds for the national elite, helping to define its own identity and new directions for Lithuanian nationalism. Through the discussion of different marital strategies and women’s roles in national politics as seen by the male intelligentsia, the paper argues that, despite the harsh critique of traditional peasant gender relations, the debate amounted to women’s virtual domestication. For male patriots, the emancipation of Lithuanian women meant, first of all, accepting the role of patriotic wives, i.e., responsibility for the education of children, or the role of nation mothers, which entailed nurturing new members of the community. A few secular and independent women writers were welcomed into nation-building politics but only as junior partners.