Zwischen Tradition und Emanzipation

Abstract

Summary This paper analyses the criticism of the position of women, the existing gender relations and marriage in women’s literature at the end of the 19th century, taking the examples of the novel Plein air (1897) by Croatian author Jagoda Truhelka (1864–1957) and of the short story Wieder die Alte (1886) by Austrian writer Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916). These authors, from the area of the then Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, in spite of different ethnicity, but also of different social status, published stories in the late 19th century where they discussed a similar topic. Both authors are concerned with the issue of women’s work and existence outside or inside civil marriage, but the endings of their works are completely different. While Truhelka’s heroine manages to realize a marriage of love, the heroine of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach becomes a victim of existing social relationships. Despite the sharp critique of patriarchy and the disruption of the stereotype of a woman as an angel in the home in Plein air, at the end of the novel there is a harmonization of interpersonal relations and the resolution of all existing conflicts, both at a personal and socio-political level. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach does not show such optimism in Wieder die Alte and her emancipated women are left alone to build their moral integrity into a life without male love. However, we can conclude Truhelka’s, as well as Ebner-Eschenbach’s heroine remain trapped between tradition and emancipation because of, or despite the fact that love shows (no) power in the tyranny of society.