Ramona Mihaila
(In)Visible European Connecting Channels:
Mapping Nineteenth Century Women’s Writings
Abstract
A research of women’s situation in different European societies is based on the observation that the political and historical events which took place in the 19th century, starting with the French Revolution, opened a new way for important social, economic and cultural changes which helped creating Realism in literature.
It is important to draw attention to the impact of women’s presence on the literary scene, and to the emergence of a women’s literary tradition. The promotion of women as writers in the Romanian society was a slow process that became clearer at the end of the 19th century and the first women writers became known as journalists, feminists, or charity supporters.
European (in)visible connections can be found, by mapping the activities of women writers and taking into account:
- their birthplace: Fanny Seculici (Slovakia), Maria Rosseti (England), Mite Kremnitz (Austria), Anna de Noailles (France);
- their place of death: Elena Ghika (Italy), Martha Bibesco and Elena Vacaresco (France);
- their marrying a foreign husband: Hermiona Asachi (married the French poet Edgar Quinet), Lucretia Suciu (the German historian Wilhelm Rudow);
- their living abroad Elena Bacaloglu (Italy), Ermiona Asachi (France), Dora d’Ístria (Switzerland, France, Italy);
- their studies accomplished abroad: Margarita Miller Verghi (Switzerland, France), Ana Marcu Holda and Alexandrina Scriban (Germany),
- their position as correspondents for foreign journals: Ruxandra Berindey Mavrocordato (France), Emilia Lungu Puhallo (Serbia), Alexandrina Scriban (Germany);
- their writing travelogues: Smaranda Gheorghiu (India), Adela Xenopol (Switzerland),
- their writing in foreign languages: Carmen Sylva and Mite Kremnitz (German), Martha Bibesco (French), Margarita Miller-Verghi (English),
- their membership of European women’s organizations: Eugenia de Reuss Ianculescu (member of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship) or Alexandrina Cantacuzino who set up the Mica Antanta a Femeilor (The Womens’Little Antante) an umbrella organization for feminist associations from Romania, Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Grecee.
SvD, April 2012
- Conferences > NEWW international conferences > Bucharest April 2012 > Mihaila