History is women’s destiny.[2]
The beginning of Julka Chlapec-Đorđević’s transnational career
„Izgleda da je za sada jednoj intelektualno razvijenoj i svoga čovečanskog dostojanstva svjesnoj ženi vrlo teško doći do duševne ravnoteže, a kamoli do osećanja sreće.“ (“It seems that, for now, it is still very hard for a female intellectual, conscious of humanity and respect, to achieve happiness.”)[3]
„S feminističkom pokretom čitav jedan svet odlazi u prošlost ili se grčevito hvata ruševina, da bi sprečio prodiranje reformi koje sprema novo socijalno i političko uređenje.“ (“With the advent of the feminist movement, an entire world begins slowly to disappear or starts to hystericallycling to its own dead and lifeless ruins in order to ban spreading reforms that are ushering in a new social and political order.[4]
The literary imagination and the power of the feminist movement of the interwar period were deeply affected by a series of events that linked these two international catastrophes – the First and the Second World War. The literature of this period reveals not just the political crisis but also the gender identity crisis. It is not a coincidence that one of the most intelligent feminists and innovative writers from that period in Central Europe wrote and lectured in the beginning of the 1930s about the crisis of sexual ethics and of ethics generally. That writer was the Serbian philosopher and feminist Julka Chlapec-Đorđevi[5] (1882, Stari Bečej, Vojvodina–1969, Ústí and Labem), a very conscious feminist with well-developed theoretical conceptualisations of the world and also a nomadic writer and cultural mediator acting between different cultures. In her philosophical theory and sociological analyses, she most of all researched the position of women in the modern – but in many aspects still patriarchal – society of her time. Chlapec-Đorđević, living most of her life in the Czech interwar Prague was with her new, thoroughly modern sensibility concerned with the human condition of women – but she was also concerned with her Serbian – and also Czech – identity.
In this paper we analyse and emphasise the national discourse (regarding her Serbian and Czech identity in the context of her cosmopolitan ideas) in her feminist thought and literary texts.
Chlapec-Đorđević was a typical intellectual of the twentieth century, experiencing in her lifetime the roller coaster of great tragic historical events and political changes of that century in Europe. Hailing from a rich upper class family in Stari Bečej, Vojvodina[6] (in the northern part of Serbia – after the First World War part of Yugoslavia), she was educated in Vienna, where she stayed until the collapse of the monarchy, so in her youth and adulthood she absorbed the context of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the complex transnational rich cultural relations of that time in the monarchy – and particularly in Vienna as a cultural metropolis.[7] Women writers in the monarchy at that time were from the beginning connected with feminism,[8] and this was also true in her case. In 1906, when she was twenty-four, she successfully finished her doctoral studies in philosophy as the first such woman in Austria-Hungary.[9]
She pursued her writing career in her forties after settling in Prague, where she lived from 1922 until 1945.[10] In Prague she continued the work of the first Czech – and Serbian – feminists in the democratic Czechoslovak First Republic. There she became a mediator between different cultures: “ex-Austrian”, Czech, and Serbian. She was also a member of the second generation of Czech feminism, and she is also often discussed in the context of the second feminist generation[11] in Serbian Vojvodina[12] and Serbia.[13] Above all, with her ideas and reflections, she was part of the European feminist movement in general.
During her writing career, Julka Chlapec-Đorđević belonged to the open multicultural society[14] of the Czechoslovak First Republic, which was successfully formed after the end of the First World War under the rule of T. G. Masaryk (1850–1937)[15] as a progressive leader who was also willing to deal with the woman question.[16] At that time, Czech feminism as an important part of the European movement was at its peak. Czech feminism in the time of the First Republic flourished with different ideas. Its leader was Františka Plamínková (1875–1942).[17] The new republic founded its identity on progress, modernity, and democracy. The equality of men and women was declared by the constitution. With the right to vote, women officially gained the right to their own voice. However, Czech society remained to a great extent still patriarchal, and working women were still in auxiliary positions. The economic crisis of the 1930s strengthened demands to limit the paid work of women, particularly married women in high-skilled jobs. In Czech feminist thinking, for a long time the idea persisted that the emancipatory demands could be accomplished by co-operating with men.[18] Critics of feminism demanded “the return of the woman to the family”. Czech feminists took part in regular meetings of international women’s organisations.[19]
Chlapec-Đorđević fully belonged to the specific avant-garde, artistic, multicultural life in Prague between the wars. She explored the modern and sometimes decadent life in the city with all the cafés, theatres, clubs, and literary salons, which contained a quite fashionable subset of South Slavic and also Serbian entities.[20] In that time and place, she – already in her forties – became a declared feminist and a writer.
In the period between the wars, the relations between two states, democratic Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, were very fruitful. They were part of the tradition of Slavic solidarity and the Slavic idea was ideologically connected with the Czech national uprising in the nineteenth century. At that time, the Czechs often constructed and believed in the idealised type of the heroic Serbs and South Slavs in general, which lasted until the end of the nineteenth century. Very important for relations between the two nations was also the beginning of the twentieth century, where a lot of Serbian students studied in Prague. After the First World War, the political, economic, and cultural relations intensified also because of the personality of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, due to his belief in Slavic solidarity.[21]
In her writing period, Chlapec-Đorđević, in five theoretical books, invented new ideas regarding the main questions in the theory of feminism and also wrote five autobiographic books: a novel and four travelogues. In the case of spreading her ideas and publishing her books, she was very transnational: she published a book in Serbia (in Belgrade) and Ljubljana, as well as three books in Prague.[22] Living in Prague, she published many articles in Czech and Serbian newspapers, which she later mostly republished in books.[23] She was quite prominent in Czech public life, because she was also responsible for promoting Serbian culture and literature in one magazine: Czechoslovak-South Slavic League (1921–1930), the only newspaper in the First Republic in the 1920s published for that purpose.[24] She was also an important Czech-Yugoslav cultural mediator in Prague and in that respect, she continued the legacy of Slovene-Croat writer and feminist Zofka Kveder (1878–1926).[25]
The 1930s were her most active period. The reception of her work was good in Czech and Serbian cultures. She tried to spread her ideas in Serbia and to have close contacts with their feminists. Czech literary critic Julius Heidenreich-Dolansky wrote in the main Czech newspaper Lidové noviny that Chlapec-Đorđević as an intellectual was exceptional with her broad knowledge of feminist work of major cultural nations. He also praised her for her clear formulation of the feminist movement’s demands.[26] In the opinion of the Serbian critic Milan L. Rajić, her two books on feminism (published in Belgrade in 1935 and 1938) are the main works on the topic of feminist ideology in Serbia, the first and only ones in Serbian lands as a result of work that lasted for years.[27] She followed events in Serbian culture, gave lectures in Serbia, and tried to organise the feminist movement there.[28] Very important were her contacts with the Czech feminist Františka Plamínková and the Serbian feminist Ksenija Atanasijević (1894–1981).[29]
After the Second World War, the work and ideas of Julka Chlapec-Đorđević were completely forgotten. In socialist Czechoslovakia, and especially during the communist changeover of February 1948, she was not present in Czech public life anymore because of her “ideologically unsound” feminist ideas. Her work was forgotten also in Serbia.[30]
Serbian national identity and Czech context in her fiction
Chlapec-Đorđević was very critical of society and of all the cultures she knew best, and she also discussed all of the features of different cultural experiences in her autobiographical belles-lettres works and travelogues, often written in an essayistic style.
A diary and a document of her first “Austrian – monarchical” period was her first book Crtice iz poslednjih godina Carevne Austrije (Short stories from the last days of Imperial Austria), published in 1922: a nostalgic and sometimes ironic 1914–1918 report from the First World War written mostly in Vienna, the “city of melancholic fragments of past times”.[31] The writer autobiographically depicts a very special changing picture of that metropolis in the war years of the empire’s collapse. She experiences the tragic end of the monarchy and the collapse of its army in different parts of the empire, even though she avoids becoming too personal – she is just a detached observer of the historical moments of the multicultural state’s breakdown. The situation is full of paradoxes: at the beginning she is very critical of the Austrian war ideology in Vienna, but on the other hand, she declares that Vienna is also the most neutral war city, offering shelter for the exodus of Jews from Galicia – and also some refugees from the Serbian community.
She recognises the changing picture and atmosphere of the main Central European metropolis. With her sensibility and her critical, socially conscious mind, she experiences the great change from the “frivolous” pre-war Vienna, “blooming” with a special decadent atmosphere to the rhythms of “Valzer viennese”, to the grotesque representation of the “marche funèbre” of the devastated and hungry city at the end of the war. Due to being of Serbian origin, she is very critical of the anti-Serbian and pro-German ideology of that time. In one chapter[32] she criticizes the ignorance of Viennese intellectuals about the Serbian “problem”, which in fact does not interest the intellectual elite, who were too preoccupied with cultural events.[33]
At that time, Chlapec-Đorđević married a Czech officer, Zdeněk Chlapec (who was first employed in the monarchical army, later in the new Czech Army, where he became a general), so we can imagine that she already identified with the Czech nation at that time. In one chapter she declares her belief in the “dawn” of the Czech nation, and she embraces its path from the “slavery of Austria-Hungary” to the new democratic state.[34] These patriotic ideas are merged with the sympathy of freedom for all Slavic nations in the Habsburg state. At the end of the book she declares the end of the monarchy with no regret, because “nobody in fact grieves for the death of Austria-Hungary”.[35]
In the first book, the new perception of the city, with all its cultural codes and symbols in the context of the fatal political changes of that time, was portrayed through modernism as she discovered her writing style somewhere in between documentary and imaginary fiction.
The most important period for her writing career was her Prague period. There, she became a writer and a feminist. We can find her belief in the modern European woman intellectual in the construction of Marija Prohaskova, the main hero of her only epistolary novel, Jedno dopisivanje: Fragmenti romana (A Correspondence: The Fragments of a Novel), which was written again in the form of letters – a diary of a love affair – written in the late 1920s.[36] According to Magdalena Koch Jedno dopisivanje is the first real Serbian epistolary novel written in letters, as a work of literature. It was influenced by the tradition of 18th-century European prose writing, which became popular already in the beginning of Serbian modernism. Chlapec-Đorđević’s text was, in the context of Serbian literature, a very modern modification of the traditional form because of its subversive motives and themes.[37]
The narrative is very simple, written in a realistic style. It depicts a love affair between two married people: the Serbian intellectual Marija Prohaskova from Prague and the Slovene doctor Oton Šrepan from Ljubljana, who continue their story from their student years in Vienna. The love story, which has many retrospective passages, ends inconclusively: it is suggested that at the end Oton Šrepan comits suicide.[38]
In the novel there are passages in which the narrator describes the two main cultural situations of Chlapec-Đorđević’s life: first life in Vienna before the First World War and then life in interwar Prague.[39] In the letters of this modern epistolary novel we can discover the construction of the prototype of the “modern woman”: an active, intellectually (but not financially!) independent woman with very modern ideas on women’s position in society and also about sex-ethics, living in open multicultural Prague, with all her energy absorbing its rich cultural life.[40] The typical nomadic character of a Central European intellectual of that time is hidden in the metaphor of traveling, which for two lovers signifies the place of freedom: they meet in Vienna, in the mountains of Slovenia, in Ljubljana, Bratislava, Brno and of course Prague. In the end, they symbolically arrange a never-realised meeting once again in Vienna: the circle of nomadic escapades ends in death.
During her student years, the main figure already absorbs all of the good aspects of Viennese high culture as we can see in the retrospective fragments of this autobiographical novel.[41] She describes the antagonism and political complexity of turbulent Viennese life before the First World War. As a student, Marija Prohaskova falls in love with a medical student but also begins to be politically active: in the period of Adler’s[42] manifestations in Ottakring she began to consolidate herself as a socially conscious Serbian patriot envisioning a new country of Yugoslavia [“Tamo u Beču kovali smo mi Jugoslaviju.” (There in Vienna, we were forging Yugoslavia), “Ja ne znam da li je koja generacija bila nacionalnije a ujedno socijalnije raspoložena nego onda naša” (“I do not know if any generation was as patriotic and, at the same time, as socially conscious as ours.”)].[43]
The presence of rich Czech culture in the 1920s dominates the life of the main hero. Prague is, for her, the most tolerant city in Europe regarding the erotic.[44] She also appreciates the equality of both sexes against the burdens of patriarchal conventions.[45] The main Serbian hero is also a Czech patriot fully incorporated into Czech culture. Her Marija falls in love with one student in the library during a sociological seminar, where she studies. She attends at that time the popular “Sokolski slet”[46] in the year 1926. She walks with her adorer to the symbolical points of Czech national pride, including the monument to Jan Hus[47] at Staroměstské námestí. She attends concerts in Obecný dům[48] and theatre plays. She goes to Czech feminist congresses. She belongs to the organisation Československo – jihoslavská liga.[49]
As far as her Serbian national identity is concerned, in the novel the writer also defines the relations between two nations – Czechs and Yugoslavs (Serbs) – and two possible public discourses in Czech public life – on the one hand the romantic discourse of Slavic reciprocity and Pan-Slavism (which was at that time still present), and on the other the realistic discourse on the different political realities of the two nations. In confronting her Czech and Serbian identity, the main hero sees a kind of conflict between them: “U društvu mojih zemljaka osećam s bolom u srcu da su mi idejno daleki, a medju strancima uhvati me katkada duboka nostalgija za njima, jer su mome srcu blizu.” (“When I am among my fellow countrymen, I feel with pain in my heart that their ideology is very different from my ideology, but when I am among foreigners, I am overpowered by the deep nostalgia for Serbs, for they are close to my heart.”)[50] She is sceptical about the democratic level in Serbian society regarding the patriarchal position of women.[51]
Very interesting are her travel sketches Osećanja i opažanja (Feelings and Observations, Chlapec-Đorđević, 1935c), lyrical, meditative, and analytical writings written for Serbian readers.[52] In writing a travelogue, Chlapec-Đorđević could draw inspiration from the tradition of Serbian women writers, such as Jelena Dimitrijević (1862–1945)[53] and Isidora Sekulić (1877–1958).[54] As a model she could also use the rich Czech tradition of that genre.[55] In the travelogue, she writes brilliant observations of places, travelling through the different parts of Europe (Switzerland, Denmark, Norway fjords, Rome, French castles on the Loire) that she visited at the beginning of the 1930s. In these texts we find many cultural and literary references. In two essays she also reflects with much sympathy and knowledge on Czech culture and history.
Chlapec-Đorđević is a sharp, analytical observer. She sees all pictures of nature and culture in a special historical moment very clearly: in the time of ascending Nazism. She did not want to be political and she was very cautious in that regard. In the Czech mountains, Krkonoše, where a German community was very present, she observes two kinds of greetings: the Czech “Má úcta” and the German “Heil” – but she did not comment on it further. She just wrote one sentence: “Ne pita se je li je smučar Nemac ili Čeh.” (“No one asks anybody are you a German or Czech.”).[56]
At almost the same time, Chlapec-Đorđević also wrote a travelogue Z cest po domově: Jugoslávie (From Journeys through the Homeland: Yugoslavia) to present her homeland to the Czech reader in the interwar period: a semi-fictionalised, semi-historical, anthropological and sociological narrative containing portraits of the Yugoslavian life of that time.[57] Descriptions of places are interwoven with the essayistic passages on the cultural, political, and social situation in Yugoslavia and Serbia. She added also some book reviews. In her travels to different parts of Yugoslavia – from small towns in Slovenia to mountain places in Macedonia – she simultaneously depicts wild pictures of nature and impressionistic urban moments with the same passion. In her reflections, she also clearly expresses her belief in the unity of Yugoslavia.
She described the ambivalent picture of Belgrade in the year 1936 – as the modern capital of the Serbian nation (and at the same time a very traditional city), and in a metaphorical manner: Belgrade is the “fire and sword” and “the constant battlefield where different tensions and forces appear to change it into the major city of a large Central European state”.[58]
We can conclude that her experience of her double identities was also thematised and historicised in her belles-lettres writing. Regarding the narrator, she used the possibilities of women’s self-representation, but the location of her subject is unclear.[59]
Reflections on her national identity in her essays and feminist writings
In her feminist work (and also literature) Julka Chlapec-Đorđević took up subjects like abortion, female identity, her relation to the body and sexuality, the problem of the family and motherhood, new sexual ethics, new methods of birth control, women’s rights, the problem of feminism and fascism, feminism and communism, feminism and pacifism.[60] Very original are her ideas on pacifism: in her opinion the real way to long-term protection against war lies in birth control.
She also criticized Soviet socialism and the role of women in it as a trap: a woman in a socialist society should perform the traditional family and sexual roles, plus work, plus be active in politics.
Chlapec-Đorđević praised the woman’s right to vote and work, and also other social legislation that could create equality between the two sexes.[61] She avoids some questions already present in the American and European feminist movement, such as lesbian and homosexual love: in her reflections she was focused on the role of the classical family and the changing role of a woman therein.
In two short chapters on feminism published in Serbian in 1930 in Ljubljana (Slovenia), Sudbina žene (The Fate of a Woman) and Kriza seksualne etike (The Crisis of Sexual Ethics), she describes the development of the woman question in the history of philosophy and European culture. She criticizes the position of the sexes in patriarchal European culture seen solely in binary categories – in stereotypical antinomies:[62] a woman is presented just as the body and man as the spirit; the woman is considered merely as a sexual object, and the man is the intellect; man represents reason, woman emotions. She expresses herself as a theoretician of different cultures and their cultural codes: she understands the poor – slave-like – condition of women in Yugoslavia as she finds the reason for this in the past history of Turkish occupation, since the Turks colonised that area for a long period of time.[63] In her historical reflections on feminism, she identifies the great Czech feminists from the first wave of Czech feminism – namely, Teréza Nováková (1853–1912)[64] and Božena Víková Kunetická (1862–1943),[65] and among Serbs she cherished the critic Jovan Skerlić (1877–1914).[66] She ends the study with an overview of the situation in her time: she is deeply persuaded that feminism is not just a social and legal problem, but also an ethical one (one of her main ideas is the belief that the father and society must assist women in motherhood). In the other chapters she analyses the problem of the family, free love, and prostitution in modern society. As an example of her ideas, she uses many allusions to classical literature.
In her Czech essay “Osudna chvile feministického chnuti” (The Fatal Moment of the Feminist Movement) she interprets the position of women in inter-war society: the existence of the feminist movement, in her opinion, depends on the approach to a particular woman (the influence of T. G. Masaryk’s ideas) – whether she is taken as an individual or just as part of her gender.[67] There she also provides a definite conclusion that the question of a woman’s position is simultaneously the question of a man. Her opinion is that a woman’s social and financial self-dependence on men must end and that women must gain equality regarding social and moral aspects of motherhood and men must react differently – more responsibly – in accepting fatherhood.
In her only long book published in Czech Feministické úvahy (Feminist thoughts),[68] she tries to explain her opinions about the state of feminism in the Czechoslovak Republic, Europe, and America. In theoretical concepts, she passionately fights for the right of the other gender to promote the idea of women’s political and social equality with men. The book is divided into three parts: in the third one she reacts polemically to the conservative or just different ideas by important politicians and scholars in Czech society on the position of women in the 1930s.
The economic crisis of the 1930s strengthened demands to limit the paid work of women, particularly married women in high-skilled jobs. Critics demanded a return of “the woman to the family”. Chlapec-Đorđević was against that. She also questioned motherhood as a special phenomenon that was also a paradigmatic question for other Czech feminists of that time.[69]
In her polemical reactions, she critically responded to the important Czech sociologists and philosophers Dr Bláha (1879–1960)[70] and Dr Rádl (1873–1942).[71] She questions different opinions on the problem of the productive work of married women (she responded to the articles of Dr. Marie Tumlířová (1889–1973),[72] Františka Plamínková, and Antonie Maxová[73] from 1933) and demands equal pay for both sexes. She believed that could solve the problem of married women, who after marriage became financially dependent on their husbands and were displaced from the labour market.[74] Similarly to other books, she finds here a source of ideas also in Masaryk’s open-minded ideas on the position of women and the possibility to change it.
The most interesting are the last two studies, because they are very polemical about the main ideas on the position of women in Czech society. Chlapec-Đorđević goes against the assertion of Senator Karpíšková[75] that women must stay home because they have a “uterus”. In that context, she promotes the idea that domestic work must be divided equally between both sexes. She is polemical also regarding a 1936 article by Maria Jurnečková:[76] she does not believe in Jurnečková’s idea that the Soviets solved the problem of feminism, which led to the equality of women. On the contrary she believes that a woman in their society is trapped in the family and depends on her man – she exposes also other problems of Soviet society in the 1930s (for example the “artificial mass abortions”).
We must complete our picture of the active feminist Julka Chlapec-Djordjevic with her active presence in the Czech feminist movement and the party Ženská narodní rada (Women’s National Council) as part of the International Council of Women. She wrote articles for them on women emancipation and freedom not only in their newspaper but also in the newspaper Nezavislá politika.
Feminist literary theory and the question of the Serbian/ Yugoslav woman
Julka Chlapec-Đorđević was the most consistent and at the same time most innovative in her approach to the theory of feminism in the Serbian and Czech public life in the 1920s and the 1930s and in her books on feminism, which she published in Czech and Serbian in the 1930s, already in the shadow of great changes before the beginning of the Second World War.
The culmination of her theoretical reflections are the books she published in Serbia in 1935 and 1938. [Studije i eseji o feminizmu I, II (Studies and Essays on Feminism I, II)]. In the first book she accented theoretical studies on feminism and in the second one the feminist literary theory.[77] In the first book she deals with the sociological and cultural aspects of feminism. She did not hesitate to criticize the Freudian approach. There is also one chapter on the psychological theory of Alfred Adler, whose psychology she prefers.[78]
Very valuable are the parts of the book on the history of Serbian feminism and the main representatives of the second wave of Serbian feminism – her contemporaries. One chapter of the first book is about the Serbian writer and feminist Draga Dejanović[79] (Omladinka Draga Dejanović),[80] the first Serbian feminist – from Vojvodina and the nineteenth century, a period “when the struggle for national survival was so furious that it absorbed all the powers of the nation”.[81] That was a time when, in most Slavic nations, the first feminists and also women writers were connected with national movements. Chlapec-Đorđević believes that Dejanović was not so much a writer as a feminist, full of energy and power, and “she transcended the borders of normal behaviour for Serbian women” because she stayed in the “whirlwind of the public life”. She introduced into Serbia the type of “the modern woman”,[82] who “supports the cultural fight of her nation” (in her opinion, in contrast to the example of other romantic German women writers).[83]
In her book on feminism, she also writes about her visit to Serbian philosopher Ksenija Atanasijević,[84] one of “the most powerful philosophical spirits not just in Serbia but also in Yugoslavia”. Analysing her metaphysical theory, she explains that the sources of her ideas are in Buddhism and great European movements.[85]
Czech liberal feminists of that period attached their hopes to the thoughts of T. G. Masaryk, as did Chlapec-Đorđević.[86] She analyses the theory of the Czech philosopher and president, Masaryk, whose ideas she adored all her life.[87] She analyses Masaryk’s “feminist concept” as part of his general ethics and sociology. She concludes: “On se zauzeo za nju, u doba kada su ostali filozofi kontinenta imali za problem feminizma samo manje – više blagonakloni osmeh.” (“He took care of the women’s situation in a time when other philosophers of the European continent had for the feminist problem just a more or less benevolent smile.”) From these remarks we can see how influenced she was in her ideas by his theory – for example in understanding the role of the family and the new ethics of the men taking responsibility for their children. Masaryk fought against prejudices with his ideas: “Masaryk je postao vrlo zaslužan na taj način što je anomaliju oko podele brige i negu porodice primetio i istakao.” (“Masaryk was very important because he recognised and pointed out the anomalies relating to the division of work and care in the family.”).[88] In his theory and action, Masaryk showed that he believed in the equality of sexes: “in the moral, social, and economic freedom of both sexes”.[89]
She opposed traditional and patriarchal ideas in Serbia in a time when non-feminist journals as well as women’s organisations in Serbia stressed female roles as wives, mothers, and housekeepers.[90] That was in a time of new conservatism in all of Europe, when the four horsemen of the future Apocalypse were shaping the situation in Europe. In one chapter she was polemical about the ideas of Serbian author Poleksija D. Stošić Dimitrijević,[91] who proclaimed motherhood as the main quest of every woman (“ Materinstvo kao najglavniji poziv svake žene”) in the Serbian newspaper Žena i svijet in 1932. Chlapec-Đorđević rejected the theory that Serbian women must return home and raise children and be prepared to sacrifice for the fatherland: “Kazati da je najsvetiji poziv žene materinstvo, znači isključiti je iz uzvišene borbe za napredak, iz najviših atributa čovečanstva, znači učiniti je robom njenih fizioloških funkcija.” (“To say that the main goal for a woman is motherhood is to ban her from the glorious fight for progress, from the highest qualities of mankind. That means to enslave her to her physiological functions.”).[92]
*
The most interesting example of her theoretical approach – in literature and cultural studies – is her second 1938 book on feminism, in which she constructs a kind of feminist literary theory.[93] With great knowledge and experience, she analyses the picture of a woman (specifically the image of the “new woman”) in the literature of male and female writers.[94] Her topics are also women writers in the contemporary world with a special emphasis on French, Scandinavian, and contemporary Czech literature. In that regard, she analyses the literary work of Czech women writers of her time: Maria Majerová, Marie Tylšová, Marie Pujmanová, and also Karel Čapek (she critically analysed his playMatka/Mother).[95]
The third part of the volume is dedicated to Serbian literature. She writes about Serbian critics and male authors regarding the representation of women in Serbian literature.
She is critical of the literary works of Serbian writers Branislav Nušić (1864–1938) and modernist poet Jovan Dučić (1874–1943). She especially criticises O braku (About Marriage), a book by Serbian sexologist Dr Aleksandar Kostić (1893–1983),[96] who in her words focuses just on the biological aspect of the human (female) existence and does not broaden his view into sociological and psychological aspects: for, after all, her woman is first and foremost a human being – not just “the other sex”.
Chlapec-Đorđević also writes about the historical and present position of the Serbian woman in her 1936 travelogue book on Yugoslavia,Jihoslovanská/Srbská žena (Yugoslav/Serbian Woman).[97] She sees explicit patriarchal and oriental tendencies in Serbian patriarchal life, which she explains by the history of the Turkish government, even though she goes to great lengths to emphasise that there are great differences going from the north to the southern part. She also underlines the long-existing myth of motherhood in Serbian culture (which is also very explicit in Serbian literature) in connection with the national uprising. In her opinion, the beginning of the cultural, social, and economic restoration of the Serbian nation began in Vojvodina under the protectorate of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century, the national movement “Omladina” appeared there – and also the first female workers – connected with that movement. Nevertheless, she estimates that in her present time the Serbian feminist movement “failed to stay on a very stable ground”, because it did not correspond to the hard Serbian social and political situation.[98] She underlines two of the main problems in Serbian society of that period: women did not have the right to vote and women after marriage became completely dependent on men. In other books she was also very critical of the feminist movement in Belgrade and Serbia.[99]
Conclusion
Julka Chlapec-Đorđević was of Serbian origin, but nevertheless for most of her writing career she lived in democratic Prague and the open Czech society before the Second World War, and was part of the Czech feminist movement. She obtained a very good education in Vienna and, in the circumstances of multicultural Viennese society of the late monarchy, she became a “cultural nomad with the identity of a monarchical intellectual” before the end of the Habsburg era. For her feminist generation, according to Rosi Braidotti, the universalism was being male-identified and masculinity was projecting itself as pseudo-universal,[100] and the feminists of that time fought against that with all their power.
She also belonged to the “generation of the global crisis” because of the experience of the First World War. The feeling of crisis is also present in her feminist discourse. But, on the other hand, national identity was for her a crucial part of her writer´s identity which was – because of the historical circumstances and her position between two cultures – typical of a Central European and South Slavic writer of that time. She often emphasised in her texts that she belonged to the Serbian nation and also identified herself with the Czech nation.
From her writing we can infer that, living most of her time in the Czech Republic (and most of her productive period in Prague), she was a great Serbian patriot, who was also very critical of the social and political situation of her nation. In her texts, there is a very symbolic sign of her national Serbian patriotic discourse: in her writing she uses the personal pronouns we and ours (“mi, naši”) – with them she emotionally underscores her belonging to the imaginary community of the Serbian nation and also her belonging to the Serbian community in Prague.[101]
The political, intellectual, cultural (feminist), and literary environment in Prague society during the 1920s and 1930s gave Chlapec-Đorđević “more stimulation, influence, and acceptance than was possible in any other city.”[102] There, in her forties, she became a conscious writer and feminist with a distinct authorial voice. She lived in the European world of dangerous totalitarian regimes: ascending fascism, Nazism, and Soviet communism, in the shadow of a future apocalypse taking shape on the horizon.[103] As a writer she was part of Serbian modernism: she wrote one very modern epistolary novel and then continued to contribute to Serbian literature by writing travelogues and critical essays.
With her brilliant mind, deep philosophical background, and knowledge of psychology and different cultures, she constructed her own theory on feminism – one of the most innovative in Central Europe. She also constructed the feminist literary theory at the end of the 1930s and tried to present that in Serbia. In her remarks we can see she was very well versed in Czech and Serbian culture, history, and literature – and also that of Europe and America.
In a very dangerous time, she did not want to be political: she was precisely political, though, and she devoted her public life to the cause of human (women’s) rights and the position of women in contemporary society. She was very careful about the Other in her theoretical and journalistic remarks – she did not want to be too political in an already very political world of burgeoning nationalisms between the wars.[104] On the contrary, she was very political and explicit in the field of women’s rights.
On the one hand, she was very conscious of public life and her interaction with the social, political and literary movements of the two different countries is clearly seen in her texts. She was part of Czech culture and Czech ideas were part of her intellectual world, and she fully belonged to the Czech feminist movement (like all Czech intellectuals, she was specially influenced by T. G. Masaryk). On the other hand, she deeply emotionally identified with the Serbs and also with the Yugoslav idea.[105] She was also a mediator between two cultures: the culture where she lived and the culture of her origin. She loved her homeland and her people and never forgot her culture, which she knew very well. She was often critical of the flaws of her native culture.
Nevertheless, she was not just a theoretician; she was polemical in both cultures. She involved herself in the women’s rights discussions in Prague and Belgrade in the 1930s. She critically responded to the new ideas and movements and publicly negated conservative opinions about the position of women in Czech and Serbian society, which overpowered their public lives at the end of the 1930s. On several occasions she criticised the level of patriarchal society in Serbia (and Yugoslavia in general) regarding the position of women. She tried to improve the level of the feminist movement and the position of women in Serbian and Czech culture. She also followed progressive ideas on those topics – both in Europe and America.
From her writing it is clear that she was a Serbian patriot, living in Prague and with the Serbian and Czech identity[106] (the identity of two small Slavic nations), but in her writing she was a passionate and subversive intellectual – a “person of letters”, a transnational intellectual with a great knowledge of philosophy, sociology, and also culture and literature – of the already globalised world. In her feminist thought and also literature, she addressed women’s problems and their possible solutions in the complex social and political geography of Central Europe before the Second World War. She saw literature as a key format for the creation, expression, and maintenance of the sexual politics that oppressed women.
Her hopes disappeared and her writing career had already ended after 1938 – after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. After the Second World War, Chlapec-Đorđević escaped from the Prague urban life to the privacy of the provincial North Bohemian town Ústí nad Labem,[107] where she died in 1969.[108] As a writer she “escaped to silence” and was not politically active anymore. After the communist coup d’état in February 1948, the consequences for Czech feminist thinking were destructive.[109] Her ideas were almost forgotten in the Czech and Serbian society. Under these new historical circumstances, her work was for years completely neglected in both Czech and Serbian culture and in the twenty-first century it remains mostly forgotten.
[1] This work was fully supported by the Croatian Science Foundation under the project number IP-2018-01-3732.
[2] Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 162.
[3] Julka Hlapec-Đorđević, Jedno dopisivanje, Fragmenti romana (Beograd: Prosveta, 2004), 9.
[4] Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, Studije i eseje o feminizmu I (Beograd: Život i rad, 1935b), 112.
[5] Also Julka Chlapcová, Chlapec-Gjorgjević, Hlapec-Gjorgjević, Gjorgjevićová, Djordjević, Hlapec-Đorđević
[6] In her travelogues on Yugoslavia, she wrote with great affection about how her native region Vojvodina was, because of its national variety and its historical and cultural context, one of the most interesting parts of Yugoslavia. See: Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, Zcest po domově (Jugoslávie) (V Praze: Československa grafická unie, 1936), 95.
[7] See: Moritz Csáky, “Europa im kleinen: Multiethnizität und Multikulturalität im alten Österreich.”, Die eine Welt und Europa Salzburger Hochschulwochen, edited by Schmidinger Heinrich (Graz – Wien – Köln, 1995), 207-248; Moritz Csáky, Das Gedächtnis der Städte. Kulturelle Verflechtungen – Wien und urbanen Milieus in Zentraleuropa (Wien – Köln – Weimar, 2010). She was a multicultural polyglot. She spoke English, German, French, Hungarian, and Czech.
[8] Agatha Schwartz, Shifting Voices. Feminist Thought and Women's Writing in Fin-de-Siècle Austria and Hungary (Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2008).
[9] See: Svetlana Tomin, „Julka Hlapec-Đorđević (1882–1969) ili o feminizmu”, ProFemina no. 5/ 6 (1996): 147. Her thesis Podvojvoda Jovan Monasterlija was about Serbian vice-duke Jovan Monasterlija (1683–1706), a Serbian aristocrat from the seventeenth century, named “the leader of the Serbian nation”, who fought against the Ottoman Empire. Part of her thesis was published in the newspaper Letopis Matice srbske in 1908.
[10] From her first autobiographical book – a kind of reportage in diary form – we could assume that during the First World War she also stayed in Vienna. See: Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, Crtice iz poslednjih godina Carevne Austrije (Beograd: Geca Kon, 1922).
[11] The oldest Serbian women´s organisation was formed in 1864 in Novi Sad, with others following toward the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, usually in urban areas. In 1919, most organisations formed a common Yugoslav Women’s Union. Most of the organisations were quite conservative and did not advocate equal rights for women in Serbian society. See: Coroll S Lilly, and Melissa Bokovoy, “Serbia, Croatia and Yugoslavia”, in Women, Gender and Fascism in Europe 1919–1945, edited by Kevin Passmore (Manchester University Press, 2003), 97.
[12] Regarding Savka Subotić, she belonged to the second wave of the “Vojvodina fighters” for women’s rights (Savka Subotić, „Videti više”, in Znamenite žene Novog Sada I, edited by G. Stojaković (Novi Sad: Futura publikacije, 2001), 51-52; 92-93.). Chlapec-Đorđević also wrote one chapter for her book on Draga Dejanović – one of the first 19th-century feminists from Vojvodina. See: Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, Studije i eseje o feminizmu I (Beograd: Život i rad, 1935b), 164–176.
[13] Savka Subotić, cited work, 2001. Her contemporaries in the Serbian feminist circles were Jelica Belović Bernadžikovska (1870–1946), Vladislava Polit (1886–1949) and Ksenija Atanasijević (1894–1981). See also: Ivana Pantelić, Jelena Milinković, and Ljubinka Škodrić, Dvadeset žena koje su obeležile XX vek u Srbiji (Beograd: NIN, 2013), 8–9.
[14] In the beginning of the twentieth century and at the end of Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prague was an avant-garde city, with Czech, German, and Jewish cultures being in a productive symbiosis. See: Michel Bernard, Praha, město evropské avantgardy 1895–1928, translated by Jana Vymazalová (Praha: Argo, 2010). As a multicultural city with a flourishing culture, it was very similar to Vienna. After the decline of the monarchy and the beginning of the First Republic, Prague was still an open and democratic city with a rich cultural life and many opportunities for “cultural nomads”.
[15] Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was a philosopher, sociologist, politician, and teacher, and after 1918 also the first president of the First Czechoslovak Republic. After the establishment of the Czech University in Prague in 1882, he became a professor of philosophy.
[16] We understand “the woman question” in the context of the problem of changing political, economic, and professional roles for women and in the context of social and sexual liberation.
[17] Františka Plamínková was a Czech politician and activist, the most known Czech feminist between the wars and also president of the National Women’s Council. She was the main person in the Czech women’s movement and part of the international scene. She fought for equal voting rights, female education, and the equality of men and women in Czechoslovakia.
[18] Marie Bahenská, Libuše Heczková, and Dana Musilová, Iluze spásy. České feministické myšlení 19. a 20. století (Hradec Králové: Univerzita Hradec Králové, 2011).
[19] Julka Chlapec-Đorđević was a member of two international women’s organisations – namely, Birth Control and Open Door International.
[20] Contrary to Czech democracy, the situation in Yugoslavia was very strict and nationalistic. In 1929, King Alexander KaraĐorđević disbanded Parliament and declared a dictatorship. We can see the gendered politics of extreme-right organisations in Croatia and Serbia during the interwar period. There was no political equality for women in the interwar kingdom. Women did not have the right to vote and they were excluded from political life (Coroll S Lilly, and Melissa Bokovoy, cited work, 2003, 92).
[21] Kateřina Kolářová, “Časopisy československo-jihoslovanské ligy: sonda do pramenů k dějinám meziválečných československo-jugoslávských styků”, Porta Balkanica 7, no. 1, (2015): 78, https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/handle/11222.digilib/135421 (accessed 1. 6. 2020).
[22] We do not know if Chlapec-Đorđević wrote her Czech books originally in the Czech language; we could speculate about an unidentified translator or a proof-reader (perhaps her husband). Her Czech writing was perhaps not fluent; in Serbian texts she made some mistakes in Czech names and Czech idioms.
[23] She published her texts in Srbski književni glasnik, Letopis Matice srbske, Ženski pokret, and Život i rad (Svetlana Tomin, cited work, 1996, 148). She published some texts in different Czech newspapers in the 1930sPřítomnost, Nezávislá politika, Pokrokový obzor and Ženská narodní rada (the newspaper of the Czech women’s organisation).
[24] Kateřina Kolářová, cited work, 2015, 48.
[25] Both of them were writers – mediators from South Slavic countries living in Prague. Slovene-Croat writer Zofka Kveder belonged to a different generation. She established her writer and feminist identity in Prague at the beginning of modernism (1900–1906), and Julka Chlapec-Đorđević followed her example as a writer between two cultures after the First World War (1922–1945). She also promoted her legacy. Kveder was connected with Czech feminists and writers from the first wave, Chlapec-Đorđević to the second wave. Julka Chlapec-Đorđević appreciated her literary work but on the other hand criticised her feminist ideas. She also wrote an article about Kveder in her main Serbian book on feminism published in Belgrade. See: Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, „Iz praških dana Zofke Kveder ”, in Studije i eseje o feminizmu I (Beograd: Život i rad, 1935b), 176–187. She dedicated her only novel to Kveder. She also worked with Kveder in Ženski svijet, the feminist newspaper Kveder organised in Zagreb (1917–1920) (Alenka Jensterle-Doležal, “The Genealogy of the 20th Century South Slavonic Novel: Zofka Kveder and Julka Chlapec-Djordjević”, Knjiženstvo no. 6 (2016): 1–7. http://www.knjizenstvo.rs/magazine.php (accessed 8. 2. 2017) and reviewed her books in Prague. See: Julka Chlapec-Gjorgjevićová, “Ž. K.”, Československo-jihoslovanská liga 3, no. 7–8 (1923): 84.
[26] Heidenreich-Dolansky in: Julka Chlapec-Đorđević, Osećanja i opažanja (Beograd: Izdanje „Života i rada“, 1935c), 122.
[27] Milan L. Rajić, L. „Dr. Julka Hlapec-Djordjević.” Život i rad XXV, no. 162 (April 1937): 199.
[28] Svetlana Tomin, „Julka Hlapec-Đorđević (1882–1969) ili o feminizmu”, ProFemina no. 5/ 6 (1996): 147.
[29] Ksenija Atanasijević was the first recognised female Serbian philosopher , and one of the first female professors at the University of Belgrade, where she graduated and translated important philosophical works into Serbian. She was also an early Serbian feminist writer. Chlapec-Đorđević signed the petition for her when Atanasijević was expelled from the faculty. She dedicated one chapter of her book to her theory. See: Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, Studije i eseje o feminizmu II, Feminizam u modernoj književnosti (Beograd: Život i rad, 1938), 56–63.
[30] Svetlana Slapšak, „Julka Hlapec-Đorđević. Iz skandalozne istorije zataškavanja feminizma među Južnim Slovenima”, ProFemina no. 5–6 (1996): 86.
[31] Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, Crtice iz poslednjih godina Carevne Austrije (Beograd: Geca Kon, 1922). 19. This is also her only book written in Cyrillic alphabet.
[32] Ibid, 23-29.
[33] Ibid, 31. In original: „Srpski problem u umetničkom Beču … slabo koga istinski interesuje.”
[34] Ibid, 55-60.
[35] Cited in the original: „Smrt Austro-Ugarske niko ne žali.”Ibid, 60. Translations of citations from Serbian to English by Alenka Jensterle-Doležal.
[36] Julka Hlapec-Đorđević, Jedno dopisivanje, Fragmenti romana (Beograd: Prosveta, 2004). The novel is an homage to Zofka Kveder and her charismatic life. In the beginning of the novel, Marija Prohaskova wants to write a novel of this charismatic Slovene-Croat writer. In the books the narrator uses just initials Z. K., and the initials of other people connected with her: Czech translator, critic, and writer Zdenka Hásková, who was also her translator and best friend (initials Z. H.); her husband, the Czech poet Viktor Dýk (initials V. D.); Slovene writer Fran Govekar (initials F. G.). In the frames of the story we can find allusions to Kveder´s life and work, which Julka Chlapec-Đorđević appreciated so much. Nevertheless, the novel also has autobiographical traces (see also Alenka Jensterle-Doležal, cited work, 2016). We could also find the influence of Kveder´s Croat epistolary novel Hanka from 1917.
[37] Magdalena Koch, "...kiedy dojrzejemy jako kultura..." Twórczość pisarek serbskich na początku XX wieku (Wrocław: Wydawnictvo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2007), 149-153.
[38] The prose is autobiographical, but we do not know how much. We do not know a lot about Chlapec-Đorđević´s marriage and love affairs.
[39] The author described her student life: In 1906, she became the first female doctor in philosophy in Austria-Hungary.
[40] Svetlana Slapšak, „Jedno dopisivanje: odgovor posle sedamdeset godina.”, in Jedno dopisivanje. Fragmenti romana Julka Hlapec-Đorđević, (Beograd: Prosveta, 2004), 167-168.
[41] Julka Hlapec-Đorđević, Jedno dopisivanje, Fragmenti romana (Beograd: Prosveta, 2004), 23–24.
[42] Viktor Adler (1852–1918), a Jew of German origin and a politician of the Austrian Social Democratic Party. He formed the Austrian Social Democrats and was their president until 1918.
[43] Julka Hlapec-Đorđević, Jedno dopisivanje, Fragmenti romana (Beograd: Prosveta, 2004), 23. The Serbian patriotism of Julka Hlapec-Đorđević was from her Viennese period connected with the Yugoslav idea – the concept of political unity and the emergence of three South Slavic nations: Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. This nineteenth-century idea became very popular among South-Slavic intellectuals before the First World War.
[44] Julka Hlapec-Đorđević, Jedno dopisivanje, Fragmenti romana (Beograd: Prosveta, 2004), 44.
[45] Ibid, 46.
[46] The Czech Sokol movement, established in 1864, was not just a part of a sport organisation: in the first part of the twentieth century, it also had a great cultural and political impact on Czech culture.
[47] The monument to Jan Hus in the main Prague Square is the best-known Czech secession monument (from 1903 to 1915) by the sculptor Ladislav Šaloun (1870–1946). Jan Hus (1372–1415), a theologian, philosopher, and church reformer, was one of the main Czech historical figures. Chlapec-Đorđević wrote about him also in her travelogues.
[48] The main building (from 1905–1912) as the example of the new Prague architecture of the ascending Czech bourgeoisie – for concerts and cultural events in Prague.
[49] Czechoslovak-South Slavic League was an important organisation that contributed significantly to the development of relations between Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia between two world wars. They published two periodicals: Czechoslovak-South Slavic League (from 1921 to 1930) and the Czechoslovak-South Slavic Revue (from 1930 to 1939). The main topics were culture, arts, tourism, literature, and the economy of Yugoslavia. In the magazines of the Czechoslovak-South Slavic League (1921–1930) two people wrote on literature: Dragutin Prohaska and Julka Chlapec-Djordjević (Kateřina Kolařová, cited work, 2018, 48).
[50] Julka Hlapec-Đorđević, Jedno dopisivanje, Fragmenti romana (Beograd: Prosveta, 2004), 116.
[51] Ibid, 105.
[52] In her introduction to that book, the Serbian feminist Ksenija Atanasijević comments that Chlapec-Đorđević, with the “awareness of her spirit”, cherished her relations with the Serbian lands. She also believed that Chlapec-Đorđević extolled the Yugoslavian idea from her studies in Vienna. See: Ksenija Atanasijević, „Uz ovaj književni mozaik” in Osećanja i opažanja, I – II, J. Chlapec-Djordjević (Beograd: Život i rad, 1935), I.
[53] Jelena Dimitrijević was a Serbian short story writer, novelist, poet, traveller, social worker, feminist, and polyglot . She is considered to be the first woman in modern Serbian history to publish a work of travel-related prose, in 1897.
[54] The most well-known travelogue by Isidora Sekulić is Pisma iz Norveške (Letters from Norway), a meditative travelogue published in 1914 at the dawn of Serbian prose writing.
[55] In the Czech literary society then, there were very famous travelogues by Karel Čapek.
[56] Julka Chlapec-Đorđević, Osećanja i opažanja (Beograd: Izdanje „Života i rada“, 1935c), 73.
[57] Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, Zcest po domově (Jugoslávie) (V Praze: Československa grafická unie, 1936).
[58] Ibid, 11.
[59] In explaining her strategy of covering the subject in her autobiographical writing, we could use the explanation of Leigh Gilmore: “For some autobiographies, when autobiography seems to collect under a single name the related ideology of identity, power, and history, the refusal to identify self-representation with that name marks the site of resistance”. See: Leigh Gilmore , Autobiographics. A Feminist Theory of Women´s Self-representation (Idaho and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), 20.
[60] See: Svetlana Slapšak, „Julka Hlapec-Đorđević. Iz skandalozne istorije zataškavanja feminizma među Južnim Slovenima”, ProFemina no. 5–6 (1996): 86-89; Svetlana Tomin, „Julka Hlapec-Đorđević (1882–1969) ili o feminizmu”, ProFemina no. 5/6 (1996): 147–152.
[61] See: Svetlana Slapšak, cited work, 1996; Svetlana Slapšak, „Jedno dopisivanje: odgovor posle sedamdeset godina.”, in Jedno dopisivanje. Fragmenti romana, Julka Hlapec-Đorđević. (Beograd: Prosveta, 2004), 153–170.
[62] In that question, she was very modern and she introduced the great feminist ideas that appeared later. Simone de Beauvoir ten years later published similar ideas in her book Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex, 1947), in which she presents the construction of gender as a social and historical fact, fighting against attendant stereotypes. For the deconstruction of those stereotypes, the book by Mary Elmann, Thinking about Women (1968), is an important touchstone.
[63] Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, Sudbina žene. Kriza seksualne etike. Dve sociološke študije (Ljubljana: Delniška tiskárna, D. D. u Ljubljani, 1930), 6.
[64] Teréza Nováková, Czech feminist and writer, editor of Ženski svět.
[65] Božena Víková Kunětická was a Czech feminist, nationalist politician, writer, and feminist. She was the first female member of the Bohemian diet .
[66] Jovan Skerlić was a Serbian writer and critic. He is regarded as one of the most influential Serbian literary critics of the early twentieth century in the beginning of Serbian modernism.
[67] Julka Gjorgjević-Chlapcová, Osudné chvíle feministického hnutí (Praha: Nakladatelství Práce Intelektu v Praze, 1933), 7.
[68] Julka Gjorgjević-Chlapcová, Feministické úvahy (V Praze: Československá grafická unie A. S., 1937).
[69] Marie Bahenská, Libuše Heczková, and Dana Musilová, Iluze spásy. České feministické myšlení 19. a 20. století (Hradec Králové: Univerzita Hradec Králové, 2011), 173.
[70] Inocenc Arnošt Bláha was a professor at a University in Brno.
[71] Emanuel Rádl was a biologist and philosopher and also a professor at Charles University. In the 1930s he initiated a great discussion in Czech society about the right of women to decide about their own bodies. His advice for women was to return from public to family life (see Marie Bahenská, Libuše Heczková, and Dana Musilová, cited work, 2011, 216).
[72] Marie Tumlířová was a Czech member of parliament between the wars.
[73] Antonie Maxová was a friend of Františka Plamínková’s.
[74] In 1930, in the newspaper Ženský svět, Czech feminist J. Šlamborová exposed the problem of how to connect family life and work (see Marie Bahenská, Libuše Heczková, and Dana Musilová, cited work, 2011, 173).
[75] Betty (Božena) Karpíšková (1881–1942) was a journalist and Czech senator from 1929 to 1939. She defended the woman’s right to decide about her body.
[76] Marie Jurnečková-Vorlová (1894–1970) was a Czech politician and senator from the Czech Social Democrat Proletarian Party between the world wars.
[77] Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, Studije i eseji o feminizmu I (Beograd: Život i rad, 1935);Studije i eseje o feminizmu II, Feminizam u modernoj književnosti (Beograd: Život i rad, 1938).
[78] In her theory, she refused to accept the “pansexualism” of Sigmund Freud and she preferred the theory of Alfred Adler, which was against the mainstream and showed her originality.
[79] Draga Dejanović (1840–1871) was a Serbian poet, writer, feminist, and patriot, part of the Serbian national uprising movement „Omladina”.
[80] Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, cited work, 1935, 164–175.
[81] Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, cited work, 1935b, 164.
[82] Ibid, 174.
[83] Ibid.
[84] Ibid, 56-63.
[85] In the Czech newspaper Ženska národní rada, she also wrote the necrology about her predecessor Zorka Hovorková (1865–1939), who was also a Serbian feminist, writer, translator and literary critic of Ženský svět (from Novi Sad), part of the second wave of Czech feminism, living in Prague, who ran a literary salon for people associated with Yugoslavia in Prague (Chlapec-Djordjević, cited work, 1938, 99).
[86] Marie Bahenská, Libuše Heczková, and Dana Musilová, Iluze spásy. České feministické myšlení 19. a 20. století (Hradec Králové: Univerzita Hradec Králové, 2011), 213.
[87] She also dedicated her first book to Masaryk (Chlapec-Djordjević, cited work, 1922).
[88] Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, cited work, 1935b, 99.
[89] Ibid, 100.
[90] Coroll S Lilly, and Melissa Bokovoy, “Serbia, Croatia and Yugoslavia”, in Women, Gender and Fascism in Europe 1919–1945, edited by Kevin Passmore (Manchester University Press, 2003), 91–101.
[91] The article was a reaction to Poleksija D. Stošić Dimitrijević and her article „Materinstvo je najglavniji poziv svake žene” (“Motherhood is the Main Goal of Every Woman”) in Žena i svijet in 1932.
[92] Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, cited work, 1935b, 140.
[93] Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, Studije i eseje o feminizmu II, Feminizam u modernoj književnosti (Beograd: Život i rad, 1938).She was familiar with different literatures and literary approaches. In her cultural theory she used mostly literary references. See also: Ivana Pantelić, Jelena Milinković, and Ljubinka Škodrić, Dvadeset žena koje su obeležile XX vek u Srbiji (Beograd: NIN, 2013), 11.
[94] The analyses of the depiction of women in literature officially began with Simone de Beauvoir in 1949. Part of the book Le Deuxième sexe is dedicated to the picture of women in the literature of men – in America in the study of Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (New York, 1969) and after that in French and Anglo-American theory in the 1970s and 1980s.
[95] In literary feminist theory, that kind of approach began to dominate much later: in the 1970s and 1980s in the French and Anglo-American theory.
[96] Aleksandar Kostić, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine, was the founder of different faculties. He wrote books on histology and sexology. He was also the founder of medical photography.
[97] Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, Zcest po domově (Jugoslávie) (V Praze: Československa grafická unie, 1936), 79–83.
[98] Ibid, 83.
[99] Julka Gjorgjević-Chlapcová, Osudné chvíle feministického hnutí (Praha: Nakladatelství Práce Intelektu v Praze, 1933), 5.
[100] Rosi Braidotti, cited work, 2011, 152.
[101] It is very emotional how often she uses these pronouns and that shows her beliefs.
[102] See: Julka Chlapec-Djordjević, cited work, 1935b, 177. These were her words about Slovene-Croat writer Zofka Kveder and her place in the Czech society before the First World War – but it could be used also for describing her position twenty years later.
[103] On 30 September 1938, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Édouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact, which sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. That was also the end of one writer’s career: after 1938, Julka Chlapec-Đorđević went silent. Around the same time, the great Czech writer Karel Čapek died. Czech literary discourse was stifled and a whole age came to an end.
[104] Regarding her political thoughts, ideology, and historical reflections, we could criticize the study in which she uncritically glorified the Yugoslav king Aleksandar Karađorđević (Chlapec-Djordjević, cited work, 1935, 39–42).
[105] From her writing we can see that she merged her Serbian identity with the common Yugoslav idea, but she never publicly declared her opinion on what was at that time a very sensible and politically disputable question (Yugoslavia in the 1930s was a dictatorship with a great influence of Serbian nationalists).
[106] That was also one of the reasons why her work did not have reception on a wider scale.
[107] We do not know the reason of her move from Prague. It may have happened because of her personal tragedy in the War: perhaps because of the death of her husband or one of her daughters? From the informal oral sources, we know that she lived in Ústí nad Labem alone with her daughter.
[108] She died on 11 November 1969: just one short obituary was published in the Czech newspaper Svobodné slovo (12 November 1969, p. 4).
[109] See: Marie Bahenská, Libuše Heczková, and Dana Musilová, Iluze spásy. České feministické myšlení 19. a 20. století (Hradec Králové: Univerzita Hradec Králové, 2011), 279. Feminism was for Czech communists even dangerous. This is exemplified by the fate of the Czech politician, communist, and feminist Milada Horáková (1901–1950), who, after Františka Plamínková, was also the official leader of Czech and Slovak women’s organisation Rada československih žen, and who, after the Second World War, was cruelly executed after a show trial by the Czech communists.