Abstract
After the devastating war, the process of reconstruction in Hungary also entailed a redefinition of ‘femininity’.1 Reconstruction and reproduction are traditionally female duties and yet these issues were usually deliberated and decided upon, and then narrated by men. The standard histories of post-1945 Hungarian literature usually mention just two women writers: Ágnes Nemes Nagy and Erzsébet Galgóczi, representing different traditions, but both belonging to the new generation of women writers who started their career after 1945. This chapter will analyse the historical and intellectual circumstances as this new generation of women entered literary life after 1945, the way the communist takeover influenced the artificial promotion of women writers and their work, and how a new generation of women writers appeared in the mid-1980s. Finally, I shall analyse recent discourse on women’s writing.
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Notes
See more on this in Andrea Petõ, Nõhistóriák. A politizáló magyar nõk történetébõl 1945–1951. (Women’s Stories. From The History of Hungarian Women in Politics) Seneca, Budapest, 1998.
Piroska Szántó’s autobographical novels include: Bálám szamara (Balaam’s Ass, 1982); Akt (Nude, 1994); Balám szamara és a többiek (Balaam’s Ass and the Others, 1997).
Lóránt Kabdebó, A háborúnak vége lett (The War has Ended) Kozmosz, Budapest, 1983, p. 239.
Lóránt Kabdebó, A háborúnak vége lett, Kozmosz, 1983, p. 242.
Géza Juhász, Trodalmunk idõszerû kérdéset (The Relevant Questions of Our Literature). Magyarok. 1945, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 189.
More on this János M. Rainer, Az írók helye. Viták a magyar irodalmi sajtóban. 1953–1956 (The place of writers. Debates in the literary press) Magvetõ, Budapest, 1990.
Piroska Szántó, Forradalmi szvit 1956. október-december. Budapest, Corvina 1989.
For more on this see Borbála Juhász, The Memory of 1956. A Gendered Transcript. MA thesis, Central European University, Department of History, Budapest, 1998.
Béla Pomogáts, Az újabb magyar irodalom 1945–1981 (The Recent Hungarian Literature) Gondolat, Budapest, 1982, pp. 625–31.
Éva Standeisky, Az írók és a hatalom. 1956–1963 (The Writers and the Power), 1956-os Intézet, Budapest, 1996.
Sándor Révész, Aczél és korunk (Aczél and our time) Sik, Budapest, 1997.
Erzsébet Eszéki, Kibeszéljük magunkat, íróportrék a nyolcvanas évekbõl (Speaking out. Portraits of Writers from the 1980s) Múzsák Budapest, 1990, p. 30.
On women in media and literature, see Barbara Einhorn, Cinderella Goes to Market Citizenship, Gender and Women’s Movements in East Central Europe (Verso, 1993), pp. 216–56.
Márta Károly, ‘Irónõk? Nõírók?’ Respublika 1994, 23, p. 61.
Márta Károly, ‘Irónõk? Nõirók?’ Respublika 1994, 23, p. 61.
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© 2001 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Petõ, A. (2001). Hungarian Women’s Writing, 1945–95. In: Hawkesworth, C. (eds) A History of Central European Women’s Writing. Studies in Russia and East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985151_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985151_15
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