Agatha Schwartz

In Hungarian literary history, the assumption has been widely accepted that the turn of the century1 had no significant women prose writers, with the exception of Margit Kaffka. This ignorance can be easily witnessed by opening any book of Hungarian literary history currently in use (Szabolcsy, Czigány, Klaniczay). Except for Margit Kaffka, the authors do not deem it necessary to mention the names of any other women prose writers. It seems as if the opinion regarding women writers formulated by István Boross in his study Regényirodalmunk nőírói [Our Women Novelists] as far back as the 1930s, has barely changed:

Not even the most outstanding among them [the women writers] reach the level of value of the really talented male writer. Our judgment so far has also been a merely relative assessment since it will take them a long time before they reach the prominent strength, depth and value of the male writer.2

We can see here a typical example of how literary value based on a literary corpus written by male authors is declared universal with no tolerance for anything different. But Boross at least went beyond his post-World War II colleagues in one aspect: he dedicated an entire book to women writers and even offered a few rather interesting and useful analyses of their texts. It is, nevertheless, regrettable that he evaluates Margit Kaffka's prose with the following words: "We cannot attribute to her advantage all those superfluous adjectives, her often forceful word-creations and sentence structure."3 What would he have said about the sentence structure of Virginia Woolf not to mention Gertrude Stein? But no one is a prophet in his own country, and even less so if one is a woman writer.

In view of this rather sad background we can attribute a revolutionary importance to Anna Fábri's 1996 monograph, "A szép tiltott táj felé": A magyar írónők története két századforduló között ["To the Beautiful and Forbidden Land:" The History of Hungarian Women Writers Between Two Fin-de-Siècles (1795-1905)]. Fábri not only (un)-covers the neglected works of several Hungarian women writers, but she also analyses Emma Ritóok's and Terka Lux' texts from a new, feminist point of view; as a result, their importance and particular literary value become evident. Feminist literary theory, which is still relatively unknown and even less respected in Hungary, has succeeded in bringing to light the consciousness that women writers could be labelled as trivial, dilettantish, etc., as long as their texts were measured with norms set by a male literary establishment. But many turn-of-the-century women writers withstand such a traditional approach to literary evaluation. More than one - such as Kaffka and Wanda Tóth - published on a regular basis in the avantgarde magazine Nyugat [West], or received literary awards. An example of the latter is Emma Ritóok whose novel Egyenes úton, egyedül [On a Straight Path, Alone] won the 1905 award of the literary magazine Új idők [New Times]. Some of the writers were also active in the women's movement, like Szikra alias Countess Blanka Teleki. Kaffka was not a feminist; however, with her literary work she made an important contribution to defining the "new woman" and her struggles. Anna Szederkényi, on the other hand, is a good example of the achieved goals the "new woman" was fighting for: she became the first female member of the Association of Budapest Journalists.

Mothers and Daughters

Young girls growing up at the turn of the century did not have it easy. True, the first high-schools for girls had opened (an initiative of Hermin Beniczky, better known as Mrs. Pál Veres) already in the 1870s and in 1895 some faculties (philosophy, medicine, and pharmacy) had started registering their first female students.4 Nevertheless, these first paltry steps toward an improvement in women's education amounted to little. Furthermore, the educated woman of this generation still had to fight against many prejudices - both in her social environment and inside of herself. Ágnes, a young doctor, the heroine of Ritóok's novel Egyenes úton, egyedül, formulates this very appropriately:

I believe that in this women's revolution of ours the most difficult part is the period of transition. Not only aren't we understood but we don't quite understand ourselves either. The woman of the future, of a happy future will be born with a clear understanding of those endeavours which are still hazy in front of our eyes [...] Don't you see how bound we are by thousand threads of the past? By family life's thousand years old habits? They took us out of the walker, we are free, but they could not take away what we have inherited nor our upbringing.5

Ritóok knew what she was talking about because she herself was one of the few women among her contemporaries to have acquired a higher education. She had studied at French and German universities, obtained a doctorate, and was also the author of several very interesting and complex novels.

Another woman character of this generation, from Kaffka's novel Színek és évek [Colours and Years], Magda Pórtelky, still resigns herself to choosing marriage - an institution that provided women with material security. She looks for meaning in her existence only within marriage. Her whole world, in which she assumed a secondary role as the organizer of her husband's life and his supporter, necessarily collapses after his death. She is unable to get on with her life as an independent human being within the limited social framework that had been available for the women of her generation.6 To escape from this predicament, she chooses another, this time very bad, marriage, merely to have a husband who can provide for her. But she sends her three daughters to high-schools and inculcates into them the hope of the "new woman"'s generation they already belong to. Therefore it is rather interesting that other woman heroes, such as Ritóok's Ágnes, who are already part of this new generation of women, continue talking about the women of the future who will be able to realize these hopes. In Wanda Tóth's novella, "Első szerelem" [First Love], Ilona reflects this view when she says: "Oh well, our mothers were maybe still looking for their individuality; and we, who have it, don't know what to do with it... even less do we know how to live for ourselves."7

Mária, the heroine of another Kaffka novel, Mária évei [Maria's Years], is another example of the "new woman." She is a high-school teacher, and lives an independent life. Nevertheless, she chooses to end her young life with suicide by jumping into the Danube from the Margit-bridge. Miklós Szabolcsy has interpreted Mária's tragedy from the point of view that society was still not ready to welcome the new woman.8 Others held Mária's escape into a world of fantasy responsible for her inability to accept an imperfect reality in which she was looking in vain for her ideal.9 Is Mária a hopelessly romantic character? One thing does not fit into this picture: the fact that she was a "new woman" from whom one may expect to step out of the world of fantasies and start drawing the contours of a new world. In an essayistic text Kaffka published in 1913 in Világ [The World], entitled "Az asszony ügye" ["In Woman's Matters"], she creates the picture of a higher female being whose life should move in the direction of "professions, work, love, creation, battle, action, and learning;" who should be able "to place her centre of gravity and her value system inside of herself, not merely into how to please a man. And above everything, she should try to get closer to herself and to dig out from her depths those big, buried, slumbering values she owes to the world and without which this world would certainly be emptier and uglier."10 Mária does not find this synthesis - neither do numerous other women characters of this period. I will try to find here a possible answer to this failure.

Secrets and Lies or Sexuality and Marriage

Fin-de-siècle sexual morality can be easily deduced to the following formula which summarizes the moral double-standard: young, inexperienced virgin girl with some education and older, materially secured man who "naturally" possesses a sexual past. We can find the type of such a young, innocent girl in Judit from Anna Szederkényi's novel Amíg egy asszony eljut odáig [Until a Woman Gets That Far]. She represents, however, the "new woman" in one aspect: she is a teacher, and therefore able to make her own living. Her husband, Zalárd Borongós, is not that much older than her and he is not wealthy either; he is merely an idler twho thinks of himself as a poet. Judit leaves her parents' home secretly in order to marry him, without their consent. But her marriage does correspond to the above formula in one aspect: as it was appropriate for a young man of his age, Zalárd had a sexual past. With an unusual modernity, Szederkényi discloses the gap which opens up from the lies of the moral double-standard since such morality necessarily carries very different expectations for the spouses. How could a deep, sincere spiritual connection develop between two beings if one of them has been exposed only to the reading of sentimental novels and to the whisperings between girlfriends? If she expects her knight in a citadel of dreams to cast upon her a flower-shower? What happens if, under the wedding night's green light, this very same knight suddenly discloses his expectations of a very different "love" as it had been practiced in brothels? It is hardly surprising if the knight starts claiming his spousal "rights" without taking into consideration the fact of his wife's sexual inexperience; and if the wife, after such a wedding night and many more similar nights to follow turns into a so-called frigid woman. Szederkényi describes this as follows:

At night, after darkness has fallen, my husband approaches me like night itself. He starts besieging me and I feel that it is not even me whom he wants to conquer but rather that unknown power which separates us... What is it? I have thought - oh, I know now many things I didn't even suspect before my marriage - that those women may be between us who came before me, who gave him some secret joys and knew the art of loving much better than I ... Maybe it is them who he thinks about, maybe in a way he is not even aware of ... I begin to believe that those things I haven't deemed important, that I belittled and thought of as secondary since I thought I stood above them and out of their reach, are indeed the base of marital life. Everything turns around them... How strange that nobody talks about these things, not even husband and wife.11

It is interesting to note that Judit is writing this letter to her mother in a moment when her marriage starts going downhill; but she never sends the letter. The lies start right there, in the relationship between mother and daughter, and perpetuate themselves through the very same. It is the mother who thinks that she has prepared her daughter for marriage but is unable to actually break through certain taboos of which she herself is a victim. Judit's story ends, however, on a note of hope thanks to the fact that she is able to live a financially independent life as a teacher. She does not depend on her husband's income (that he does not have anyway) and manages to finally leave this man, her "first one." After several years of marriage, he feels like a stranger to her, just like any of her other suitors. Szederkényi portrays the "new woman" as the stronger sex: It is Judit who gives up everything for her lover, she breaks ties with her family and is in the end, after she has been totally disappointed by her husband and his character (or rather the lack of it), again the one who brings up the strength to leave a bad marriage.

We are presented with a different type of the "new woman" in the character of Magda. Magda is the younger sister of Ágnes, the doctor from Ritóok's novel Egyenes úton, egyedül. Unlike her sister, Magda has no higher education. She gives the purity and beauty of her 18 years exclusively to the man she loves and with whom she accepts to live without the conventional marriage-bond. Up to the moment when her partner sends her away before a visit from his family since he himself is not mature enough to stand up for such an unconventional relationship in front of them. It becomes clear that the man is portrayed as the weaker one who is the prisoner of conventions. After a few years Magda suddenly shows up at her sister's doorstep only to leave her little daughter behind. Shortly afterwards, Magda ends her life by jumping into the Danube and Ágnes sees her on the dissecting table at her clinic. Again, it is the man who is portrayed as the weaker sex. Ágnes can only feel pity for Magda's ex-lover who married a rich girl in the meantime and who "when he is supposed to carry the weight of responsibility [...] is weaker and more helpless than a woman."12 Ritóok deconstructs the ideal of marriage based on the moral double-standard not only through Magda who chooses free love and fails in her choice but also through Ágnes who revolts against the idea of marriage as an institution for the maintenance of the human race which is supposed to give meaning only to a woman's life:

- And I'm saying that marriage is woman's natural goal in life, shouted out Tilda in excitement. [...]
- Yes, but it is the same for man as well - replied Ágnes, now herself agitated.
- Nature wants to maintain the family, the race, it doesn't need any artists, writers, politicians and great men. But society has developed other goals for men, it created one-sided benefits for them in order to help them to achieve those goals, and it doesn't remind them of their natural goals as it does with women. Society invented the means to harmonize individual and family life for men only.13

Ritóok takes on the position of a critic of essentialism which explains differences between the sexes with "nature," i.e. some inborn and there-fore forever unchangeable qualities. These arguments, often misogynistic in tone, were used particularly to keep women in their "natural" place and role.14 Ritóok interprets gender differences as a result of rules and norms invented by society and the pressure to obey them, to be moulded by them.15 The "new woman" who, like Magda, does not bend in front of the norms set by society fails since the man with whom together she would like to break those very same norms remains their prisoner and seeks refuge in a marriage of convenience.

Baba in Terka Lux' novel Leányok [Girls] is another character with a fate similar to Magda's. Baba attends high-school in Budapest but, unlike her colleague Juli who wants to become a doctor, has not set a higher professional goal for herself. Baba's life also ends in a tragedy: the man with whom she was in love abandons her in pregnancy. Baba sees but one exit from this situation, which at the turn of the century, still carried a lot of social stigma for a young woman: she undergoes an abortion. Since it is performed illegally and without the appropriate expertise - her doctor friend Juli refusing to perform it herself and trying to convince Baba to keep the baby instead - Baba dies of the consequences. Thus this female character, who also opted for free love beyond social conventions, fails due to their contradictions.

The "New Woman" Beyond Love

Kaffka's Mária, Szederkényi's Judit, Ritóok's Ágnes, and Lux' Juli are all female characters who have taken advantage of the new professional opportunities which had opened up in fin-de-siècle Hungary for the "new woman." The young doctors Ágnes and Juli, especially, take their profession very seriously. They live for it. A shared common denominator of all four young women is that they have either been disappointed in love or that love is absent from their lives. Mária keeps on dreaming about love while at the same time her fiancé's kisses leave her cold. Ágnes and Juli, the two doctor characters, also carry the image of a complete love which is not given to them in the present moment. Ágnes' interest in her colleague Lénárd remains unrequited since he prefers her sister, Magda; the results of this love affair have been discussed above. Another suitor, Derzsi, the journalist, only seeks Ágnes' company because he needs to be listened to by a sensitive and intelligent woman. Free love proves to be a failure for Magda; Ágnes' other younger sister, Zsuzsa, who lives the conventional life of a wife and mother, after a few years of marital life comes to the conclusion: "I am a machine who gives birth to children, who cooks and does the laundry!"16 Faced with all these unhappy love-scenarios in women's lives of her generation, Ágnes carries on the hope to the generation of Magda's little daughter, to the future "in which you women will be strong and happy."17

Juli, the other doctor character, is a self-reliant, self-conscious, strong, professionally oriented woman. Her independence and strength are difficult for a young man of her time to accept. Her roommate's brother, who is in love with her, describes her as follows: "You are the kind of a wise, calm, superior, and beautiful girl who doesn't marry when she is asked but when she can tell the happy man: I love you and want to be yours!"18 What Juli is looking for in a man is intellectual partnership and a soulmate; she does not find these characteristics in her roommate's brother who is of a weak nature. Only once does she give in to his kisses but only for being dazed by spring, by the music that he produces for her on the piano. Realizing this fact, the young man commits suicide the next day. Juli, however, does not find fulfilment by living exclusively for her work. When a couple of years later she is about to leave Budapest and move to the country, she has tears in her eyes as her friend's mother who helps her pack talks to her: "But you not only have a brain like the men around here but also a heart, the angelic heart of a woman. And this heart needs to be loved and to love, to have children."19 The synthesis that Kaffka dreamt about for the "new woman," a synthesis toward "professions, work, love, creation, battle, action, and learning" ("In Woman's Matters") was somehow left out. The women characters discussed seemingly placed their "centre of gravity and value system" that Kaffka talks about inside of themselves, but only seemingly since none of them are capable of finding happiness in their private lives. And the choice they face is only seemingly one between profession or love since all of the women characters fail in their choice, be it in favour of love or profession. One could say that those opting for the path of independence (Judit, Ágnes, and Juli) are somewhat better off since their lives at least do not end in a tragedy. Kaffka's Mária, who tries out both paths and does not find herself in either one, seems to act the most consequentially: she is not ready for any compromise but rather chooses death. Maybe times were not ready yet to fully accept the "new woman;" and maybe the "new woman," despite all her efforts and willingness, was not able to awaken the "new man" in her contemporaries if they by themselves were not ready for a modification of the existing gender patterns. On the other hand, the past with all its interiorized texts was still echoing in the "new woman's" mind regardless of how much she was trying to erase or overwrite them with new texts. The result was most likely an uneven palimpsest with an underlying hidden layer which still propagated the old ideal of love: it is man who has to be strong and courageous in order to deserve the love of a "new woman" who is not willing to let an incomplete male being enter her life. Will the daughters' daughters be capable of achieving the desired synthesis, will they find the happiness Ágnes wished for her niece?

Look-out

Complete synthesis is still not about to occur in Kaffka's next novel, Állomások [Stations] either. Éva Rosztoky, the new heroine, a successful artist, surpasses her predecessors in one aspect: she has managed to place the centre of gravity inside of herself, her happiness does not hinge upon the love of a man. One fact contributes to this situation: Éva's accomplishment in motherhood. She cares for herself and her little son from her first marriage through her work as an industrial designer. In a letter to Éva, a girlfriend characterizes her as follows:

Éva, if you only knew how often I think of you with jealousy; of your deep calm, your harmony, your independence, and your proud, beautiful solitude that you have chosen! How did you acquire it, how do you manage, and ... how can you still remain an artist, a real artist in all of this?20

Éva has succeeded in combining an independent lifestyle with motherhood and in self-consciously accepting loneliness in regard to men.

Another author, Renée Erdős, wrote a play in 1923 entitled Az alkotók [The Creators]. In this play, Anna, a celebrated sculptor, finds the balance between her career as an artist, motherhood, and a happy marriage. She finds herself at a crossroad when, after many years, she meets again her old love, a fellow sculptor. She feels the old passion awaken again, a passion much stronger than what she feels for her husband who is a writer of average talent, but with whom she lives a quiet life and does not have to exhaust her creative energy in constant battles. In Erdős' text it is the woman who chooses and she chooses the man whom she considers to be the best partner for her to balance out all aspects of life:

It may be that he is not an extraordinary human being, he is no genius but he has a pleasant face and a slenderness of the kind that I like. This is why you consider me unworthy of your esteem? But you, worthy men sometimes lie at the feet of the most despicable woman all your life! Why shouldn't I also be allowed to arrange my life as I please? Because I am a woman?21

We are witnessing here a reversal of the traditional gender roles. The woman neither supports her man's creativity to the point of self-sacrifice (as it was expected of the generation of her grandmothers) nor does she devote herself exclusively to her career with no male presence in her life (as many among the first generation of the "new woman" did). Instead, Anna manages to balance out the diverse elements that are to bring about her happiness and is thus the only character in the discussed texts who is able to achieve the desired synthesis in the "new woman's" life Kaffka was talking about.

Through the analysis of some fin-de-siècle female characters, I have outlined the conflicts that women writers from that period had observed as paramount in the "new woman's" life. Through their female characters, these writers show us the resistances and paradoxes women of their times often had to face and fight against. Even though the ideal of the "new woman" had already matured in young women living at the turn of the century, they were not yet able to achieve the level of harmony that would encompass all aspects of their lives. Yet later in the first half of the century characters such as Kaffka's Éva Rosztoky or, even more so, Erdős' Anna Szalay - who achieve the desired balance and are capable of choosing their path independently, self-consciously, without tragedy or regrets - demonstrate that the struggle of the previous generations had not been in vain.

NOTES

1 By the notion of the turn of the century or fin-de-siècle I understand the meeting point of the 19th and the 20th century, as it is usually acknowledged in literary history.
2 István Boross, Regényirodalmunk nőírói [Our Women Novelists] (Budapest: Gyóni Géza Irodalmi Társaság, 1935), p. 134. All translations from the Hungarian originals are by Agatha Schwartz.
3 Ibid., p. 24.
4 Rosika Schwimmer, one of the most important founding members of the Association of Feminists (Feministák Egyesülete), talks about these facts in "Der Stand der Frauenbildung in Ungarn," in Handbuch der Frauenbewegung, Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer, eds., 2 volumes. (Berlin: W. Moeser, 1902).
5 Emma Ritóok, Egyenes úton egyedül [On a Straight Path, Alone] (Budapest: Singer & Wolfner, 1905), p. 27-8.
6 A middle-class woman of Magda's generation could choose between becoming a governess, a teacher for girls, or opening a fashion store, a salon.
7 Wanda Tóth, "Első szerelem" [First Love], Nyugat 1911 (II): 339-51. p. 346.
8 Miklós Szabolcsy, A magyar irodalom története [A History of Hungarian Literature] (Budapest: Akadémiai kiadó, 1966), p. 228-32.
9 György Bodnár, "Látószög: Kaffka Margit, Mária évei," in Kaffka Margit, Mária évei [Mária's Years] (Sopron: Bethlen Gábor, 1994), p. 185-202.
10 Margit Kaffka, "Az asszony ügye" [The Woman Question], Világ, April 20, 1913.
11 Ritóok, p. 152.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., 61.
14 The turn of the century was a time replete with such theories; one major representative was the Austrian Otto Weininger whose book Sex and Character, first published in 1903, became an absolute bestseller and had a tremendous impact on many contemporary writers yet was heavily (and understandably) criticized by feminist writers.
15 Rosa Mayreder, an Austrian writer and feminist of the same period, one of the founding figures of the Austrian women's movement, expresses similar views in her influential book of essays Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit, 1905.
16 Ritóok, p. 121.
17 Ibid., p. 154.
18 Terka Lux, Leányok [Girls] (Budapest: Légrády, 1906), p. 226.
19 Ibid., p. 269.
20 Kaffka, Állomások [Stations] (Budapest: Szépirodalmi, 1957 [1917]), p. 489.
21 Renée Erdős, Az alkotók [The Creators] (Budapest: Fővárosi könyv és lapkiadó részvénytársaság, 1921), p. 61.

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