FEMINIST REFINEMENT OF SOCIALLY ENGAGED LITERATURE (FROM 1930’S TO 1950’S)

Abstract

During the evolution of leftist movements in Yugoslav states feminist requests used to have ambivalent treatment. This political fact had immediate influence on the status of feminist aspects and values in literature. Literature used to be used as a tool of revolutionary struggle and emancipation, sometimes actively and sometimes rather passively, depending on current availability of other public spheres. This paper points out that the understanding and evaluating of socially engaged literature does not necessary has to be grounded in the understanding of so called ‘clash of the literary Left’ (1928–1952), as it used to be in the Yugoslav literary historiography. By putting focus on the problem of artistic autonomy in the context of the Revolution, one can explain some segments and aspects of the literary Left, while in that case the whole field of the work of left-feminist authors is undervalued. The prose writing and reception of Milka Žicina, Jelene Bilbija, Frida Filipović, Nadežda Ilić Tutunović, Mitra Mitović, etc., two-fold oppression and consequently two-fold emancipation which women/authors wrote about, and emancipation which they conducted in praxis, discovers the existence of one more revolutionary transformation in the frame of common / shared revolution in Yugoslav society. Women’s revolutionary fiction or women’s engaged prose writing shows how Marxism and Feminism were grounded into the narrative image and vision of the world in the form of successfully hybridized ideological paradigm. In some aspects, this fiction corresponds with social reproduction theory.