7/2/2022

In the post-1918 political context and in a city with a specific demographic landscape, women’s activism was shaped by ethnic and religious criteria, as well as by other specific objectives. Applying this typology to Romanian women’s societies, the study offers a view on some of the most prominent associations from Cluj, through a series of monographic notes that retain their most important defining elements: objectives, activity and ignificant accomplishments, also listing the individual particularities of each society. The short histories include microbiographies of the leadership – some of the most important representatives of the Cluj women’s movement. Going from description to analysis and by discerning the particular elements of each society, their leadership and also their discourse, the study emphasises the local particularities of interwar women’s activism; originating in the pre-war era, Romanian women’s interwar activism maintained the line of a national militancy, served through piety, charity and emancipation. This context left little interest for radical emancipation ideas; therefore, militancy for women’s rights centred on the objective of feminine emancipation as the ultimate purpose is not witnessed. Considered on a regional and national scale of female interwar activism, Romanian women’s activism from Cluj is part of a regional current of the feminist movement, with a traditionalist moderate tendency inside the larger Romanian feminist movement. The local Cluj branch of the Romanian Women’s Group (Gruparea Femeilor Române), who followed the model of their mother-society, promoted a distorted interpretation of women’s rights, in an anti-democratic authoritarian ideological construct marked by strong nationalist accents. On the other hand, after 1918, within new political and state realities, the activities of Cluj women established their objectives in tight connection to the main determining factors of the specific local realities of the era (demographic, economic, social, and cultural factors), and in the service of asserting and consolidating the newly found Romanian identity of the city.

Art does not represent reality, but it can be an expression of it. Artists always used real-life experiences, including such events as revolutions, wars, etc. as a source for their works. At the same time, political and religious leaders used artistic, visual language for promoting their military victories or the supremacy of their power or faith. So, artworks, buildings, sculptures, or paintings were valuable tools for propaganda. Art can be used as a manifestation of political power or as a form of protesting against it. Sometimes artists were asked to represent abstract values like liberty, victory, peace, or the nation. In such circumstances, artists used the feminine form and not only because the notions were feminine nouns. Considering these general premises, my study explores the female representations and presences in Romanian First World War commemorative art. The study examines how the feminine form was used in the First World War monuments. The personification of abstract notions was examined, together with the presence of real feminine figures in this type of art, and Romanian women’s involvement in creating and sponsoring these kinds of monuments. In addition, the study intends to assess the impact and the extent to which people in general, and women in particular, resonated with these monumental works of art. The main sources for this approach were the public monuments built during the interwar period as part of the commemoration practices of the war. Given the context, reference is also made to other works of art having female representations, created by the same artists who created the monuments under review.

The aim of this article is to provide a close reading of two illustrative texts for the feminine version of the war diary during WWI in the Romanian territory, namely Yvonne Blondel’s War Journal: 1916-1917 and Queen Marie’s unabridged version of the diary she kept between 1916 and 1918. The contrastive element is represented by Sextil Pușcariu’s Memoirs, which are relevant from a threefold perspective: gender, geography, and the representation of the feminine figure. The article will focus on six feminine roles: the nurse, the patriot, the diplomat, the wife, the mother, and the writer.

Social life and fashion have not been the woman’s only concerns at the end of the 19th and the late 20th century. Their contribution to modern society changes, by taking on new duties and liabilities will have a specific means of expression and for a better understanding of the activities they carried out it requires an overview, even a brief one over a few Oltenian women from the above-mentioned period. Seen only as a wife and mother, the woman makes her way into society being concerned with her own education, she takes part in financing arts and not only, and she engages in harnessing traditional clothing and crafts.

This study aims to explore the visual discourse about women and their roles in the Romanian village, a discourse created by the picture postcards from the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. To reach this aim, we considered the following objectives: to realise a typology of the used research material, to identify the main representations of women, to analyse the relationship between the representations of women and the other represented elements (men, children, rural landscapes, households, tools, etc.), to discuss the main features of the visual discourse about the women from the rural area, for the respective period, based on the previous identification of the elements that became iconic through repeated representation. We used a critical visual methodology and discourse analysis to explore the picture postcards that represented women from the Romanian village, underlining the connection between their meanings and the cultural reality. Our findings are useful for similar research on gender and its visual construction from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.