Stručni rad
The life of women in Vinodol at the beginning of the 20th century from weddings to the upkeep of families
Katica Barbarić
Sanja Škrgatić
; Centar za kulturu Dr. Ivan Kostrenčić
Sažetak
The author writes about the life of women in the Vinodol valley at the beginning of the 20th century, basing her work on personal memories and on the stories that she had heard during her childhood in the 1940s from her old ancestors and the local people in her home settlement of Grižane. In the article she describes the traditional wedding customs, from contract marriages, to the preparations for the wedding itself and the wedding celebrations.
In the second part of the article she describes the numerous obligations of the married women in the household and the property, their arduous daily work, because they were also forced to do the “men’s” work because most of the year their husbands were working away from the village. The wife had an important role in the household despite their traditionally subordinate position compared to their husbands, in all areas of life.
Despite the numerous and difficult jobs that a woman carried in the household and the property her contribution was regularly diminished and devalued. Even at the time of the wedding, the greater importance of the bridegroom and his family was visible with the fact that his family took place of honour at the table closer to the young couple, whilst the bride’s family sat at the end of the table. The girls usually married very young, and by their 20s they were already consider too old, and at that age, it was difficult for them to find a groom. After the wedding the young brides were forced to take on many duties and tasks around the family and property. More often than not they were too young and inexperienced so at the beginning they helped their mother-in-law and from her they learnt their housekeeping jobs and family rules. With the spring the men would already have left to work in other regions and would only occasionally return, whilst the women would be left alone, bore the children, maintained the properties and families which consisted of the children and the aged parents of their husbands, and so they were forced to bear all the hardships of life in the country. They earnt money by selling their agricultural produce in nearby Crikvenica, but they carefully economised their modest income and they only bought the most necessary things. They made clothing and footwear themselves, and in the same way they also prepared their daughters' dowries.
This paper is a small contribution to the way of life of the women in Vinodol in the recent past and contains several examples from the life of the local environment of the settlement of Grižane. Considering that it concerns layered themes that so far in this milieu have not been investigated, we believe that it requires more attention than this paper provides and that it deserves a more complex investigation and study.
Besides the description of the wedding customs, also noted here are several songs that were often sung at wedding celebrations, and also mentioned are a number of local names connected to the household with which this paper contributes to the documenting of the oral tradition of Grižane.
Ključne riječi
women; Vinodol; Grižane; wedding customs; family
Hrčak ID:
170775
URI
Datum izdavanja:
15.12.2015.
Posjeta: 1.037 *