Izvorni znanstveni članak
ON MISOGYNOUS STORIES
Maja Bošković-Stulli
; Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, Zagreb
Sažetak
The paper shortly deals with the deep roots of anti-women attitudes and with their regional differences. For example, in the cattle-breeding Dinaric regions women were not
even allowed to sit at the same table with men (and its relics are shown also today, even in a statement by a Croatian female minister). Following the path of the discussions of
Elfrieda Moser-Rath and other authors, the author shows the literary anti-women tradition
since the Middle Ages until Baroque, including Croatian older writings. All of it was later
on reflected in oral stories, in which it was partly motivated by the real-life situations.
The paper also discusses so-called women aesthetics, the stones selected by women
themselves, and the way women shaped them. The author shows stones that indeed are not
anti-women, but advocate a passive and unequal role of women: legends and tales on
unjustly persecuted women, on patient female sufferers, and even on women who are
intellectually superior to men, but always within the framework of their previously set
roles. However, those stories should not be accepted as always identical stereotypes
because the female narrators gave their own, very heterogeneous meaning to the same
contents.
The author then shows many types of stories on evil women from the international
menu: on adulteresses, stubborn or quarrelsome women, talkative women, women worse
than the devil himself, and on woman as her husband's enemy in contrast to a faithful dog,
etc. The same types of stories on women are discussed on examples of Croatian oral
traditions; their sense, expressions, forms and narrators are analyzed together with how it
had all influenced the meaning of a story. Women in above mentioned cattle-breeding
regions liked telling stories on evil women — evil just because they contradicted their
husbands; or they were teamed in an entirely cruel way. Even cheerful stories on woman
who outwitted the devil often end in punishing her not very clear evilness. No matter how
witty those stories are, they are at the same time educational, and teach women their
permitted behaviour. A characteristic example of this kind of story is the one when a king
appoints a man to be his minister and at the same time advises him to "soften the back" of
his talkative wife.
The final part mentions the film "Women-devil" (directed by Susan Seidelman,
starring Roseanne Barr) as a contemporary example of a chaotic, symbolic woman revenge
in a parody incarnation created from the long-lasting perception of women.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
44909
URI
Datum izdavanja:
19.12.1996.
Posjeta: 3.301 *