The Inter-Imperial Dowry Plot

Abstract

Taking Liviu Rebreanu's novel Ion (1920) as an example of a modernist text produced in the periphery of European empires, the essay proposes a typology of inter-imperial modes of gendered silence. Set in a small village in Transylvania, on the periphery of the Austro-Hungarian empire, itself on the semi-periphery of the modern world-system, the novel dramatizes Transylvanian Romanians' claim to a modernity understood as a struggle for land redistribution and language rights. The essay traces a series of inter-related forms of modernist silence as they pertain to the portrait of an ostensibly “traditional” female character. We argue that this portrait is a symptom of an inter-imperial predicament that sidelines projects of gender emancipation in the service of prioritizing anti-imperial struggles. Women's complaints against this predicament register as whims.

Keywords:

• Citizenship
• gender analysis
• modernism
• New Woman
• Liviu Rebreanu
• small literature canon
• world-system

Notes

1 On this intersection, see Cheah (2016).

2 After initial translations into Czech (1929), Italian (1930), Polish (1932), German (1941), Slovenian (1943), Croatian (1943), Ion was translated into French, English, Russian, Turkish, Persian, Japanese.

3 On women's writing in the Austro-Hungarian empire, see Schwartz (2008).

4 See especially Lazreg (1994) and Spivak (2010).

5 On masculinity, see Connell and Messerschmidt (2005).

6 For an account of Rebreanu's realism, which excludes the possibility of its convergence with modernism, see Simuț (2010).

7 On the global reverberations of naturalism, see Hill (2009).

8 Between 1876 and 1910, 1,422,205 Hungarian nationals emigrated to the United States, 6,056 to Canada, 264,460 to Argentina and 8,500 to Brazil (Horvath and Neyer 1996, 35). As the Brazilian government was looking for white settlers to populate its vast domain as well as to “whiten” the predominantly Black and mestizo population, it offered free transportation to migrants from Eastern Europe. The overwhelming response, which saw over 100,000 citizens of Russia and Austria-Hungary leave for Brazil starting in 1890, prompted the Hungarian government to ban emigration to Brazil altogether at the end of 1900 (Zahra 2016, 37; Gammerl 2018, 44).

9 Literary critic Eugen Lovinescu described the novel in 1920 as “the strongest objective creation in Romanian literature” (quoted in Rebreanu 1970, 714). In 1935, George Călinescu considered that Ion was “the first genuine Romanian modernist novel”. For a review of debates on modernism in Romanian-language literary criticism, see Terian (2014).

10 On naturalism and prostitution, see Hill (2011). On debates on prostitution in the Austro-Hungarian empire, see Wingfield (2017).

11 Parenthetical citations from the novel refer to Rebreanu (1965) and Rebreanu (1970). We modified some translations.

12 On this mutation, see Bolovan (1999, 163).

13 On the power dynamic between “deflowerer” and virgin, see Freud (1966).

14 On the guilt associated with the loss of virginity in the broader Romanian culture, see Vintilă-Ghițulescu (2006).

15 In a series of articles in 1890, Stefan Buzilă reported on an ethnographic study of wedding rituals in the region. He repeatedly underscored that wedding rituals among the rural Romanian population followed Roman custom.

16 Bolovan (2017) documents the high rate of intermarriage in Transylvania of the late nineteenth century and anxieties associated with this rate. In 1890, Buzilă emphasized that “the daughter of a Romanian peasant will never marry a Jew, a Hungarian or a Gypsy, etc” (Buzilă 2010, 130).

17 On virginity, see Davis (1993).

18 In the early modern period, a law in neighboring, Romanian-language community in Moldova required that rapists marry their victims (quoted in Oișteanu 2016, 382).

19 The portrayal of Ion's father as unmanly is crucial to how Rebreanu frames the household in which Ion grew up. Of Ion's mother, Zenobia, the novel reports that she is “a woman as efficient as any man [o femeie ca un bărbat]” (39, 56). Indeed, given her husband's inefficiency, “she became man and master of the place [s-a făcut ea bărbat și a dus casa]” (40, 57). Zenobia thus challenges the local gender system, temporarily becoming the man in the house. There is a sense, however, that the household still does not have a “head”, which explains its downward mobility. As Ion matures, he takes over the household and things slowly return to normal. A sign of this normal is Ion being ready to strike his mother so as to point to her new place in the household.

20 In 1894, the imperial state secularized marriage, limiting the authority of the church in matrimonial law (Bolovan 1999, 67). Churches continued to function as major actors, especially with regards to civil and moral issues.

21 The list of dowry items itemized by Deteșan (2013, 37) on the basis of Transylvanian church and notary records is almost identical to Rebreanu's fictional list.

22 On the form of the list, see Parvulescu and Boatcă (2020).

23 A rhetoric of animalization is deployed to describe the character of Savista, who is disabled:

Savista, the village cripple, crept through the gate, worming her way through the people's legs […] Her legs were maimed from birth and her long wiry arms served as hooks to drag her crippled body along. The whitish lips of her enormous mouth covered froth-flecked gums and sparse pointed stubs of yellow teeth [Tocmai atunci se târăște pe poartă, printre picioarele oamenilor, Savista, oloaga satului […] Are picioarele încârcite din naștere, iar brațele lungi și osoase ca niște căngi anume spre a-și târî schilozenia, și o gură enormă cu buzele alburii de sub care se întind gingiile îmbălate, cu colți de dinți galbeni, rari și lungi]. (14, 18–19)

24 On the global dimensions of this argument, see Kessler-Harris (2004, 154).

25 Quoted in Gheran (1986, 103).

26 On corporal punishment in Transylvanian schools, see Sabău (2015, 146).

27 Oișteanu (2016, 153).

28 Oișteanu (2016) writes, matter-of-factly, about this phenomenon in the broader Romanian culture:

The custom of the husband beating his wife was considered one of his inalienable ‘rights’. This was a usual perception even among women. It is a problem of traditional mentality, profoundly instilled … the well-intentioned intervention of a stranger was perceived like an intrusion, being considered more brutal than the violence administered by one's own husband. (152–3)

29 Romanian-language literary critic Nicolae Manolescu (1980) argues that the greatness of the naturalist novel depends on characters like Ana: “The naturalist novel owes its greatness to the cultivation of these people without a chance, to these destinies without hope” (175–6).

30 Fleissner (2004) describes a naturalist pattern: “an ongoing, nonlinear, repetitive motion – back and forth, around and around, on and on – that has the distinctive effect of seeming also like a stuckness in place” (9).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship: [Grant Number na].