Women and the Family in the Late Nineteenth-century Romanian Feminist Press

Abstract

From a historical sociology and gender studies perspective, this article sets out to explore the representations and the public discourse surrounding women's role in society and in the family, through the lenses of the late nineteenth-century Romanian feminist press. As elsewhere in Europe, the feminine ideal of that era emphasized motherhood and the dichotomy between public and private spheres in the construction of gender relations. At the same time, the feminist discourse provides a privileged window on the ''idealized'' model of the family and the distribution of gender roles, but it also allows researchers to capture the tensions between dominant and minority representations of femininity. This kind of discourse and public position create at the time the conditions of possibility for further social change. Hence, a content analysis of Femeia românȃ magazine is of particular heuristic value, due to its longevity, but also to the personality of its founder.Women, the family, and feminism are topics that have already been visited many times in Western historiography, from different theoretical and methodological perspectives, which showcase their complexity as well as their centrality for understanding past and contemporary societies. 1 Before 1989, Romanian social scientists and particularly historians were mostly interested in some variant of ''traditional family history.'' 2 The fall of the communist regime constitutes a point of departure for the revitalization of the field through the emergence of new research topics and innovative theoretical and methodological approaches. The history of the family, legal, and demographic studies; the sociology of matrimonial and patrimonial strategies; women's history and gender studies; sexuality; as well as increasing acknowledgment of the impact of medicine upon social life (its