Bad mothers and maternal ambivalence in Ciclul Hallipilor [The Hallipa cycle] by Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu and Patimi [Passions] by Sofia Nădejde
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v9i2.28608Keywords:
motherhood, Romanian modern novel , modern mothers , women’s responsibility , social and domestic oppressionAbstract
The article analyzes the symptomatic representations of maternal experience in the modern Romanian novel written by women. It aims to draw attention to maternal voices portrayed in literary texts across national contexts at the beginning of the 20th century. The two novels proposed for this study focus on two prominent Romanian women writers who held ideologically opposing views: Sofia Nădejde (1856-1946), a feminist and socialist activist, and Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu (1876-1955), a well-established female novelist associated with the influential literary group which marked Romanian literary modernism during the interwar period – Sburătorul. This article examines the instrumental role of maternity and maternal ambivalence in these two novels. The often distant or even toxic relationship between mothers and children illustrates that maternity in this context is not a choice, but a question influenced by social demands and “female responsibility.” Thus, I explore significant aspects of “modern motherhood” as a gendered experience shaped by the social order: maternity as a matrimonial transaction, domestic oppression, social pressure, and finally, how the need for social emancipation and economic advancement interfere with the maternal role that women experience in terms of patriarchal constraints. This article aims to reflect on how these novels depict maternity as an experience beyond women’s agency.
References
Anderson, H. (1992). Utopian feminism: Women’s movements in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Yale University Press.
Baltazar, C. (1962). Contemporan cu ei: Amintiri și portrete [Contemporaneous with them: Memories and portraits]. Editura pentru Literatură.
Baghiu, Ș. (2022). Liviu Rebreanu și Sofia Nădejde ca world literature: Geopolitică, interimperialitate și descoperirea lumii în romanul modern [Liviu Rebreanu and Sofia Nădejde as world literature: Geopolitics, interimperiality, and the discovery of the world in the modern novel]. Transilvania, 10, 46–54. https://doi.org/10.51391/trva.2022.10.06
Băluță, I. (2008). La bourgeoise respectable: Réflexion sur la construction d’une nouvelle identité féminine dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle roumain [The respectable bourgeois woman: Reflection on the construction of a new feminine identity in the second half of the Romanian nineteenth century]. Bucharest University Press.
Benedetti, L. (2007). The tigress in the snow: Motherhood and literature in twentieth-century Italy. University of Toronto Press.
Bopp-Filimonov, V. (2024). Extraordinary bodies in Liviu Rebreanu’s Ion: A reading through the lens of disability studies. Dacoromania Litteraria, 11, 8–27. https://dacoromanialitteraria.inst-puscariu.ro/pdf/11/1%20Bopp_Filimonov.pdf
Bordeianu, M., Botez, V., Botez, Gr., Lăzărescu, I., & Teodorescu, Al. (Eds.). (1966). Scrisori către Ibrăileanu [Letters to Ibrăileanu]. Editura Minerva.
Bourdieu, P. (2001), Masculine Domination. (R. Niche, Trans.). Stanford University Press.
Devesel, A. (2012). Sofia Nădejde: A nineteenth-century Romanian socialist feminist [Master’s thesis, Central European University].
Ganaway, B. (2010). Toys, consumption and middle-class childhood in imperial Germany, 1871–1918. Peter Lang.
Gill, R. (2009). Narratives of mothering: Women’s writing in contemporary France. University of Delaware Press.
Goriss-Hunter, A. (2021). Patchwork girl: Fractured maternal monster. In A. L. Palko & A. O’Reilly (Eds.), Monstrous mothers: Troubling trope. Demeter Press.
Jianu, A. (2003). Women and society in the Romanian principalities, 1750–1850 [Doctoral dissertation, University of York]. https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/26166/
LaChance Adams, S. (2014). Mad mothers, bad mothers, and what a “good” mother would do. Columbia University Press.
Lovinescu, E. (2016). Istoria civilizației române moderne [The history of modern Romanian civilization] (O. Soare & N. Mecu, Eds.). Editura Fundația Academiei Române.
Mihăilescu, Ș. (2002). Din istoria feminismului românesc [From the history of Romanian feminism]. Polirom.
Mondry, H. (2006). Pure, strong and sexless: The peasant woman’s body and Gleb Uspensky. Rodopi.
Nădejde, S. (2021). Patimi [Passions] (rev. ed.). Publisol.
O’Reilly, A. (Ed.). (2004). From motherhood to mothering: The legacy of Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born. State University of New York Press.
Oișteanu, A. (2016). Sexualitate și societate: Istorie, religie și literatură [Sexuality and society: History, religion and literature]. Polirom.
Papadat-Bengescu, H. (1937, July 11). Autobiografie [Autobiography]. Adevărul Literar și Artistic, 18(866), 5–6.
Papadat-Bengescu, H. (2012). Opere complete: Vol. 1. Romane [Complete works: Vol. 1. Novels] (G. Omăt, Ed.). Fundația Națională pentru Știință și Artă.
Pârvulescu, A., & Boatcă, M. (2022). Creolizing the modern: Transylvania across empires. Cornell University Press.
Pippidi, A. (1988). Amour et société: Arrière-plan historique d’un problème littéraire [Love and society: Historical background of a literary problem]. Cahiers roumains d’études littéraires, 3, 4–25.
Ransirini, S. (2021). “She laughed at anything”: The portrayal of the monstrous maternal in Anna Burns’s No Bones. In A. L. Palko & A. O’Reilly (Eds.), Monstrous mothers: Troubling trope. Demeter Press.
Rogozanu, C. (2024). Naratorul cel rău: Un studiu despre realismul românesc: Rebreanu, Preda, Dumitriu [The evil narrator: A study of Romanian realism]. Tact.
Ruddick, S. (1989). Maternal thinking: Toward a politics of peace. Ballantine Books.
Rye, G., Browne, V., Giorgio, A., Jeremiah, A., & Lee-Six, A. (Eds.). (2017). Motherhood in literature and culture: Interdisciplinary perspectives from Europe. Routledge.
Tova, M. (2020). Literary bioethics: Animality, disability, and the human. New York University Press.
Vintilă, C. (2006). Focul amorului: Despre dragoste și sexualitate în societatea românească, 1750–1830 [The fire of love: On love and sexuality in Romanian society, 1750–1830]. Humanitas.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Ioana Moroșan
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
