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REPRESENTATION OF MODERNITY AT THE OUTSET OF LATVIAN WOMENВ’S WRITING: THE CASE OF ASPAZIJA

M. Burima

Abstract

Aspazija (Elza Rozenberga, 1965–1943) is a founder of Latvian women’s writing. She had an essential role in the formation of Latvian contemporary literature in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. At that time, it was modernity that determined social and economic processes in the world. That time was characterized by the deconstruction of the patriarchal model of life and the stratification of the society. Industrialization and urbanization determined the overlap, transformation and hybridization of ethnic and social identities. Aspazija addressed these topics also in her public presentations in periodicals. In 1897 she married J?nis Pliekš?ns, who soon became famous under his pseudonym Rainis (1865–1929). The article will focus on the modernity markers represented in Aspazija’s texts and public views: the replacement of rural identity by urban identity, inhabitants’ mass migration to towns and their complicated integration into the urban space overtaken by rapid industrial development, the deconstruction of patriarchal life order, women’s multiple roles in the society. Aspazija was among the first writers who understood her time as a period of significant political and cultural transformations. Her early works incited major controversies around women's rights, poverty, Latvian national independence etc. In her texts she reveals how in literary works of that time a woman from the object becomes a subject quiding the action.

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