Tradition och provokation. Kvinnlighetens röst i modern polsk litteratur

Abstract

There is a basic understanding of attitude towards women's themes in Polish literature and culture that derives from a traditional view on the roles of men and women. Especially the idea that womanliness is inborn and that the main purpose of a woman is to be a wife and mother, is today characteristic of women's role and position in Poland. This position is of course strongly influenced by the religious codes in Polish society. Here the strong reverence for the Virgin Mary Mother of God assumes a special position as one of the most distinctive national symbols. It is against this background of historical, cultural and religious expectations that one must see the picture of women in Polish literature, both earlier and today. This picture, however, has been noticeably affected by the political and social events of recent decades both in Poland and in all of Eastern and Central Europé. Even the picture of women in modern Polish literature is in the process of redefining itself. Especially the picture of women that is put forward by young women writers such as Izabela Filipiak, Manuella Gretkowska, Olga Tokarczuk and others, hardly has any counterpart, seen from a traditional point of view, in earlier Polish literary history. In the artide I take up and exemplify some of the most characteristic aspects of these writers' novels, with an emphasis on the discrepancy between old expectations and new roles for women and "womanliness" in modern Polish literature.