New Women in Hungarian
literature:
Margit Kaffka
1880-1918
The evaluation of women’s writing
• ‘Not even the most outstanding among
them [of the women writers] reach the
level of value of the really talented male
writer. Our judgment so far has also been
a merely relative assessment since it will
take them a long time before they reach
the prominent strength, depth and value of
the male writer.’ [István Boross on
women’s writing, 1930s ]
Margit Kaffka portrait
Map of Hungary
Biography
• 1880 Nagykároly/Carei
• Public prosecutor father, impoverished landed
gentry
• Sisters of Mercy Teacher Training College in
Szatmár
• Erzsébet Girls’ School, Budapest
• 1904 Qualifies as a high school teacher, Miskolc
• 1905 marriage
Biography 2
• 1907: move to Budapest
• 1910: divorce, single-handed support of
her son, secondary school teaching
• 1914-1918: marriage to Ervin Bauer,
brother of Béla Balázs, librettist of
Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle
Beginning to write
• ‘Sister, your daughter’s poems are not bad
at all, rather, they are good and beautiful.
But for what would a woman write? It
would be a shame if the daughter of a
good housekeeper like yourself decides
not to stick to the wooden spoon. That she
is training to be a teacher is also a shame.’
An uncle on Kaffka’s early poems
Kaffka’s works
Poetry:
1903: Versek [Poems]
1906: Kaffka Margit könyve [MK’s book]
1911: Tallózó évek [Browsing years]
1912: Utolszor a lyrán [The last time on
the lyra]
1918: Az élet útján [On the journey of life]
Kaffka’s works
Short stories:
1905: Levelek a zárdából [Letters from the convent]
1906: A gondolkodók [The thinkers]
1910: Csendes válságok [Quiet crises]
1911: Csonka regény [Trump novel]
1912: Süppedő talajon [On sinking ground]
1914: Szent Ildefonsó bálja [The ball of St Ildefonso]
1916: Két nyár [Two summers]
1918: A révnél [At the ferry]
Kaffka’s works
Novels:
1912: Színek és évek/Colours and years
(1999)
1913: Mária évei [Mária’s years]
1917: Állomások [Stations]
1918: Hangyaboly/The Ant Heap (1995)
Nyugat
• A significant connection: regular
contributor to Nyugat, belonging to the
social-literary ferment of the early 20th
century
• Earlier: support from Budapest publishing
houses: embraced by Nyugat in 1908
Nyugat [West]
• 1908-1941
• Hungarian literary and cultural periodical
responsible for the renewal of Hungarian
literature: ‘new songs of new times’
• Also responsible for introducing recent
English, German and French poetry in
poetic translation
The predicament of the woman
writer
• ‘Maybe now it will be a little better; my
grandmother will come to keep house, and
in the new flat I will have four walls of my
own (each of them one meter long!)
among which I can huddle with some
sense of privacy.’ Kaffka, 1908
Colours and years (1911)
• The predicament of the woman in late 19th
century Hungary
• Strongly autobiographical work, based on
the life story of her mother
• Historical identifier:
• During the prime ministry of Tisza (18751890); the archduke’s visit in the mid1880s
Women’s choices
Magda Pórtelky’s life is defined by her marriages
1. Girlhood in Grandmother’s house until marriage 1-approximately age 19
2. The Vodicska marriage: first year omitted, the second
year is the focus of action -- about 6 years of marriage
until the suicide of the first husband -- age 26
3. Looking for and not finding her place in society; in
Budapest, at the mother’s house, and return to Szinyér
where she marries the second husband -- age 30
4. The Horváth marriage, 17 years -- age 47
Internal tensions within Magda
• Ambivalence about the Vodicska marriage:
‘conquest and dance’ is disproportionate to the
aftermath
• ‘At the end of that winter she already had some
scheme for me to marry the lame Elemér Kendy,
who had eleven hundred acres in view … That
was the first time I was overwhelmed with a
sudden feeling of despair at my helpless state;
as a girl, I was at the mercy of others.’ [52]
Women in marriage
• ‘I felt a great burgeoning desire to
undertake this role. Yes, of all occupations
this was the one for me, for this was
something I understood and had been
brought up to do, running a household, a
woman’s work in the home.’[172]
Women in relationships
• The story of widows (grandmother;
mother; Magda)
• The strong widow: Grandmother
• The weak widow: Mother Klári, Magda
• Women in relationships: Mother Klári
(ineffectual, unable to save family from
financial disaster)
• Magda: Ineffectual, unable to save families
from financial disasters
Women in marriage
• Aunt Piroska: the life of the village gentry
• ‘My Aunt Piroska would spend half the day
out of sight in the apiary … The dairy, the
barnyard poultry, the orchard, and the
bargaining with the market-women took up
all my aunt’s time and energy, meanwhile
she had a new infant every year’ [55-56;
also 163-164]
Women in marriage
• Aunt Marika
• ‘penny-pinching, constricted, petty
official’s lifestyle’ [150]
• ‘what a proper little pen-pusher he had
become, the former lively, jaunty, leathergaitered young gentleman who gambled
away the last of his little estate at cards
when he was already married to Marika’
[154]
Women’s powerlessness within
marriage
Men as failed providers:
• Magda’s father
• Vodicska: loses election, accummulates
debts, eventually commits suicide
• Horváth: inability to care and provide for
his family - spendthrift and gambler
• Telegdy: improvident, loses his own and
his wife’s estate
Magda’s inability to consider
alternatives
• Brief alternative in the ‘sinful city’- actress?
• Brief alternative in the villagepostmistress?
• Brief alternative in the uncle’s househousekeeper?
So, what should a woman choose?
• Telegdy: the vision of the ideal woman in the new world
pp. 142-143
• ‘The age of independent, strong women capable of
fighting is coming, women who can stand firm even in
trouble, responsible for themselves and for those
entrusted to them by nature, as mothers.’
• Telegdy: the vision of the ideal woman pp. 212-213
• ‘The woman will always remain inferior … two-thirds of
their life-span are occupied with unconscious animal
cares and duties that go with the maintenance of
humankind, and instincts that guide the intellect.’
Magda’s daughters
• more educated than their mother
• ‘The youngest is eighteen years old now,
preparing for her diploma, struggling hard,
giving lessons and begging funds for
herself, poor thing. Yet all the same she
writes, and sometimes I feel that she may
be right, that her life is a more honest life,
and her youth is a more honest youth.’ [55]
Page references to:
Kaffka, Margit. Colours and years, trans. by
George F. Cushing.
Budapest: Corvina, 1999.
Secondary sources
•
Brunauer, Dalma H., "A Woman's Self-Liberation: The Story of Margit Kaffka (18801918)," Canadian-American Review of Hungarian Studies vol.2 , Fall 1978, pp. 31-42.
•
Brunauer, Dalma H. "The Woman Writer in a Changing Society," Journal of
Evolutionary Psychology vol. 9, n. 3-4, 1982.
•
Czigány, Lóránt, "Women in Revolt: Margit Kaffka" in The Oxford History of
Hungarian Literature, Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. pp. 333-36.
http://mek.niif.hu/02000/02042/html/47.html
•
Reményi, Joseph, "Margit Kaffka, Poet and Novelist, 1880-1918," Hungarian Writers
and Literature, New Brunswick-New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 1964. pp. 284-91.
•
Zepetnek, Steven Tötösy de. “Margit Kaffka and Dorothy Richardson: A
comparison,” Hungarian Studies, 1996,
http://www.epa.oszk.hu/01400/01462/00018/pdf/003-012.pdf
•
Uglow, Jennifer S., comp, and ed. "Kaffka, Margit (1880-1918)," The Macmillan
Dictionary of Women's Biography, London: Macmillan, 1982.