The Contribution of Feature Writer Laura Marholm to the Discourse on Women’s Emancipation in the German-language Press of Latvia at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries
The Contribution of Feature Writer Laura Marholm to the Discourse on Women’s Emancipation in the German-language Press of Latvia at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Summary/Abstract: The Riga-born playwright, feature writer and translator Laura Marholm (1854–1928) was a distinctive albeit contradictory public figure and was well-known in Latvia, Germany and Scandinavia. With the conviction that a woman can succeed in reaching her goals through the intercession of an intermediary, most often a man, Marholm was in conflict with representatives of the women’s emancipation movement. Her contemporaries called her an anti-feminist; reference literature listed her as a difference feminist who, among other things, contributed to the promotion and development of the cult of motherhood. In Latvia, press publications referred to Marholm as an authority in the field of women’s psychology. She was a popular amateur who dealt with a fashionable theme of the era – psychology. Together with her husband, Swedish writer Ola Hansson (1860–1925), she corresponded with famous personalities in Scandinavia, Germany and France. The Hanssons came into conflict with many of them which, in turn, increasingly pushed to the couple into creative self isolation. This article investigates Marholm’s influence on the discourse about women’s emancipation in the German-language press of Latvia from the late 1870s up until the late 1920s.

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