ECATERINA TEODOROIU, THE WOMAN-SOLDIER
ECATERINA TEODOROIU, THE WOMAN-SOLDIER

Summary/Abstract: The representation of women in prominent social positions is a current topic, as the exercise of power by women is still limited, and therefore still in need of being addressed. Setting out from this premise, I am going to sketch up a portrait of Ecaterina Teodoroiu, "the heroine of the Jiu River", a personality who made history on the battlefield of World War I, thereby creating a role model which was seldom fit for women at the time. Her exceptional life story has inspired movies and literature, out of which I have selected four to be discussed in this paper. I am working within the frame of multimedia studies of representation in the language of cinema, of fiction and of historiographical prose. For the analysis of the two films and the two texts in which she appears as a character, we chose the method provided by the studies of representation, especially as defined by Stuart Hall (a long time associated with the Cultural Studies Department at the University of Birmingham) and Michael Foucault, a representative of social criticism (associated with the path-breaking University of Vincennes). Woman's relationship with power has always been a tensed one, although history provides conclusive evidence that females are capable of governing a state, such as Romania’s Queen Mary, who pursued politics behind the curtain. Pages of history, such as those referring to the First World War, also mention a female personality, with an iron will, able to be at the head of an army, entering an exclusively male realm. Although she was perceived as educated in a male-dominated world, she stubbornly made her way to the battle field. She managed to change the stereotypes of the patriarchal society which constructs the woman figure as subject to male authority. Ecaterina Teodoroiu will remain as a heroine who managed, despite all social barriers, to enter a world previously reserved for the male gender, her heroism inspiring several representations in the movies, fiction, and historiographical prose.

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