Pardon, this is my Wife! A Contribution to the Knowledge of the Position of Women in the Second Half of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century in Dalmatia and its Hinterland Cover Image

Da prostite, to mi je žena! Prilog poznavanju položaja žene u drugoj polovici 18. i prvoj polovici 19. stoljeća u Dalmaciji i njezinu zaleđu
Pardon, this is my Wife! A Contribution to the Knowledge of the Position of Women in the Second Half of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century in Dalmatia and its Hinterland

Author(s): Jelka Vince Pallua
Subject(s): Gender Studies, Customs / Folklore, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, 18th Century, 19th Century
Published by: Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Filozofski fakultet
Keywords: Dalmatia; position of woman; 18th and 19th century; bride; pregnancy; everyday life; moral; witches; man-woman relation;

Summary/Abstract: The intention of this article is to contribute to the knowledge of the status of woman in Dalmatia and its hinterland in the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. The work is based on the archival sources written in Italian and Latin by some Dalmatian writers. The author focuses on six crucial thematic wholes: 1/ a bride 2/ pregnancy - delivery 3/ work - everyday life 4/ morality 5/ the attitude of man towards woman 6/ possessed women - witches. In the third chapter the author refers to the paleoslavic etymon ved 'to know' /cf. skr. veda "knowledge' etc./ which is reflected in the words nevjesta and vještica, the first word showing an unprivileged and the second one privileged position of woman. Secondly - these sources are useful and instructive because they give us the possibility to follow and to reconstruct the development of ethnological thought The impact of evolutionism is present in their explanation of cultural phenomena. Two opposite points of view concerning the value of Montesquieu's anthropogeographical theory are being discussed in connection with the status of a woman. At the end the author states that the status of the woman in Dalmatia and especially in its hinterland is heavily determined by dinaric patriarchal codex and points to the better condition of woman in that part of the coastal region once inhabited by Liburnians, especially in Primorje.

  • Issue Year: 1990
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 77-96
  • Page Count: 20
  • Language: Croatian