Des femmes, des concierges et de la littérature/ On Women, Concierges and Literature

Abstract: The article below highlights the theme of this issue of Meridian Critic. It proposes an analysis of the way in which the portrayal of the concierge is carried out in French literature and considers the changing dynamic underlying the relationship between women and their careers.

Keywords: women, career, concierge, Georges Simenon, Muriel Barbery.

Ioana Em. Petrescu. Nivelurile unei cariere refuzate/ Ioana Em. Petrescu. The Levels of a Declined Career

Abstract: The paper is rather an essayistic reading of Ioana Em. Petrescu’s immersing perspectives on literary criticism, as they are reflected in her Jurnal. All her major critical works sum up different ontological models, closely connected with her psychological states and with her distinctive ways of understanding the role of literary criticism.

Keywords: Ioana Em. Petrescu, Jurnal, career, literary criticism.

Aniţa Nandriş-Cudla. Istoria unei cărţi şi a unui om/ Aniţa Nandriş-Cudla. The Story of a Book and of a Human Being

Abstract: The memoirs of Aniţa Nandriş-Cudla, a countrywoman from the North of Bukovina, occupy an important place in what regards the literature dedicated to the Stalinist deportations of the post-war period. The detailed analysis of the facts depicted, the thorough investigation of the historic conditions of the events that make up the epic weaving of the narrative, the scrupulous examination the Siberian course of a family cut short by the war in all the stages of its absurd deportation lead to the conclusion that Aniţa Nandriş-Cudla’s memoirs represent a document of utmost importance for the understanding of the national, social and political processes that Bukovina had to pass through in the 20th century. Thus, these memoirs posses a triple value: historical, literary and philological, constituting an important source of information for the historiography of Bukovina and also a vast material for such academic disciplines as Linguistics or Literary History.

Keywords: Bukovina, Aniţa Nandriş-Cudla, deportation, the slum, the gulag, peasant aristocracy, genetic endowment, narrative instinct.

La femme écrivaine et les affres de la création/ The Woman Writer and the Pangs of Creation

Abstract: The article consists in an analysis of literary representations and metadiscursive forms relating to the question of the woman writer. The body of study is an open and free debate in the form of an investigation of contemporary writers of the Romanian literary space. The poietic approach seeks to explore the particular configurations of the theme and the dilemma of motherhood in relation to the requirements and the experience of writing, in harmony with the experience of motherhood.

Keywords: process of creation, metadiscourse, woman writer, writing, motherhood.

The Reluctant Mother: A Study of ‘Motherhood’ as a Tool of Patriarchy in Bollywood Films

Abstract: A 2021 advertisement by Preganews, a pregnancy toolkit, celebrating upcoming Women’s Day, has attracted public attention for its sensitive portrayal of infertility in women. The advertisement portrays a joint family where the younger daughter-in-law is being pampered by everyone as she is heavily pregnant. But the elder daughter-in-law who is an accomplished teacher is wistfully sighing at the attention lavished upon the younger one. The camera pans through the awards and certificates that she has obtained through her outstanding accomplishments. The background narration identifies her as unhappy because she is incapable of conceiving a child. The advertisement ends with a message emphasising the need to “embrace those women who are complete” in themselves. Behind this embracing message, therein lies a sinister implication that normalises motherhood as an obvious phenomenon of adult female life and portrays childlessness as some form of disability or deformity that needs compassionate understanding.

Keywords: mother, motherhood, patriarchy, Bollywood films.

La femme dans l’évangile de Luc / The Woman in the Gospel according to Luke

Abstract: In this paper we focus on the feminine presence in the first ten chapters of the Gospel according to Luke. We try to emphasize evangelist Luke’s admirative attitude towards women, presenting them in the context they appear in. Figures like Elisabeth, Virgin Mary, prophetess Anna, the Nain widow, Martha and her sister Mary are mentioned here in the background they emerge.

Keywords: evangelist Luke, Gospel, feminine presence, admirative attitude, Elisabeth, Virgin Mary, prophetess Anna.

A Governess with a Mission: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

Abstract: The article analyses Charlotte Bronte’s celebrated protagonist from the perspective of Foucault’s notion of governmentality via an investigation of the semantics of the word ‘governess’ and of the status of this professional woman in mid- and late-Victorian England. The aim of the approach is to demonstrate that the governess acts as an instrument of rectification in the novel, working to governmentalize a system that has been chaotic and has taken for granted woman’s subordination.

Keywords: governess, Charlotte Brontë, Foucault, governmentality, governmentalization normalization, subordination, madness.

Lady Macbeth, Ruthless Murderess or Career Scapegoat

Abstract: Our paper seeks to investigate Lady Macbeth’s critical career, focusing on her hypostases, as they emerge from various readings of Shakespeare’s text. Following the motif of the double present in the play, the critical images of Lady Macbeth’s character oscillate between the magically empowered ruthless murderess at the beginning of the play and the passive carrier of her husband’s guilt. The article offers two other interpretations of the character, based on Roger Caillois’ study on the praying mantis and on the Derridean concept of pharmakos, respectively. The research also dwells on the relationship between the critical approaches to Lady Macbeth’s character and the evolution of social attitudes towards women.

Keywords: Lady Macbeth, witch, praying mantis, hysterica passio, pharmakos.

Representations of “la Parisienne” in a British Relocation Narrative

Abstract: This paper investigates an Englishman’s representations of French women, with particular focus on the portrayal of a Parisian lady, as revealed by a first-person narrative belonging to the relocation memoirs. Considered either as a “full-fledged genre”, under the name of literature of accommodation (E. C. Knox), or as a subgenre of travel literature, under the name of relocation narrative (L. A. Mastellotto), where Anglophone writers have lifestyle migrants relate their experience of settling in a French locale, these home-abroad books offer a window on the views held on the natives both before and after the narrators’
settlement in the country of their choice.

While relying on the premise that no individual can be the absolute quintessence of the culture he lives in, our analysis retraces the dynamics of the traits creating the portrait of what makes a Parisienne be a Parisienne, as perceived by an Englishman in Paris.

Keywords: representation, relocation narrative, life style migration, la Parisienne.

Les femmes et les hommes d’Amos Oz / The Women and Men of Amos Oz

Abstract: The study offers an analytic hypothesis about the search of “the master” and of “real knowledge” in the fictional world created by Amos Oz in several autobiographical novels. Although Amos Oz does not belong to literary postmodernism, he is touched by the spirit of the postmodernists, by their ambiguous agnosticism. He detaches himself from both the Jewish heritage and the radical nihilism of the (post) modernists, but he isolates himself, through the conscience of his heroes and their life stories, in a skeptical relativism, attentive to the internal movements of being, but refusing any clear spiritual solution.

Keywords: knowledge, woman, fictional world, autobiographical novel, analytic hypothesis.

Evoluţia imaginii femeii, desăvârşită de ea însăşi / The Evolution of Woman’s Image Perfected by Herself

Abstract: The theme I approached in the present paper comprises a brief evocation of significant moments in history, through which women proved their capacity to be equal with men in all fields of social activity. I limited the grounds of this research to two countries: France and Romania, as there is an important connection between them, in the sense of the impact French culture had on the development of Romanian spirituality. From an immense canvas of instances, I chose a few figures who have accomplished, through their will and aspirations, the sum of wishes of the ones who did not have the possibility to express them in a concrete manner.

Their victory was not accidental; it was predictable because the male prejudices they were fighting had no rational grounds.

At times, it was precisely the absurdity of a support which was more difficult to prove, and it can be stated that women managed to do that not only through words but also through their deeds. The period I analysed was until WWII which brought about major changes in the world. From that moment on, women began to obtain most of the rights requested throughout time and feminism acquired new facets. At the same time, the mass media through which women exposed their problems became more complex and they can represent the object of another type of analysis.

Keywords: women’s status, prejudices, evolution, freedom.