While male intellectuals of the Romanian interwar period have received widespread critical attention in Romania and abroad, exegetic discourses have failed to focus on the works of Romanian women writers during the interwar period, with the notable exception of Hortensia Papadat Bengescu.
In my paper I refer to various works by Hortensia Papadat Bengescu, Henriette Yvonne Stahl, Ioana Postelnicu, Anisoara Odeanu, and others, whose emergence on the literary scene and high visibility during the interwar period puzzled critics who quickly coined the sometimes derisive term “feminine literature.” I consider interwar Romanian literature as a discourse marked thematically and stylistically by debates regarding modernity, gender, and national identity, and I situate the work of women writers within this context.
I argue that, in spite of the lack of suffrage for women at the time, through their writing Romanian women writers recurrently affirmed a female presence in the public sphere, thus challenging the emerging gendered divide between a public masculinity and a private femininity. In their novels, they criticized middle-class marriage arrangements and argued for sexual freedom, work, and financial independence for women. Their heroines explored the city (most notably Bucharest) and traveled alone. Other recurrent themes are the body, sexuality, and female friendship.
