WOMEN IN THE PROSE OF ŠABAC REALISTS

Abstract

The request for literature, which as art outlives, lives, elaborates, observes and presents as a gift to the reader the history and its circumstances as at least slightly nicer in any of its segments, with special attention paid to the life of woman, occurs at the same time when social environment, over several decades, experiences economic and social bloom. The social circumstances, thanks to geographical position ideal for trade of any kind, changed for the better after many an exciting turnover, while calming down in terms of opening up a path to prosperity. Economic prosperity improves conditions for all other segments of human activity. Therefore it was not accidental that, synchronized, in given environment a rich cultural life develops. This period resulted in economic and cultural bloom. It was at that moment that, gradually, a shift from the literary era of Romantism to Realism takes place. A constellation of writers realists appear, con-nected to a high degree among themselves, who take seriously their task before the requirement of a new era in literature. The anecdote and day-to-day life become a basis around which literary weaving develops. Program realism, with Svetozar Marković as the founder in the Serbian literature, puts a goal before everyone: the way of life, the way of speaking, the reality of ordinary man who instead of a hated stranger now has a profane but inevitable problems in form of the state apparatus or inadequate social status to obstruct his happiness – these being the subject of literary interest.
Sabac realists, Janko Veselinović and Laza Lazarević, who belong to Sabac dually: by either birth or life they spent in it or by the choice of topic of their literary work, got down to work very thoroughly. With the aim to write down the life itself, the reality that surrounded them in childhood, the way of organization of patriarchal environment, urban or rural. Their aim was to record and to write down. They did it so successfully, that a notion of „writing down“, regardless of how it may sound, or of a writer who captures photographs with his quill pen, imposes itself.
Attention is paid to female characters, sometimes deliberately and other times perhaps even without a forethought (as basis for folkloric elements of prose). Within analysis of each writer separately, separate sections are necessarily devoted to women. The life of woman in given historic and social moment is recorded in numerous aspects, in every phase of her life.