Challenges of narrating a female career

About the memoirs of Emília Kánya

Abstract

The life and career of the first female journal editor and founder of the journal Családi kör, Emília Kánya (1828–1905), was a pattern for the extension of Hungarian middle class female roles. This paper explores how the memoir relates the roles (a honoratior intellectual pursuing a literary career, even able to make money through it, the independent mother divorced from her husband) which were clearly exceptional both in the contemporary social context and in later histories of female writing. What kind of Emília Kánya-image emerges from the autobiography? The paper argues that wherever it is possible, the memoir tries to represent a gender-wise atypical life and career as something ordinary. Although her career is clearly norm-violating, the work (Réges-régi időkről) creates a textual self-portrait which submits itself to the standards of the contemporary discursive context: one that tries to fulfil the role of the ideal middle-class Lutheran woman.