Review Article: The Wedding Gown Writes Back. Borgos, Anna. 2013. Nemek között: Nőtörténet, szexualitástörténet ('Between the Sexes: Women's History, Sexuality History'). Budapest: Noran Libro Kiadó. 317 pp.; and Lovas, Ildikó. 2008. Spanyol menyasszony (‘The Spanish Bride’). Bratislava/Pozsony: Kalligram Kiadó. 304 pp.

Abstract

In Central Europe nowadays universities, research institutes or museums are attempting to reconfigure the region's complex history from the perspectives of formerly forgotten or marginal/ized individuals and groups. Besides initiatives such as the opening of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, or of the Center for Queer Memory in Prague, new studies and literary works presently (re-)create narratives that challenge the generally accepted past. Two recently published Hungarian books, a novel and a study that partly deals with the novel, exemplify this revisionist tendency. Ildikó Lovas’ novel, Spanyol Menyasszony ['The Spanish Bride'] (2007), which questions the cult of Géza Csáth (1887-1919), the writer and psychoanalyst who was also a drug addict that murdered his wife, renders the fictional diary of Csáth's wife and victim, Olga Jonás (1884-1919); Anna Borgos’ study, Nemek között: Nőtörténet, szexualitástörténet ['Between the Sexes: Women’s History, Sexuality History'] (2013), examines the Csáth affair within an inclusive analysis of women’s positions, roles and sexuality in the Hungarian culture of the last century. In this article Chmurski traces the ways in which both authors reread the lives and tragic marriage of Csáth and Jonás.

Keywords

• Hungarian literature, Women's writing, women’s studies, gender studies, Vojvodina, Géza Csáth, Olga Jonás