Abstract
How did literary representations of women change in the late 1980s and early 1990s? What role did the official state ideology play here and what role did the so-called "Western feminism", which began to be reciprocated in the Czech context after 1989, play? How do today's feminist currents in Czech studies reflect the narrative of the development of feminist criticism? Contemporary feminist discourse within Czech literary scholarship still repeats the thesis that socialist women's emancipation was only a kind of expropriation of the interwar feminist agenda, which was only renewed after 1989. But the literary texts of the 1980s are populated by strong female heroines, employed women, friends, mothers, who thematise the problematic of double burdens or the search for an equal partner. Although these texts cannot be described as feminist, they tell us much about how socialist female emancipation affected women's self-determination.
In my paper I will analyse the so-called women's reading of the 1980s and 1990s and try to link literature intended for women (i.e. not only by women authors) to the situation of the book market and other material aspects of the production of texts. I will be interested in authors like Carola Biedermannová, Zdena Frýbová, Eva Hauserová, Jaroslava Kolárová, Slávka Poberová, but also authors like Vladimír Páral or Michael Viewegh. I will also be interested in the way contemporary feminist literary scholarship reciprocates this period.