Family Portraits: Gendered Images of the Nation in Nineteenth-century Hungary

Liberalization Challenges in Hungary

“…This environment also gave birth to anti-Semitism, given the prominence of Jews among Hungarian liberal and socialist thinkers. The agrarian camp feared wealthy Jews the most, perhaps because Jews constituted a serious threat to the political and economic interests of the wealthy landowners (Lampland 1994). Yet, conservative liberalism was possible in the nineteenth-century Hungary.…”

“…Traditionally, for Hungarians home is where the love of nation overlaps with the desire for prosperity and wealth (Lampland 1994). With home, Orbán associates the wish for a kind of Hungary, where everyone would have a better quality of life and better opportunities (Speech in the Parliament June 8, 2011).…”

The Nation as a “Gentleman’s Agreement”

“…Let our nationality and our Hungarian-ness stand in so beautiful a light that the chaste virgin, though blushing before the entire world, [would] share her life with ours. (Széchenyi 1830a 67–69, see also Lampland 1994, 293)…”

“…Elite women typically found the habit disgusting. Paget, himself a nonsmoker who suffered from the thick smoke in national clubs, tried to persuade Hungarian ladies that “it only depended on themselves to banish smoking and such abominations from their drawing rooms whenever they pleased.” The women told Paget (1834, 1, 271–73), however, that Hungarian men would “prefer their pipes to our drawing rooms at any time; besides the woman who should attempt such a thing would be exposed to neglect and insult of every kind.” Julia Pardoe (1840, 1, 25), another English traveler, also characterized Hungarian smoking habits as “a blot upon the national character.” Evidently concurring, Széchenyi (1830a, 67–69; see also Lampland 1994, 293) tried to curb national smoking while promoting the masculinity of refinement: “We cannot expect that our beauties would love to be in the company of a patriot, who, I daresay, would visit in greasy boots and fill up the house with pipe fumes.”…”

Introduction: Questions of Space and Place in Scholarship on Modern Hungary

“…Pioneering studies by cultural anthropologists like Martha Lampland (1994), sociologists like Gábor Gyáni (1989Gyáni ( , 2002, and geographers like Judit Timár and Éva Fekete not only indicate a direction we need to take our work in, but also provide a clear framework for the critical discussions we need to have. As Timár and Fekete (2010) suggest, this doesn't simply mean including gender as an analytical category of study; it also entails an active "seeking out" of women's voices, and with this the creation of critical spaces for both women and feminist theory in the work we do collectively and individually.…”