Impersonal Narration in the Prose of Margit Kaffka, Emma Ritoók and Jolán Földes

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the ways in which women writers have contributed to literary modernity, and discuss approaches and rhetoric tropes that are able to convey the peculiarities of femininity. To this purpose, I have chosen to discuss a range of gendered prose poetry methods used by women writers of the first half of the 20th century that articulate the peculiarities of women’s identities. Inspired by feminist researchers Griselda Pollock and Rita Felski, I also examine instances and possible interpretations of gendered impersonal narration, such as the rhetoric of enumeration, overlapping cultural and fictional narratives, and the projection of feminine subjectivity onto objects. I also emphasize that we must take into account not only to the voice, language and personality of a character or narrator when examining constructs of their (feminine) self-image, but also other signs emerging elsewhere in the text.