Womanhood: Blessing or Cursing? - Blessed or Cursed?

Buday, Kornélia (2006) Womanhood: Blessing or Cursing? - Blessed or Cursed? Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 51 (1-2). pp. 3-30. ISSN 1216-9803

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Abstract

Images of the divine sphere represented in the religious folk tradition show the everyday life of the faith community, the dominant family structure, the relation between man and woman, the gender roles, and the division of labour within the family of not only past times. Texts relating to religion demonstrate clear gender-based characteristics. It depends, what kind of ideologies had to be supported by the gender groups within the community, or, exactly on the contrary, had to be withdrawn into “inner emigration” within the burdensome domination of the commonly defined rules. All these obvious or hidden expressions of convictions can be explored in the pictorial descriptions of oral tradition. The derogatory female images in biblical stories, which were interpreted and enforced from a typical point of view of rural storytelling men, inform us unambiguously about hidden male self-preservation and fears against women. The prayers and stories of peasant women, on the other hand, do not concentrate on men, but rather avoid the male elements, and, contradicting the everyday experiences of male oppression, they visualise the absolute female power.

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