Teréza Nováková, née Lanhausová (31 December 1853 – 13 November 1912) was a

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

author, editor, and

ethnographer Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...

Life

Teréza Nováková was born in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

in the

Austrian Empire The Austrian Empire, officially known as the Empire of Austria, was a Multinational state, multinational European Great Powers, great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the Habsburg monarchy, realms of the Habsburgs. Duri ...

(now the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

). She married a secondary school teacher, Josef Novák, and they had six children together. Novák got a job in

Litomyšl Litomyšl (; ) is a town in Svitavy District in the Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 10,000 inhabitants. It is a former bishopric and Latin Catholic titular see. Litomyšl is known for the château-type castle complex of the Lit ...

, in eastern Bohemia, and Nováková became interested in the local

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

, influenced by the work of Karolína Světlá who she had worked with earlier in Prague. She also founded the Association of Ladies and Girls () for the local middle-class women. Nováková loved the area and eventually bought a

cottage A cottage, during Feudalism in England, England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a cotter or ''bordar'') of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager had to provide ...

there, although the death of her eldest daughter in 1895 caused her to return to Prague. In 1903, Nováková bought a house in

Proseč Proseč is a town in Chrudim District in the Pardubice Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 2,100 inhabitants. Administrative division Proseč consists of seven municipal parts (in brackets population according to the 2021 census): *Prose� ...

, where she wrote her most important works, including ''Drašar'', ''Jiří Šmatlán'', and ''Úlomky žuly''. Her health began to decline in 1907. She died in Prague on 13 November 1912.

Activities

Nováková began writing articles, short stories and novels while living in Litomyšl, the early ones depicting conventional middle-class life. By 1890, when she published ''A Small-Town Novel'' (), "she turned to realism in an attempt to condemn what she thought of as the insular national idealization of Czech society." Nováková published the most ethnographic of her articles in the journal, ''Housewife'' (), with others going to

Čeněk Zíbrt Čeněk Zíbrt (1864–1932) was a Czech ethnographer and historian, specializing in folk culture. He corresponded for a long time with Emilie Fryšová when she was assembling ethnographic artifacts for her museum in Písek. On his advice, she ...

's journal, ''The Czech People'' (). Her early articles did not challenge conventional attitudes about women and their role in the family, but, by the early 1890s, she had "published two important studies of women’s social status. In the first, ''On J. S. Mill's

The Subjection of Women ''The Subjection of Women'' is an essay by English philosopher, political economist and civil servant John Stuart Mill published in 1869, with ideas he developed jointly with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill. J.S. Mill submitted the finished manus ...

'' (), Nováková expounded on Mill’s concepts of freedom and responsibility with regard to women. In the second, '' L. N. Tolstoy's

Kreutzer Sonata The Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, Opus number, Op. 47, by Ludwig van Beethoven, is an 1803 sonata for piano and violin notable for its technical difficulty, unusual length (around 40 minutes), and emotional scope. It is commonly known as the '' ...

from a Feminine Perspective'' (), she reviewed the debates over double moral standards for men and women that had been generated by Tolstoy's controversial work."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Novakova, Tereza 1853 births 1912 deaths Writers from Prague Czech feminists Czech women novelists 19th-century Czech novelists Czech women's rights activists Czech ethnographers 19th-century Czech women writers Ethnographers from Austria-Hungary Writers from Austria-Hungary Czech anthropologists Women anthropologists