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Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), the First Serbian Female

Novelist: Old and New Interpretations*

Svetlana Tomić
University of Novi Sad

To Vladimir Milankov and Milorad

Antonić

Despite the fact that Draga Gavrilović was the first Serbian female fiction
writer who contributed to Serbian literature, her work has been almost for-
gotten, and when discussed it is continually misinterpreted and misjudged.
Gavrilović’s experiences as one of the first female students in the new public
schools for young girls, and later on, one of the first female teachers and
feminists, made her critique of women’s restricted positions in a patriarchal
society bold and uncompromising. This essential context of Draga Gavrilo-
vić’s life and work further explicates what other interpretations fail to present,
and explains what it meant to be a female writer in a culture whose funda-
mental definitions were and still are patriarchal.
For Draga Gavrilović, to be a female writer in a patriarchal society meant
to confront the patriarchal stance which excluded or diminished values of fe-
male characters, or with its strict roles of female identity which were limited
only to women’s physical life of childbearing, care giving, and domestic
work. She was the first Serbian author who created intelligent female person-
alities, in the range of very young daughters, sisters, friends, colleagues, fe-
male students or teachers, an actress, and female writers. For Gavrilović, to be
a female writer meant to support, in many different ways, the new authority of
an emerging social category, which she named the “women who think.” For a
patriarchal society, the category of the “women who think”, or more precisely
female writers or intellectuals, was not an acceptable form of female identity.
Therefore, the patriarchal society exerted many kinds of pressures, and in the
end, labeled Gavrilović a mad woman, causing her to abandon literary work.

*
The author greatly appreciates the generosity and intelligence of Dr. Ljubica D. Popovich,
Professor Emeritus at Vanderbilt University, Dr. Lilien Filipovitch-Robinson at George Wash-
ington University, and Ms. Iva Frkić. Their excellent, incisive language suggestions and in-
valuable critical comments helped this text grow from its first drafts.

Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies 22(2): 167–87, 2008.
168 Svetlana Tomić

In this article I clarify and provide the history of academic misjudgments

about Gavrilović’s works and explain how they affected contemporary re-
search. The main part stresses the complexity of her inherently gendered ex-
periences—of a female student, a female teacher, and a female writer. The
conclusion, except for reading Draga Gavrilović’s withdrawal from literary
work in a new light, underlines misogyny as the core of patriarchal politics
toward women. Despite Gavrilović’s hard existential circumstances and pub-
lic resistance, she succeeded in making progress in perceiving, understanding,
originally creating, and publicly encouraging women’s prominent intellectual
roles in a society, thus preparing the ground for her female peers.



From the late 1970s to the present, in the West as well as elsewhere, feminist
researchers have been continually trying to prove a hypothesis that the ab-
sence of female writers from the literary canon was constituted by male
authority over knowledge, which presents and protects patriarchal norms, val-
ues, judgments, and laws. For that reason female artists are marginalized and
are more likely to disappear than appear in a cultural canon, which does not
respect or value them in the same manner as it does male artists. On the one
hand, struggling with the male tendency to diminish the significance of fe-
male artists’ work, of devaluing and ignoring the meaning even of female
characters, and of misinterpreting power relations in society, feminist scholars
discovered many female authors whose work proves their cultural importance
and aesthetic distinction. On the other hand, such research underlines the ten-
dency of male centered interpretations which are lacking in objectivity and
therefore also in plausibility, validity, and responsibility.
The same problem is apparent in the relationship between Serbian literary
history, criticism, and methodology and the first Serbian female fiction writ-
ers. When in the last two decades of the 19th century a number of female fic-
tion writers emerged in Serbia, such as Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), Milka
Grgurova (1840–1924), Mileva Simić (1858–1954), Jelena Dimitrijević
(1862–1945), Kosara Cvetković (1868–1953), and Danica Bandić (1871–
1950), they had two things in common which make a literary and social phe-
nomenon worth researching. Except for Jelena Dimitrijević and Milka
Grgurova, all of them were the first generation of Serbian women who gradu-
ated from first public high schools for Serbian girls in the Hungarian part of
the Austro-Hungarian empire1 and all of them focused on the perspectives of

1
For a well-documented account of the long, hard struggle for female education in Serbia, see
Ljubinka Trgovčević, “Žene kao deo elite u Srbiji u 19. veku. Otvaranje pitanja” (251–68);
 Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), the First Serbian Female Novelist 169

female literary characters. Since at that time educated women in Serbia could
only work in the public sphere as teachers, most of these writers in fact
worked as (Serbia’s first) teachers, which granted them financial inde-
pendence and consequently the status of independent women.
They appeared as the first female writers of original narratives and natu-
rally tried to achieve public acceptance of their emerging cultural authority
through many forms of art. Some—like Kosara Cvetković and Milka
Grgurova—were translators of Russian and French literary works of that
time.2 Others excelled in theater as actresses or dramatists. Milka Grgurova
became one of the first reputable Serbian female actors whose talent was
widely acknowledged in the former Yugoslav region.3 Mileva Simić and
Danica Bandić received national prizes for their dramas.4 However, none of
these women were acknowledged as writers. During the 20th century Serbian
literary historians and university professors such as Jovan Skerlić, Jovan
Deretić, and Dušan Ivanić, selectively wrote about one or two of them (Draga
Gavrilović and Jelena Dimitrijević), merely mentioning them as first female
fiction writers, without focusing on their work or assessing it along with the
work of contemporary male authors who alone constitute the Serbian literary
canon.
The problem of objectively evaluating the work of female authors in Ser-
bia is connected with academic resistance to the incorporation of feminist and
gender theories into the program of literary studies, particularly at the main
state university in Belgrade, the center of cultural and educational develop-
ment in Serbia. For that reason one is faced with the paradox of Serbian fe-
male researchers striving to interpret feminist scope in literary work without

http://www.cpi.hr/download/links/hr/7077.pdf. More political details can be found in Latinka

Perović, “Srbija u modernizacijskim procesima XIX i XX veka” in Žene i deca. Srbija u
modernizacijskim procesima 19. i 20. veka (Belgrade: Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji,
2006), 7–32. Perović’s work is also presented on the Internet: http://www.helsinki.org.rs/serbian/
doc/sveske23.pdf.
2
For example, among her many translated works, Kosara Cvetković was a translator of a Fydor
Dostoyevsky’s novel The Devils (published in two volumes, in Belgrade, 1922, 1959, 1964)
and of the collected works of collected Anton P. Checkov, published in six volumes, in Bel-
grade, in 1939. According to Julija Bošković, Kosara Cvetković is also known as an illustrator
and caricaturist. See, Leksikon pisaca Jugoslavije I, A-Dž, (Novi Sad: Matica srpska 1972),
407.
3
On Milka Grgurova’s acting roles and importance in Serbian theatre, see Borivoje S.
Stojković, Velikani srpskog pozorišta, “Milka Grgurova” (Belgrade: SKZ–GIRO “Milan
Rakić”, 1983), 11–25.
4
Little is known about Simić’s dramas. For Bandić’s praised drama Emancipovana [The
Emancipated Woman] see Biljana Šljivić-Šimšić, “Women in Life and Fiction at the Turn of
the Century (1884–1914)” in Serbian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1993, 106–23.
170 Svetlana Tomić

having basic knowledge of feminist and gender theories. In some recently

published studies, one finds arguments stressing the patriarchal way of think-
ing—that the weak point of a female writer’s work is her focus on women,5 or
even contradicting claims—that in a female writer’s work feminist ideas are
not part of a gendered identity and difference.6 Not surprisingly then, a
wrongly reasoned deduction is still prevalent, claiming that Serbian female
writers from the late 19th century have no literary or cultural values to offer,
that the Serbian tradition of female authors was established only in the begin-
ning of 20th century, and that Isidora Sekulić (1877–1958) was the first Ser-
bian female writer who inherited the modern, complex, and sophisticated
ideas of Western culture.
This paper seeks to prove that such claims do not take into account the
importance of the first generation of female writers, which emerged in late
19th-century Serbia, spearheaded by a woman whose work, ideas, and identity
make her Serbia’s first modern female writer and an unavoidable figure in the
country’s literary canon. This woman is Draga Gavrilović. Her work moreo-
ver laid the ground for others—women artists like Milka Grgurova, Mileva
Simić, Jelena Dimitrijević, Kosara Cvetković, and Danica Bandić, who con-
tinued to develop this different sociocultural perspective of female thinking
about life. In presenting the work of this female writer and explaining its im-
portance, this research also answers the question of why Draga Gavrilović
was overlooked by literary authorities and that until now her work has not
been acknowledged.
In order to further explain representative interpretations, I will focus on
three literary historians and academics who are responsible for a deep-rooted
belief that female authors do not have to offer any kind of literary and cultural
values. Consequently, this attitude is connected not only with their ignoring of
female writers but female characters as well, and specifically male characters
who represent oppressive and key figures of patriarchal society.7 In Jovan

5
Vesna Matović about Jelena Dimitrijević’s work: Vesna Matović, “Ženska književnost i
srpski modernizam: Saglasja i raskoli” (278–93) in Srbija u modernizacijskim procesima 19. i
20. veka, knj. 2, Položaj žene kao merilo modernizacije, ed. by Latinka Perović (Belgrade:
Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 1998), 280.
6
Jasmina Ahmetagić about Draga Gavrilović’s work: “Predgovor”: “Vrlinska bića Drage
Gavrilović” (vii–xvi) in Draga Gavrilović, Izabrana proza (Belgrade: Multinacionalni fond
kulture—Kongras, 2007), x.
7
Skerlić’s interpretation of a very important novel (Jakov Ignajtović’s Vasa Rešpekt, published
in 1875) shows that he omitted the fact that the hero’s father was abusive and responsible for
determining the tragic fate of his son. Not only did Ignja Ognjan beat his only child Vasa
(sometimes for no particular reason), but he also acted as a badmouth, gossiping about his own
son, spreading his own false understanding to people who could help Vasa but instead adopted
 Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), the First Serbian Female Novelist 171

Skerlić’s Serbian literary history—Istorija nove srpske književnosti—the

name of Draga Gavrilović cannot be found. Two other literary historians—
Jovan Deretić and Dušan Ivanić—mention her novel Devojački roman [A
Novel of a Young Girl], published in 1889, because “it was our [Serbian]
earliest attempt at writing a female novel,”8 and “because of literary and his-
torical reasons.”9 Besides these statements there are no further explanations of
what is considered to be “a female novel”, nor relevant details which would
precisely establish the relationship between “literary and historical reasons”.
Deretić did state the important fact that Draga Gavrilović was “the first Ser-
bian female writer of short stories,”10 but did not clarify how her stories’ nar-
ratives were related to her novel’s narrative. Neither did Deretić take into the
account the fact that Draga Gavrilović published many short stories in her
time, as well as some polemics, or that one of her stories was translated and
published in a German newspaper (in Hazfelder Zeitung, in 1891). Not a word
is written on the fact that she was a popular author in her time. This informa-
tion can be found in another study, entitled Draga Gavrilović—život i delo
[Life and Work of Draga Gavrilović], by Vladimir Milankov.11 That work
deals, however, more with facts about the place where Draga Gavrilović was
born and lived (Srpska Crnja) than about her life and work, thus failing to ful-
fill its biographical purpose. When the same author a year later (in 1990) ed-
ited Gavrilović’s collected works, he again failed to give an assessment of the
importance of her work, focusing instead in the preface more on the literary
and scientific work of her professors and schoolmates.
Despite Milankov’s efforts to present Draga Gavrilović as an important
Serbian literary figure by publishing her collected works—poems, short sto-
ries, a novel, and translations—Serbian academic scholars showed little inter-

the father’s point of view, resulting in a collective misunderstanding of the son. Furthermore,
Skerlić failed to find a relationship between the two main story lines in the novel—that of Vasa
and of his female cousin, Emilija—because he ignored all the female characters. It is this
specific linkage which stresses the parents’ guilt for their children’s misfortune. Jovan Skerlić,
“Predgovor”, Jakov Ignjatović, Vasa Rešpekt (Belgrade: SKZ, 1913), v. The same circulus
viciosus is found in Jovan Deretić’s Istorija srpske književnosti (Belgrade: Prosveta, 2002) and
Dušan Ivanić’s Srpski realizam (Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1996).
8
“naš najraniji pokušaj ženskog romana”: Jovan Deretić, Istorija srpske književnosti (Bel-
grade: Prosveta, 2002), 850.
9
“iz književnoistorijskih razloga”: Dušan Ivanić, Srpski realizam (Novi Sad: Matica srpska,
1996), 121. Ivanić repeated the same words in Ka poetici srpskog realizma (Belgrade: Zavod za
udžbenike i nastavna sredststva, 2007), 209.
10
“prva žena pripovedač”: J. Deretić, Istorija, 850.
11
Vladimir Milankov, Draga Gavrilović—život i delo (Kikinda: Književna zajednica Kikinde,
1989).
172 Svetlana Tomić

est in investigating its significance. A book review about Gavrilović’s col-

lected works, written by Dušan Ivanić—an academic professor, critic, and
historian—and published in 1991, illustrates how evaluation of literary work
is inseparable from the power of institutional positions which filtrate and
control knowledge.12 Several false statements are found in Ivanić’s review
which seem to want to discard or trivialize the importance and originality of
Gavrilović’s work. Firstly, Ivanić argues that Gavrilović “did not happen to
publish her books”13 even though Milankov had earlier proved that she had
been struggling to publish her work as a serial in a newspaper but could not
overcome the publishers’ resistance.14 Ivanić does not state or make clear that
it was not Draga Gavrilović’s fault but of the strong patriarchal system which
values women and their work less than those of men. Second, Ivanić states
that Gavrilović’s works “do not make the Serbian realism any richer”15 and
that she is “a writer of marginal value only”.16 This however seems to be in
contradiction to his claim that her contribution to Serbian fiction lies in “jour-
nalistic straightforwardness, lively and concrete speeches of literary charac-
ters, [and] dynamic conversation”.17 Afterward, Ivanić admitted Gavrilović’s
work to have value but only if it is considered together with the work of other
female writers of that time.
Being a part of the academic and cultural male establishment, Ivanić’s
manipulation of knowledge and judgments are compatible with patriarchal
beliefs that women intellectuals are a kind of oxymoron, that their public, lit-
erary work cannot have values and therefore cannot be important. Let us com-
pare frequent gaps between Ivanić’s claims and facts of Gavrilović’s works.
Ivanić introduces Gavrilović’s ideas of women’s emancipation as “inter-
esting” but, for her perception of Serbian literature and culture in general,
these ideas were substantial. More over, she was the first Serbian writer to
incorporate these ideas in fiction so firmly and uncompromisingly, with a
clear criticism of Serbian culture, literature, and society. As a historian, Ivanić

12
About institutional control see Pjer Burdije, Pravila umetnosti: Geneza i struktura polja
književnosti (Novi Sad: Svetovi, 2003): “Osnovi nauke o delu”, 253–403.
13
“nije stigla da objavi knjigu svojih tekstova”: Dušan Ivanić, “Sabrana dela Drage
Gavrilović”, Letopis Matice srpske, Novi Sad, Vol. 447, 1991, 158.
14
Vladimir Milankov, Draga Gavrilović—život i delo (Kikinda: Književna zajednica Kikinde,
1989), 111 and 119.
15
“ne bogate lik srpske književnosti epohe realizma”: D. Ivanić, “Sabrana dela Drage
Gavrilović”, 158.
16
“pisac marginalne vrednosti”, D. Ivanić, “Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilović”, 159.
17
“žurnalističkoj izričitosti, živoj konkretizaciji govornih slika junaka, dinamici konverzacije”:
D. Ivanić, “Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilović”, 159.
 Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), the First Serbian Female Novelist 173

does not care to consider the context in which Gavrilović wrote and to analyze
the reasons for which she persistently incorporates a feminist political identity
into her work and to assess the importance of that. For these reasons, readers
cannot understand why she wrote about female teachers, which Ivanić stresses
as “one of the main themes of Serbian fiction of that time”.18 So, at the end of
this book review, Ivanić’s seemingly generous starting point about such a rare
example of having the collected works of a female author, is revealed as false,
echoing a big irony, because in his conclusion Ivanić judged Draga Gavrilović
as “a writer of marginal value”.19 Therefore, his initial statements that
“ecriture feminine of Serbian literature has got an unexpected newborn” 20 and
that “her hardly reachable fiction now becomes part of a living literary tradi-
tion”21 do not announce the birth of the literary work and its female author as
it might at first appear; rather, Ivanić proclaims their death.
The crucial element of Ivanić’s interpretation of Gavrilović’s oeuvre is his
inherent refusal to consider her work as part of the Serbian literary canon. In
claming that her opus has value only if considered “in a history of Serbian
female authors’ fiction”,22 Ivanić firmly divides social values of two genders.
The fact that there was no “history of Serbian fiction of female authors” at
that time, in 1991, does not prove that Ivanić’s claim shows certain respect for
the future of an unknown subject, but instead reveals a perception of a history
of Serbian fiction of female authors as a utopian doubt.23 In the academic
studies Ivanić published many years after this review, no women writers are
included despite the growing number of well-argued research studies on the
topic of literary value of female authors’ work.24 By claiming the acceptance

18
“jedna od glavnih tematskih kompleksa srpske proze”, D. Ivanić, “Sabrana dela Drage
Gavrilović”, 159.
19
“pisca marginalne vrijednosti” D. Ivanić, “Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilović”, 159.
20
“žensko pismo srpske književnosti dobilo neočekivanu prinovu”, D. Ivanić, “Sabrana dela
Drage Gavrilović”, 157.
21
“jedva pristupačna proza Drage Gavrilović postaje sada dio žive književne tradicije”, D.
Ivanić, “Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilović”, 158.
22
“u istoriji srpske ženske književnosti”, D. Ivanić, “Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilović”, 158.
23
The first history of Serbian and Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature written by female authors
was published nine years after Ivanić’s review: Celia Hawkesworth, Voices in the Shadows:
Women and Verbal Art in Serbia and Bosnia (Budapest: CEU Press, 2000). In Hawkesworth’s
history there is no mention of Draga Gavrilović. Since Hawkesworth relies on the weak
arguments of Predrag Palavestra and Zdenko Lešić, with no interpretations of her own, it seems
that the work of Draga’s female peers need to be (re-)evaluated.
24
For example, there are two important studies about Jelena Dimitrijević’s work Pisma iz Niša.
O haremima, which is the second novel written by a female author in Serbia and published in
1897. See, Slobodanka Peković, “Jelenina pisma” Jelena Dimitrijević, Pisma iz Niša. O
174 Svetlana Tomić

of women only inside women’s culture, one recognizes the old but prevalent
patriarchal prejudice which protects the idea that women’s intellect is weak
and insignificant, at the same time stressing sexual difference as essential. It
makes acceptance of female writers false because with no serious examination
and evaluation of their work, the latter is ignored in the literary canon. Conse-
quently, only male authors are permitted into Serbia’s 19th century literary
“hall of fame.” As a result, readers and Serbian culture as a whole get multi-
ple clouding and misinterpreting—of Gavrilović’s feminist efforts in her writ-
ing, of the importance and value of her work, and last but not least, of Ivanić’s
own authority, which in this case scholarly research of the text does not prove
as objective.
It is not surprising then that other essays about Gavrilović’s fiction, pub-
lished after Ivanić’s judgment, follow his authority, accepting and confirming
his statements and repeating his judgment. Such examples can be found in an
essay by Nada Mirkov (1999)25 and in Jasmina Ahmetagić’s preface of Gav-
rilović’s selected works (2007). Mirkov cannot explain the fundamental para-
dox that while Gavrilović publicly gained certain importance, her work was
never honored with truly scholarly interest and appropriate research methods.
Mirkov admires and praises Ivanić’s role, citing his judgments about Gavrilo-
vić’s work from his study published in 1988, which he repeated in the above
mentioned book review.26 She stressed for the first time the fact that Gav-
rilović was the first female fiction writer in the Serbian patriarchal society.
However, neither Mirkov nor Ahmetagić considered a crucial point regarding
this author’s literary achievements and that is what it meant to be a female
writer in a culture whose fundamental definitions were and still are patriarch-
al. Mirkov, however, pointed out the complexity of Draga’s narrative and her
continuous efforts to be well informed about women’s emancipation in Eu-
rope at the end of 19th century.
The editor of a recently published Selected Works of Draga Gavrilović,
Jasmina Ahmetagić, incorrectly presents and inadequately states facts. In a
note about Draga Gavrilović, Ahmetagić wrongly attributes the work U među-
prostoru to Draga Gavrilović, although that work was written by another fe-
male author, who was born in 1954 in Čačak and had a similar first name

haremima, Belgrade: Narodna biblioteka Srbije, 1986; Svetlana Slapšak, “Haremi, nomadi:
Jelena Dimitrijević” in Žene, slike, izmišljaji, ed. Branka Arsić (Belgrade: Centar za ženske
studije, 2000).
25
Nada Mirkov, “Draga Gavrilović”, ProFemina (Belgrade: 1999), Vol. 17–19, 137–40.
26
Dušan Ivanić, Zabavno-poučna periodika srpskog realizma: Javor i Stražilovo (Novi Sad:
Matica srpska, 1988), 227.
 Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), the First Serbian Female Novelist 175

(Draginja) and the same surname (Gavrilović).27 Furthermore, in preparing a

new edition of Draga Gavrilović’s selected works, Ahmetagić fails to state the
criteria for selecting the works and the years when Gavrilović’s narratives
were originally published. Moreover, Ahmetagić’s preface “Vrlinska bića
Drage Gavrilović” [The Persons of Virtue of Draga Gavrilović’s] does not
offer the sociopolitical context of the realist epoch in which the author wrote,
or any kind of connection between the work of male realist writers and Gav-
rilović’s fiction, or the link between Gavrilović and a newly established tra-
dition of female fiction writers. Ahmetagić’s study had started up from a con-
tradictory hypothesis that in Gavrilović’s work feminist ideas are not part of
her gendered identity and difference, which lead her interpretation to the mar-
ginal problems in Draga Gavrilović’s works, such as Gavrilović’s own textual
and Biblical quotations. As Nada Mirkov had done, Ahmetagić incorporated
Ivanić’s judgments, repeating his interpretation of Gavrilović’s female
characters as “persons of virtue”, which is her main focal point.
From the very beginning of her literary work, Draga Gavrilović had de-
veloped an awareness of the need for strong resistance to the patriarchal cul-
ture and literature of Serbian realism. Compared to the advocacy for female
rights as it was voiced by two important Serbian literary and political figures
from 18th and 19th centuries who were considered to be supporters of
women’s rights—Dositej Obradović (1744–1811) and Svetozar Marković
(1846–75)—Gavrilović called for more intellectual women who were sup-
posed to be aware of their subjugated position in order to change it. As noted
by a lucid critic, Milan Bogdanović, both of these above-mentioned cultural
figures described the ideal woman in almost identical words, “purity and
sainthood,” thus projecting the idealized image of their mothers.28 Fixing
female identity to the role of mother, which also means a married woman who
is subjugated to the limited space of domesticity, Draga Gavrilović perceived
as problematic. From early childhood she asked why a single woman was not
respected in the same manner as married women and how a woman could live
as an honorable person if she does not want to marry.
Unlike many other young girls growing up at the time, Gavrilović had the
opportunity to be educated. As a female student, she experienced some frus-
tration with the school system and mentality of the teachers’ of the time. Once
she herself became a teacher, she was determined to do more for society in

27
The maiden name of this contemporary author was Baltić. See the biographical notes on a
book cover of Draginja Gavrilović’s collection of stories: U međuprostoru (Vršac: KOV, 2004)
and compare with “Beleška o piscu” Jasmina Ahmetagić, in Draga Gavrilović, Izabrana proza,
2007, 373.
28
Milan Bogdanović, “Milica Ninković” in Stari i novi, IV (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1952), 49.
176 Svetlana Tomić

general. She was willing to pass on another kind of specific and gendered
knowledge. This determination sums up her struggle for asserting a new fe-
male identity—that of women thinkers, creators, and artists.
As an intellectual, Draga Gavrilović could not accept the fact that Serbian
society allowed educated women to work in public only as teachers. She
thought this rule needed to be changed since it harshly restricted woman’s
intellectual abilities and strictly limited women’s possibility to gain public
respect. She wrote about how women in some European countries and in the
USA became doctors, lawyers, and writers. Therefore, she decided to work as
a writer.29
In contrast to her female literary predecessors, Gavrilović does not use
pseudonyms or initials. She neither hid nor felt frightened by public judgment.
She did not show any signs of “anxiety of authorship”, so typical for the liter-
ary beginnings of female writers.30 Gavrilović decided to use her pen for fear-
less and uncompromising critical energy against society’s habits and preju-
dices, which she defined as powerful enemies of progress and truth. She held
Western society as a model, and dedicated herself to strengthening women’s
cultural authority. To do so, she chose to write about completely new female
characters and personalities—of intelligent young girls, sisters, daughters, fe-
male friends, female students, female teachers, an actress, and women writ-
ers—characters who did not exist in a Serbian fiction.
Serbian male realist authors who published their work before Draga
Gavrilović, such as Milovan Glišić (1847–1908) and Simo Matavulj (1852–
1908), or after her, such as Janko Veselinović (1862–1905), Stevan Sremac
(1855–1906), Svetolik Ranković (1863–99), Lazar Komarčić (1839–1909),
and Dragutin Ilić (1858–1926), constructed female characters mainly as “fair-
ies and dolls”.31 Draga Gavrilović did not accept such a limiting and simplis-
tic reduction of female reality, which saw only mothers who sacrificed their
lives, and who were also wives who suffered in their marriages. For her, these
female literary characters were all constructs of idealized emptiness, or ab-
stract and distant mysteries.

29
Draga Gavrilović herself wrote the listings of her published fiction entitled “Spisak mojih
književnih radova” which Vladimir Milankov found in the Archive of manuscripts of Matica
srpska, in Novi Sad, No. M 1608 and presented in Draga Gavrilović—život i delo, 119 and 121.
30
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 2000): “Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of
Authorship”, 45–93
31
”vile i lutke”: Draga Gavrilović, Izabrana proza, Devojački roman (Belgrade: Multi-
nacionalni fond kulture—Kongras, 2007), 91.
 Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), the First Serbian Female Novelist 177

Most importantly, Draga seems to be the first author who in a overtly

feminist way criticized Serbian realist narration for its representation of “male
rotten taste, hypocrisy, and selfishness” which “poison women”32 through its
ideological perception, refusing to give credit to other female identities which
existed but were not accepted and therefore not described either. Many other
feminists used the same arguments in their scientific research—almost a hun-
dred years later.33 Draga Gavrilović decided to present a different reality, con-
structing for the first time literary characters who were intelligent and coura-
geous young women, educated and rebellious, and who critically perceived
family, education, culture, and society in general. These young women she
identified as “misleće ženskinje”, which means “women who think” or “think-
ing women”—simultaneously specifying one of the key themes in her work.
No one in Serbian 19th century literature had ever before introduced
characters of Serbian female writers, or the emancipated characters of Ameri-
can female writers, which further implies the promotion of American freedom
and democracy.34 By multiplying the characters of female writers and by re-
solving all of their conflicts in their own favor, Draga Gavrilović reinforced
the cultural authority of Serbian female writers. And this was not as usual as
one may think. In a recently published history of American female authors,
Elaine Showalter stresses that Louisa May Alcott (1832–88), one of the well-

32
“…nego nas tim vašim trulim ukusom trujete i u književnosti, u spisima vašim. Belo lice,
rubin-usne, vrane obrve, viti stas, i to sve u najjačoj „nijansi”, to su mađije koje zanose i vezuju
naše „junake”. Baš kao i u životu… Pa je li onda čudo što ženskinja pada u tu pogrešku?”
Draga Gavrilović, Izabrana proza, Devojački roman, 91.
33
Since it is impossible to name all of them, the author will mention the few, fundamental
studies and texts: Mary Ellman, Thinking About Women (New York : Harcourt, 1968); Adri-
enne Rich, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing Re-Vision”, College English 34 (1972); Judith
Fetterley, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1977); Annete Kolodny, “A Map for Rereading: Gender and the In-
terpretation of Literary Texts”, The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature,
Theory, ed. by Elaine Showalter, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 46–62; Patrocinio P.
Schweickart, “Reading Ourselves: Toward a Feminist Theory of Reading”, Modern Criticism
and Theory: A Reader, ed. by David Lodge and Nigel Wood, (New York: Longman, 2008),
485–505.
34
When introducing into her narrative the literary personality of young women in the USA,
Gavrilović does not give geographic details. That could be an indication of her not practically
lived but transcendentally gained experience, by reading about contemporary political changes
in European countries and the States. She herself could have easily related to many of the
stories which village folk brought back as USA immigrants into her native Srpska Crnja. For
further details see V. Milankov, Draga Gavrilović—život i delo, “Iseljavanje u Ameriku (do
1919)”, 18–19.
178 Svetlana Tomić

known American female writer, omitted authorship in her work “although it is

constantly implied.”35
The main character of Gavrilović’s story San [A Dream] (Novi Sad: Ja-
vor, 1889) is an unnamed American female author who speaks boldly, argues
persuasively, and immediately attracts the audience’s attention by confronting
a Serbian male writer in front of an international literary audience “of all re-
ligions and nations.” In another story, the heroine is a young American female
writer of Serbian origin whose family immigrated to the USA. This female
writer is Jovanka Zamislićeva, and she succeeded in debating with a man that
“everything depends on character”—Ona je—srce mu kaže [She is the One—
His Heart Tells Him] (Kikinda: Sadašnjost, 1890). As in other of Gavrilović’s
fiction, the naming of characters makes readers think about these new person-
alities in 19th-century Serbian narration. “Zamislićeva” is Jovanka’s second
name, and it’s meaning is multiple. This word can be literally translated as “a
female person who is capable to penetrate into imagination,” but it is associ-
ated with many other words as well, such as “meditating,” “thinking,” “de-
lineating,” or “rendering”. All of the suggested associations situate the hero-
ine, the writer, her literary work, and her readers into a transcendental sphere
of imaginative power, which Gavrilović links up with the politics of 19th-
century Serbian reality. All of these American women, their independent
lives, and richer professional options stand as political facts in her fiction and
serve to advocate for political changes in Serbia.
In another story an unnamed Serbian female teacher and a writer ex-
pressed vigorous support for an unnamed Serbian actress who, despite her
great talent, is not yet publicly acknowledged—”Misli u pozorištu, Jednoj
srpskoj glumici” [Some Contemplations in a Theater: To a Serbian Actress]
(Kikinda: Sadašnjost, 1884). While watching a theatrical performance fea-
turing the actress, the teacher experiences another specific drama taking place
in the audience as many mock and scoff at the actress, regardless of her talent
or performance. The teacher in question later writes to the actress, praising
her talent and encouraging her work while criticizing society’s prejudices
regarding new female professions, and arguing against nonprofessional criti-
cism. The story achieves its climax in a complex paradox: “If men are better
in everything, and if they understand our feelings better than we do, why do
they not replace us [women] in everything!”36 Here a point is made about de-

35
Elaine Showalter, A Jury of Her Peers: Celebrating American Women Writers from Anne
Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 169.
36
“Kad su muški u svačem napredniji, pa i osećaje naše bolje razumu od nas samih, zašto nas
bar svuda i ne zamenjuju!”: Draga Gavrilović Sabrana dela (Kikinda: Književna zajednica
Kikinde, 1990), Vol. 2, 59.
 Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), the First Serbian Female Novelist 179

fending female artists, their right to create and gain authority. While Nada
Mirkov asserts that Draga Gavrilović is writing to “an imaginary Serbian
actress,”37 it could be argued that Gavrilović could have had Milka Grgurova
in mind, whose fame was at its peak at that time.38
For the main female character of her novel Devojački roman (Novi Sad:
Javor, 1889) Gavrilović chose an intellectually and ethically powerful young
woman, Darinka, who knows how to act in front of two-faced parents, pseudo
intellectuals, a sly owner of a large estate, and a sugarcoated but Machiavel-
lian fiancé whom Darinka rejected as a mean person. None of these men
know how to talk to Darinka, and none are able to find counter-arguments for
her rhetoric, which dazzles them as a manifestation of free and critical think-
ing.39 The crucial part of this truly feminist novel is Darinka’s fights and de-
bates with her father. This father-daughter plot reflects the struggle between
two opposite, patriarchal, and emancipated principals of a woman’s life.
Darinka’s critiques of social traditions (literary, cultural, and educational) are
a starting point for her self-justification.40
Particularly because of Darinka’s strong personality, the end of the novel
seems to have quite the opposite meaning from the interpretation of a happy
marriage cliché, which Ivanić first concluded and which Mirkov and

37
N. Mirkov, “Draga Gavrilović”, 139.
38
During 1884, Grgurova played the main role in a drama “Adriana Lecouvreur”, written by E.
Scribe and E. Legouve, which successfully marked a repertoire of the main Serbian national
theater in Belgrade. In Gavrilović’s story, the teacher states that she could hardly wait for the
school year to end so that she could head for “your capital—to a theater.” In contrast to Draga
Gavrilović, who lived in a poor village in Austro-Hungary, or today’s Vojvodina, Milka lived
in Belgrade, where she could have succeeded in pursuing her career not only as a translator and
an actress but also as a story writer. Together with one of the first Serbian feminists and poets,
Draga Dejanović (1840–71), Grgurova could have attended the first meetings of a newly
established Serbian literary society at that time and, after a long and persistent struggle, to
publish her book Pripovetke Milke Aleksić-Grgurove. Prva sveska. Vera. Đerdan od bisera.
(Belgrade: Državna štamparija Kraljevine Srbije, 1897). The author owes deep thanks to
dramatrug Irina Stojković-Kikić of the library of the Museum of Serbian Theater for sending
part of the monograph of Milka Grgurova written by Vera Crvenčanin Svitanja i suton Milke
Grgurove (Belgrade: Muzej pozorišne umetnosti Srbije, 2003) and to theatre expert Zoran T.
Jovanović for having the opportunity to read his “Bibliography of Milka Grgurova’s work”,
which is a part of a new monograph about Milka Grgurova, currently in print, written by Dušan
Mihailović.
39
Free and critical thinking are also crucial motives of Gavrilović’s earlier poem “Za slobodu”
[For Freedom], published in the reputable Serbian cultural magazine Javor (Novi Sad), in 1879.
40
For further discussion of the daughter-father plot in feminist novels see Barbara H. Sheldon
Daughters and Fathers in Feminist Novels (Frankfurt aim Main: Peter Lang, 1997).
180 Svetlana Tomić

Ahmetagić lately confirmed.41 At the end of the story, Darinka meets and
marries “Neznanko Neznanković” [“Mr. Unknown Unknowingly”] but some
textual facts, excluded from mentioned interpretations, reveal this ending to
be far from a standard cliché, a happy end, or a marriage. For example, it
might be argued that Draga named Darinka’s new fiancé as “Neznanko Ne-
znanković” in order to stress his doubtful sociocultural and political identity.
Furthermore, his relationship with Darinka hardly exists since readers do not
get details about the two of them acting as a future married couple, which
Gavrilović usually does when introducing important male characters in the
story. Additionally, a newly married couple moves into a place named—in a
Utopian manner—”Srećnice” [“Lucky Women”], whereby the writer states
her belief that lucky women hardly can be found in real life, or alternatively
that their lives do not turn out to be realistic. Or, precisely, that an educated
and emancipated fiancé exists as “Mr. Unknown Unknowingly”, which is an
idea compatible with the utilized formal solutions in shaping this kind of male
character. Rather he represents an ironic image of a double reality. Mr.
Unknown is more desire than reality, more “deus ex machina” than a literary
personality. Otherwise, Gavrilović would not have written an ending by
praising Darinka’s deceased aunt, but by lauding the married couple and the
power of their bond in the future. If the writer’s real concern was the happy
marriage of her heroine, she would probably have chosen a different title for
her novel. Gavrilović had changed it from Devojački san [A Dream of a
Young Girl] to Devojački roman. In searching for the proper words, she chose
to insist on a girl’s standpoint, which focuses her gendered location and its
oppressed position. While obscuring this dreaming and desiring incentives,
for which Gavrilović feels a need, she forces and at the same time advocates
the new politics of the life of a single young Serbian woman in a specific time
and place—that of the second half of 19th century, in an unnamed place with
Serb inhabitants. Therefore, the transition from the original novel’s title A
Dream of a Young Girl to the newly chosen A Novel of a Young Girl suggests
the encouragement of young girls’ emancipation and their own life choices.
What Ivanić stated about Gavrilović’s novelistic main theme, that it is about
the “awakening of a young being”42 is not compatible with the character of
the heroine nor with the theme of the novel, which is all about Darinka’s un-
corrupted intelligence and her bold critical thinking.

41
Dušan Ivanić, Srpski realizam, 121; Dušan Ivanić, Ka poetici srpskog realizma, 209; Nada
Mirkov, “Draga Gavrilović”, 140; Jasmina Ahmetagić, “Predgovor”: “Vrlinska bića Drage
Gavrilović” (vii–xvi) in Draga Gavrilović, Izabrana proza, xi.
42
“buđenje mladog bića”: Dušan Ivanić, Srpski realizam, 121. The same statements can be
found in Dušan Ivanić, Ka poetici srpskog realizma, 209.
 Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), the First Serbian Female Novelist 181

In her longest story Iz učiteljičkog života [From a Female Teacher’s Life]

(Novi Sad: Javor, 1884), Gavrilović created quite an unusual male character.
Kosta is a husband on whose perception of women’s emancipation his wife’s
intellectual female friends made a strong impact. He came to share their views
and became convinced that women need men’s support for emancipation,
honestly stressing the need of men’s rejection of their pseudo intellectualism,
which encourages intelligent women in theory but in practice disputes, refuses
and sabotages them. Ten years after this story, Draga Gavrilović elaborated
the idea that women’s rights cannot be gained without support of truly eman-
cipated men. In a polemic Pismo pobratimu [A Letter to a Blood Brother] (Ki-
kinda: Sadašnjost, 1894) she writes that the battle for respect of women intel-
lectuals’ authority must begin with the emancipation and education of men,
since they held and controlled powerful positions in a society. For Gavrilović,
women’s emancipation and education comes after reaching a society peopled
by new and liberated men.
The reason why Draga Gavrilović’s representation of women’s condition
is so much more convincing than that of her contemporary male authors lies
in the fact that her own experience was the basis for the situations she por-
trayed and for the issues she treated in her work. Having been a female stu-
dent in one of the first public high schools for young women, the first female
teacher in her native Srpska Crnja, an unmarried woman, and the first female
fiction writer, Gavrilović had plenty of material for exploring the novelty of
the female position and female identity in a patriarchal society. Thus, her
first-hand knowledge is the result of her gendered experiences and this epis-
temic privilege, which is complexly incorporated into her narrative. Conse-
quently, this explains why other stories dealing with Serbia’s female teachers
and written by male authors could not reach the profound scope of Draga
Gavrilović’s narrative. This holds true for work by male authors published
before her fiction, for example the stories Školska ikona by Lazar Lazarević
and Učiteljica by Stevan B. Popović, both published in 1880, as well as those
published after her work, such as Bela vrana, a story by Janko Veselinović
from 1890, or Seoska učiteljica, a novel by Svetolik Ranković from 1899.
The other crucial part of Gavrilović’s narrative is presenting the essential
messages through young women’s confessions. This is not only a distinctively
formal sign of her fiction, but the center of important political messages for
they stress social conflicts of gender differences. In her first published work
From a Female Teacher’s Life and in her novel A Novel of a Young Girl,
Gavrilović underlines the most dramatic part of a female student’s con-
fession—which is that male professors at her high school “uproot the wheat
182 Svetlana Tomić

instead of the chaff,”43 marking them not as sophisticated as non-intellectual

educators. Gavrilović gives many examples of how professors punish and
humiliate critical thinkers among female students, while “toadies” will get
jobs quickly and easily in big cities, where they will have better living con-
ditions and higher salaries. Thinkers will be degraded by being left behind in
the job market, waiting years before getting a job, usually in remote villages
where they will be estranged and isolated from cultural progress. Soon, they
will have to decide whether to live a poor life as a single woman or to get
married, most likely to an uneducated or not so well-bred man, sacrificing
their intellectual development to a family and a domestic life. In the confes-
sions of her heroines about the teacher-student relationship, the fundamental
problem revealed is the issue of guilt. The heroines do not feel guilty for
finding and speaking the truth, but for having to live the truth which is
inseparable from their sex and gender identity. That truth brings to light the
problematic role of male professors who, as authorities of educational institu-
tions, did not reject misogyny. Gavrilović underlines that in the beginning of
higher education of female students, professors did not respect young women
but humiliated and punished them because these women asserted their ability
of critical thinking.
This problem can be further investigated in relation to today’s theories of
“identity economics,” particularly as elaborated by George A. Akerlof and
Rachel E. Kranton, who use norms, ideals, and “identity utilities” to show
how individual motivations vary with social context.44 In Gavrilović’s fiction,
the education of girls and young women is contextualized from within the
society’s rigidly gendered norms. Female teachers often fail to make any
further personal or collective progress. After years of trying to combat villag-
ers’ prejudices and resistance, these teachers are discouraged or left to vege-
tate in a devastated life. Judging from how she treats in her work the issue of
sexual harassment, it is evident that Draga Gavrilović had a sophisticated per-
ception of reality compared to the narratives of Veselinović and Ranković.
The female protagonist in Gavrilović’s novel, Darinka, together with her
female peers, refuses to take part in sexual manipulations between professors
and female students. In contrast to these female students, Darinka is capable
of perceiving mutual sexual harassments as a dual form of manipulation.
While professors manipulated their institutional power, some of their female
students manipulated their sexual identity. In Veselinović’s story Bela vrana

43
“čupaju mesto kukolja žito”, Draga Gavrilović, Devojački roman, 137.
44
George A. Akerlof and Rachel E. Kranton, “Identity and the Economics of Education” (61–
83) and “Gender and work” (83–97) in Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our
Work, Wages, and Well-Being (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
 Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), the First Serbian Female Novelist 183

and Ranković’s novel Seoska učiteljica focus is on men who use their politi-
cal power in the village to engage in sexually abusive behavior. Both of these
authors chose not to present the feelings of female teachers, especially Vese-
linović who makes her a humiliated woman and a degraded teacher.
Gavrilović gives many details in describing poor economic conditions
which are reflected particularly in the living conditions of single female teach-
ers but which also slow down general social progress. It is therefore not sur-
prising that most female teachers give up on their personal intellectual and
general sociocultural struggle, to continue to live as married housewives or
peasants. Readers—especially female readers—of the story From a Female
Teacher’s Life, which is about three young female teachers (Lenka, Milica,
and Darinka) may be disappointed or even shocked upon learning how Lenka,
one of the smart female students, rejected her job as a teacher to become a
married housewife who works on her husband’s farm, milking the cow at
dawn and raising a child. Her friend, Milica, will choose to marry merely be-
cause of her partner’s high social status and salary. Only Darinka will choose
to struggle for different norms. Only she will continue to teach female chil-
dren because they need to be educated.45 For Darinka, this need itself is a
value: she is aware of very young girls’ education needs and appreciates the
struggle to achieve it. This is also the description of her “identity model,”
which she defended in the past, being a clever and critical but also unwelcome
and unaccepted female student. At the same time, Darinka’s resistance reveals
the “identity model” of her professors and her school. She must fight for her
new identity as an educated young woman, who is allowed to work in public
as a teacher, or whose profession alone is a confirmation of her intelligence.
Her professors and her school do their best to sabotage their role as educators
and as an institution beneficial and essential to society’s progress. They ap-
pear as the very enemies of the idea of educated women. As institutions with
social goals, schools of this kind did not impart skills or ethical values. In-
stead they reveled the great tension between their purposes (to educate female
students) on the one hand, and their prejudices (identifying the female gender
as inferior to male) on the other. The act of educating girls split society’s re-
ality into two incomparable acts, functionalizing the biggest irony: professors
and school are fighting not for society’s progress but for its regress. As edu-

45
When describing her teaching duties, Darinka mentions only female students even though
she has previously stated that her school has four grades and more than a hundred pupils.
According to the educational laws of that time, female teachers were supposed to teach only
female students in the first four grades of elementary school. For further details about Serbian
female teachers see Neda Božinović, Žensko pitanje u Srbiji u XIX i XX veku (Belgrade:
devedestčetvrta: Žene u crnom, 1996), 80.
184 Svetlana Tomić

cators, they teach female students that they cannot be valued because they
have the identity of the “other” gender. Despite them, Darinka sustains her
teaching norms. Her thoughts reflect the words of another identically named
female teacher: “A teacher’s real merit shows (only) in the virtues of those he
or she had once taught.”46
After fourteen years of literary work, Draga Gavrilović decided to aban-
don it. She wrote her last work, and that was Pismo uredniku jednog srpskog
lista [The Letter to an Editor of a Serbian Magazine] (Kikinda, Sadašnjost,
1900). Milankov assumes that she had had an editor of Sadašnjost in her mind
(Ivan Veselinović) because she signed the letter as “the faithful female con-
tributor to your magazine.”47 In this letter, she provides, in a very confessional
way, the answer to what it meant to be a female writer in a patriarchal society.
For Gavrilović, to be a female writer meant not only to fight with prejudices
and society’s strict gender norms, but to sacrifice one of the outstanding per-
sonalities. She admits that she accepted living an isolated life because of hos-
tile pressure, which was hard to bear. What exactly were the words Draga
Gavrilović may have heard and what precisely were the actions she may have
endured at the time as the first female teacher and the first female fiction
writer, often struggling with her illness, in a poor Austro-Hungarian village
with Serb inhabitants, remains unknown. One detail, however, testifies to the
degradation of the “women who think”.
At the end of the first part of her letter, Draga Gavrilović complains that
“my way of writing brings alone to me many bitter hours” and for that reason
“I withdraw myself from literary work almost completely”, hoping that public
pressure will relent.48 Nevertheless, the pressure of some people continues to
grow when convincing other people that she becomes “a senile female writer”
[“ishlapela književnica”]. For that reason, she wants to assure everyone that
she has not become “senile”, and that her withdrawal was of her “own free
will” [“svojevoljno”]. To mark a woman’s bold intellect as a mad one is a
typical patriarchal strategy of using its power in all sorts of violent actions.
Talking about Gavrilović as a mad woman was not only rhetorical violence,
but a judgment which, by identifying “women who think” as “mad”, dem-

46
“Učiteljeva prava zasluga opaža (se) tek u vrlinama ljudi koji nekad behu učenici njegovi”:
Devojački roman” (Draga Gavrilović, Izabrana proza, 2007), 151.
47
V. Milankov, Draga Gavrilović, 130.
48
“I moj način pisanja donosio mi je dosta gorkih časova. I ja sam se povukla sa književnog
polja skoro sasvim”, Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilović, knjiga 2, Vladimir Milankov, ed.
(Kikinda: Književna zajednica Kikinde, 1990), 98.
 Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), the First Serbian Female Novelist 185

onstrates away from sustaining male supremacy and power in a patriarchal

society.49
Another drama needs to be recognized within her confession. First, Gav-
rilović writes about pressure, saying that it made her withdraw. Later on, she
wants readers to accept her “own free will,” as an essence of her decision. By
converting the attribution of power, from the aggressive and primitive patri-
archal society to her “own free will,” she changes again the perspective of
valuing power itself. Therefore, she asks readers not to accept the resistance
of patriarchal society regarding the female writer but her “own free will” as
the most important part of this confessional message.
Fortunately, this withdrawal was not a break with her literature, since she
wrote that she decided to withdraw herself from literary work “almost com-
pletely”, nor was it a renouncement from it since at the end of her life she her-
self wrote “The Listing of My Literary Work.” Perhaps, she believed that, as
heroines frequently state in her fiction, people would value the work of “the
women who think”. In her time, at the end of 19th century, this was not possi-
ble. Nor was it the case during the 20th century. It is more likely that will
happen in the times yet to come. In conclusion, it becomes clear that neither
Gavrilović’s short stories nor her novel can be defined as “an attempt” at lit-
erary work. That claim was merely a strategy for discrediting the work of fe-
male writers, in Deretić’s and Ivanić’s interpretations. As the first female fic-
tion writer, Draga Gavrilović appears well prepared in formal and intellectual
aspects of narration. She writes interestingly and composes craftily. The
structure of her novel is more complex that any of her contemporaries. It does
not have the compact organization of narrative as in Ranković’s Gorski car
(1897), but offers a complicated arrangement of narrative parts, as of a retro-
spective introduction, developed conversations, different kinds of letters, and
confessions. Some of Gavrilović’s stories seem to require more elaboration,
for example, Razume se, onu lepšu 1886, Blagosloveno ricin-ulje, 1890, spe-
cifically because of their inconvincing resolutions, which shed light on the
undeveloped characters and their unreasonably supported motivation. Com-
pared to Gavrilović’s work, the perception of female characters and gender
issues in the literature of Glišić, Matavulj, Veselinović, Sremac, and Ranković
appears as retrograde. Even after Gavrilović’s work, if female characters were
given the roles of protagonists, they remained empty and almost meaningless
female identities. As a case in point one can cite Matavulj’s collections of
short stories Iz raznijeh krajeva (1893), Beogradske priče (published from

49
For further details about the patriarchal types of violence, see “The Violence of Rhetoric” in
Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender, Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Blooming-
ton, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), 31–50.
186 Svetlana Tomić

1891 to 1908), Stevan Sremac, Zona Zamfirova (1906), Dragutin Ilić,

Gospođa Marija (1917), and so on. In rejecting and changing the repression
of Serbian culture to women, Draga Gavrilović made a progressive step
toward modern female identity. She succeeded in what no male Serbian writer
could have done.
Instead of incorporating Gavrilović’s work, Serbian literary history and
criticism refused to accept the modernism of this new female culture, which
was, paradoxically, supported by some Serbian male intellectuals in one part
of Austro-Hungary, today’s Vojvodina, in the last few decades of the 19th
century.50 Rather than appreciating Gavrilović’s works, Serbian literary his-
torians and critics chose to label it as an enemy, erasing the importance of her
contributions. By excommunicating her work from the literary tradition, she
was sentenced to the same destiny as her heroines: Draga Gavrilović was
guilty for revealing the misogyny of writers, literature, and society of her
time. Her literary work was punished since the authorities of Serbian educa-
tional and cultural institutions did not grow out of their misogynistic attitudes.
Even today, literary historians, university professors, and academic critics fail
to appreciate Gavrilović’s ability to think critically and create as a writer. She
herself was also one of the “women who think” and consequently not com-
patible with the politics of a patriarchal and cultural canon. Therefore, neither
Gavrilović nor her contemporary female literary successors were and are not
yet welcome in histories of Serbian literature.
Two other examples confirm, in another way, that culture does find a way
to resist the rigid norms, refusing to perceive itself as an ideologically fixed
and closed space. On the one hand, the academic misinterpretations of this
artist’s work make a negative impact on the Serbian culture. On the other
hand, by publishing Gavrilović’s collected and selected works, Serbian cul-
ture demonstrates efforts to re-evaluate the importance of her work. What
would have happened if, twenty years ago Vladimir Milankov had not made
possible the appearance of Draga Gavrilović’s collected works? And, what if
intuition had not attracted a male journalist, Milorad Antonić, to further ex-
plore the work of Gavrilović and to publish that author’s selected works in
2007? Both writers believed her talent to have been significant for the Serbian
literary tradition and culture. Besides offering some new insights by this

50
The editor of a reputable cultural magazine Javor (Novi Sad), Ilija Ognjanović, frequently
placed one of the earliest published Draga Gavrilović’s stories on the first page, obviously con-
sidering her work as serious and important, at the same time giving the primary attention to her
new narrative. Another editor of Sadašnjost (Kikinda), a teacher, Mihajlo Kostić, encouraged
Draga Gavrilović to publish her novel as a book. Both of these facts are presented in Vladimir
Milankov, Draga Gavrilović, život i delo, 111 and 119.
 Draga Gavrilović (1854–1917), the First Serbian Female Novelist 187

author, this work acknowledges their efforts to find and reveal the value in
Gavrilović’s work and establish her place of importance in Serbia’s literary
tradition.

tomic.svetlana@gmail.com
 Figure 1. Draga Gavrilović
[Source: Draga Gavrilović, Sabrana dela: pesme, pripovetke, ed. Vladimir Milankov vol. 1
(Kikinda: Književna zajednica Kikinde, 1990), photo on p. 6 ]
 Figure 2. Cover page of the journal Javor which published
“Devojački roman” by Draga Gavrilović
[Source: Draga Gavrilović, Sabrana dela: pripovetke, Devojački roman, prevodi, ed. Vladimir
Milankov vol. 2 (Kikinda: Književna zajednica Kikinde, 1990), image on p. 102]