Jelena Ilka Marković: upisivanje u političku istoriju Srbije
Jelena-Ilka Marković: Inscribing into the Political History of Serbia

Summary/Abstract: This paper reconstructs the life of Jelena-Ilka Marković and the reasons leading to her unsuccessful attempt of assassination of king Milan in 1882, regarding her gender roles, class and political orientation. The basic hypothesis is that the assassination was not only an act of personal revenge for the death of the husband, but also a politically inspired one. The paper positions Jelena-Ilka Marković in the context of her gender roles of a wife and childless widow and tracks the development of her political convictions through the political stands and activities of her two husbands: dr Jovan Andrejević, a member of educated bourgeoisie patriotically inclined class struggling to preserve their Serbian identity in the Habsburg Monarchy, and Jevrem Markovic, an opposition member of parliament, adversary of king Milan and a war hero that belonged to the emerging bourgeoisie intellectual class of socialists struggling against the absolutism of king Milan, and advocating the transformation of Serbian society into a modern state. From such a background emerges an emancipated women who possessed rationality, self-consciousness and agency, and who can thus be considered a political subject who acted not only out of personal but also political reasons.

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