Ambiguity of Interpretation: the Gender-Conscious Attitudes in the Dissident Works of the Czech Writer Lenka Procházková
Ambiguity of Interpretation: the Gender-Conscious Attitudes in the Dissident Works of the Czech Writer Lenka Procházková

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores the presence of gender-conscious attitudes in the works of the Czech authorLenka Procházková (born 1951), a member of the dissident movement during the communist regime. It argues that her writings took issue with patriarchal social structures, yet sometimescamouflaged these challenges behind criticism of the totalitarian rule. These expressions, whichone might be tempted to consider as feminist from a Western and 21st-century point of view, emerged within East European dissident culture and probably without exposure to Western feministconcepts. Procházková developed a model of an inner exile for dissidents that originatedin a canonical work of Czech literature by Božena Němcová and from which one of her femaleprotagonists draws strength. Thus, her works suggest that Western gender theories are limited intheir potential to assess East European dissident women’s writing, when they fail to include localliterary traditions.

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