Súlyosbító körülmények. Női vádlottak az első világháború hátországi büntetőbírósága előtt
Aggravating Circumstances. Female Defendants in the Criminal Courts of the WWI Hinterland

Summary/Abstract: The history of women in the hinterland has attracted little attention in the historiography of the Great War. The study aims to fill this gap by examining the populous but hitherto seldom investigated social stratum of poor rural women through conflicts they encountered as a direct consequence of the war. The source material derives from lawsuits in which these women, primarily from former Bács-Bodrog and Torontál counties (now largely in Serbia), were acting as defendants. While the WWI historiography of women, narrated from the angle of the increasingly bourgeois upper classes at the time, emphasises the advances in women’s emancipation, the present study reveals a different picture. The breakout of the war did not bring about the same manoeuvrability for poor peasant woman, instead the opposite took place. Although these women of uncertain social status could try (even illegally) to use new income opportunities to make up for missing income after the loss of the breadwinner, these rarely improved their difficult situation. The law, at the same time, was draconian even if the women’s sole breadwinner status in their family was acknowledged. In their assessment by the law the war counted as aggravating circumstance, if at all considered. In their case, the court hardly ever deliberated the exceptional situation

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