Tensiuni feministe în romanele Sofiei Nădejde: etica maternității, configurații familiale și educația femeii în Patimi și Robia banului
Alisa Tite
Descriere autor:
Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca
E-mail:
E-mail personal autor:
alisa.tite@stud.ubbcluj.ro
3
Rubrica:
Studii literare
Feminist Tensions in the Novels of Sofia Nădejde: The Ethics of Motherhood, Family Configurations, and Women’s Education in Passions and The Bondage of Money
Abstract:This article examines Patimi. Roman din viața românească (1903) [Passions. Novel taken from Romanian Life] and Robia banului (1906) [The Bondage of Money] by Sofia Nădejde through key concerns of first-wave feminism, focusing on family morality and education as structuring principles of female destiny. It argues that, in these novels, the family functions as a privileged site for articulating moral value, not as a monolithic or idealized form, but as a tension-ridden structure that exposes both economic dependency and gender inequality, while simultaneously linking women’s narrative trajectory to family configurations. While allowing for a critique of women’s condition, Nădejde’s narratives ultimately ends up situating emancipation within the family. Particular attention is paid to the centrality of motherhood, figured both through the maternal transmission of education and through an ethics of maternity that governs narrative outcomes. Placed in dialogue with first-wave feminist discourse, socialist theories of the family, and tropes from “female-oriented” literary subgenres, the article shows that Nădejde’s fiction negotiates emancipation through a reformist moral framework, revealing the tensions between feminist critique and the persistence of patriarchal and nationalist norms.
Keywords: Sofia Nădejde, Romanian literature, first-wave feminism, feminist tensions, family morality, motherhood, women’s education
Citation suggestion: Tite, Alisa. “Tensiuni feministe în romanele Sofiei Nădejde: etica maternității, configurații familiale și educația femeii în Patimi și Robia banului”. Transilvania, no. 3 (2026): 1-11.
https://doi.org/10.51391/trva.2026.3.01.

