Draga Gavrilovi (1854-1917), the First Serbian Female Novelist: the Old

and New Interpretations1

Svetlana Tomi (University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Philosophy,
Serbia)
To Vladimir Milankov and Milorad Antoni

Despite the fact that Draga Gavrilovi was the first Serbian female fiction writer who
contributed to Serbian literature, her work has been almost forgotten, and when discussed it was
continually misinterpreted and misjudged. Gavrilovis 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 womens restricted positions in a patriarchal society bold
and uncompromising. This essential context of Draga Gavrilovi's life and work further
explicates what other interpretations omit to present, and explains what it meant to be a female
writer in a culture whose fundamental definitions were and still are patriarchal.
For Draga Gavrilovi, to be a female writer in a patriarchal society, meant to confront the
patriarchal stance which excluded or diminished values of female characters, or with its strict
roles of female identity which were limited only to women's physical life of childbearing,
caregiving and domestic work. She was the first Serbian author who created intelligent female
personalities, in the range of very young daughters, sisters, friends, colleagues, female students
or teachers, an actress, and female writers. For Gavrilovi, to be a female writer meant to
1

The author greatly appreciates the generosity and intelligence of Dr.Ljubica D. Popovich,
Professor Emerita at Vanderbilt University, Dr.Lilien Filipovitch-Robinson at George
Washington University, and Ms. Iva Frki. Their excellent, incisive language suggestions and
invaluable critical comments helped this text to grow out of first few drafts.

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 exactly, female writers or intellectuals, was not an acceptible form of female identity.
Therefore, the patriarchal society exerted many kinds of pressures, and at the end, labeled
Gavrilovi a mad woman, causing her to abandon from literary work.
In this article I clarify and provide the history of academic misjudgements about
Gavrilovic's works and explain how they affected contemporary research. The main part stresses
the complexity of her inherently gendered experiences - of a female student, a female teacher,
and a female writer. The conclusion, except for reading Draga Gavrilovi's withdrowal from
literary work in a new light, underlines misoginy as the core of patriarchal politics toward
women. Despite Gavrilovi's hard existential circumstances and public resistance, she succeeded
in making a 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 absence of female writers from the
literary canon was constituted by male authority over Knowledge, which presents and protects
patriarchal norms, values, 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 and
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 female artists work, of devaluing and ignoring the
2

meaning even of female characters, and of misinterpreting power relations in a society, feminist
scholars discovered many female authors whose work proves their cultural importance and
aesthetic distinction. On the other hand, such research underlines the tendency of male centered
interpretations which are lacking in objectivity and therefore 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 writers. When in the last two
decades of the 19th century a number of female fiction writers emerged in Serbia, such as Draga
Gavrilovi (1854-1917), Milka Grgurova (1840-1924), Mileva Simi (1858-1954), Jelena
Dimitrijevi (1862-1945), Kosara Cvetkovi (1868 - 1953) and Danica Bandi (1871-1950) ,
they had two things in common which make a literary and social phenomenon worth
researching. Except for Jelena Dimitrijevi and Milka Grgurova, all of them were the first
generation of women who graduated from Serbias first public high schools for girls2 and all of
them focused on perspectives of 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
(Serbias first) teachers, which granted them financial independence and consequently a status of
independent women.
They appeared as first female writers of original narratives and naturally tried to achieve
public acceptance of their emerging cultural authority through many forms of art. Some like
Kosara Cvetkovi and Milka Grgurova were translators of

Russian and French literary works

For a well documented account of long and hard struggle for female education in Serbia, see Ljubinka Trgovevi,
ene kao deo elite u Srbiji u 19. veku. Otvaranje pitanja (p. 251-268);
http://www.cpi.hr/download/links/hr/7077.pdf. More political details can be found in Latinka Perovi Srbija u
modernizacijskim procesima XIX i XX veka in ene i deca. Srbija u modernizacijskim procesima 19. i 20. veka
(Beograd: Helsinki odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji, 2006), p. 7 32. Perovi's work is also presented on the
Internet: http://www.helsinki.org.rs/serbian/doc/sveske23.pdf

of that time.3 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.4Mileva Simi and Danica Bandi received national prizes for their dramas.5
However, none of these women were acknowledged as writers. During the 20th century Serbian
literary historians and university professors, such as Jovan Skerli, Jovan Dereti, and Duan
Ivani, selectively wrote about one or two of them (Draga Gavrilovi and Jelena Dimitrijevi),
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 Serbia 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 which is the center of
cultural and educational development in Serbia. For that reason one is faced with the paradox of
Serbian female researchers striving to interpret feminist scope in literary work without having
basic knowledge of feminist and gender theories. In some recently published studies, one finds
arguments stressing the patriarchal way of thinking - that the weak point of a female writers

For example, among her many translated works, Kosara Cvetkovi 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 Belgrade, in 1939. According to Julija Bokovi, Kosara Cvetkovi
is also known as an ilustrator and caricaturist. See, Leksikon pisaca Jugoslavije I, A-D, (Novi Sad: Matica srpska
1972), p. 407.
4

On Milka Grgurova's acting roles and importance in Serbian theatre, see Borivoje S. Stojkovi Velikani srpskog
pozorita, Milka Grgurova (Beograd - Valjevo: SKZ - GIRO Milan Raki, 1983), p. 11 - 25.
55

Little is known about Simi's dramas. For Bandi's praised drama Emancipovana [The Emancipated Woman] see
Biljana ljivi-imi Women in Life and Fiction at the Turn of the Century (1884-1914) in Serbian Studies, Vol.
7, Fall 1993, No. 2, p. 106 - 123.

work is her focus on women,6 or even contradicting claims - that in a female writers work
feminist ideas are not part of a gendered identity and difference.7 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 beginning of 20th century and that Isidora Sekuli (18771958) was the first Serbian 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 Serbias first modern female writer and an
unavoidable figure in the countrys literary canon. This woman is Draga Gavrilovi. Her work
moreover laid the ground for others women artists like Milka Grgurova, Mileva Simi, Jelena
Dimitrijevi, Kosara Cvetkovi and Danica Bandi, who continued to develop this different
sociocultural perspective of female thinking about life. In presenting the work of this female
writer and explaining its importance, this research also answers the question of why Draga
Gavrilovi 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
6

Vesna Matovi about Jelena Dimitrijevis work: Vesna Matovi enska knjievnost i srpski modernizam:
saglasja i raskoli(278-293) in Srbija u modernizacijskim procesima 19. i 20. veka, knj.2,Poloaj ene kao merilo
modernizacije, ed. by Latinka Perovi (Beograd: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije, 1998), p. 280.
7

Jasmina Ahmetagi about Draga Gavrilovi's work: Predgovor:Vrlinska bia Drage Gavrilovi(vii-xvi) in
Draga Gavrilovi Izabrana proza (Beograd: Multinacionalni fond kulture-Kongras, 2007), x.

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.8In Jovan
Skerli's Serbian literary history Istorija nove srpske knjievnosti [History of New Serbian
Literature] the name of Draga Gavrilovi cannot be found. Two other literary historians
Jovan Dereti and Duan Ivani mention her novel Devojaki roman [A Novel of a Young
Girl], published in 1889, because it was our [Serbian] earliest attempt at writing a female
novel,9 and because of literary and historical reasons.10 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 relation between literary and historical reasons. Dereti did state
the important fact that Draga Gavrilovi was the first Serbian female writer of short stories,11
but did not clarify how her stories narrative was related to her novels narrative. Neither did
Dereti take into the accaunt the fact that Draga Gavrilovi 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

Skerli's interpretation of a very important novel (Jakov Ignajtovi's Vasa Repekt, published in 1875) shows that
he omitted the fact that the hero's father was abusive and responsible for determing the tragic fate of his son. Not
only did Ignja Ognjan beat his only child Vasa (sometime 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 the father's point of view, resulting in a collective misunderstanding of the son. Furthermore, Skerli 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 female characters. It is this specific linkage which stresses the parents' guilt for their
children's misfortune. Jovan Skerli Predgovor, Jakov Ignjatovi Vasa Repekt (Beograd: SKZ, 1913), v. The
same circulus viciosus is found in Jovan Dereti's Istorija srpske knjievnosti [History of Serbian literature]
(Beograd: Prosveta, 2002) and Duan Ivanis Srpski realizam[ Serbian Realism] (Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1996).
9

na najraniji pokuaj enskog romana: Jovan Dereti, Istorija srpske knjievnosti (Beograd: Prosveta, 2002), p.
850.
10

iz knjievnoistorijskih razloga: Duan Ivani, Srpski realizam (Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1996), p. 121. Ivani
repeated the same words in Ka poetici srpskog realizma (Beograd: Zavod za udbenike i nastavna sredststva, 2007),
p. 209.
11

prva ena pripoveda: J.Dereti Istorija, p.850.

was a popular author in her time. This information can be found in another study, entitled Draga
Gavrilovi ivot i delo [Life and Work of Draga Gavrilovi], by Vladimir Milankov.12 That
work deals, however, more with facts about the place where Draga Gavrilovi was born and
lived (Srpska Crnja) than about her life and work, thus failing to fulfill its biographical purpose.
When the same author a year later (in 1990) edited Gavrilovi'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 Gavrilovi as an important Serbian literary
figure by publishing her collected works poems, short stories, a novel, and translations
Serbian academic scholars showed little interest in investigating its significance. A book review
about Gavrilovi's collected works, written by Duan Ivani - 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.13 Several false
statements are found in Ivani's review which seem to want to discard or trivialize the
importance and originality of Gavrilovi's work. Firstly, Ivani argues that Gavrilovi did not
happen to publish her books14 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.15 Ivani does not state or make clear that it was not Draga Gavrilovi's fault but of the

12

Vladimir Milankov, Draga Gavrilovi ivot i delo (Kikinda: Knjievna zajednica Kikinde, 1989).

13

About institutional control see Pjer Burdije Pravila umetnosti: Geneza i struktura polja knjievnosti (Novi Sad:
Svetovi, 2003): Osnovi nauke o delu, p. 253 - 403.
14

nije stigla da objavi knjigu svojih tekstova: Duan Ivani Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilovi, Letopis Matice
srpske, Novi Sad, Vol. 447, 1991, p.158.
15

Vladimir Milankov Draga Gavrilovi ivot i delo (Kikinda: Knjievna zajednica Kikinde, 1989), p. 111. and
119.

strong patriarchal system which values women and their work less than these of men. Second,
Ivani states that Gavrilovi's works do not make the Serbian realism any richer16 and that she
is a writer of marginal value only.17 This however seems to be in contradiction to his claim that
her contribution to Serbian fiction lies in jounalistic straightforwardness, lively and concrete
speeches of literary characters [and] dynamic conversation.18 Afterward, Ivani admitted
Gavrilovi'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, Ivani's manipulation of
Knowledge and Judgments are compatible with patriarchal beliefs that women intellectuals are a
kind of oximoron, that their public, literary work cannot have values and therefore cannot be
important. Let us compare frequent gaps between Ivani's claims and facts of Gavrilovi's
works.
Ivani introduces Gavrilovi's ideas of women's emancipation as interesting 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,
Ivani does not care to consider the context in which Gavrilovi wrote and to analyze the reasons
for which she persistently incorporates a feminist political identity into her work and to asses the
importance of that. For these reasons, readers cannot understand why she wrote about female

16

ne bogate lik srpske knjievnosti epohe realizma: D. Ivani, Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilovi, p. 158.

17

pisac marginalne vrednosti, D. Ivani, Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilovi, p. 159.

18

urnalistikoj izriitosti, ivoj konkretizaciji govornih slika junaka, dinamici konverzacije : D. Ivani,
Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilovi, p. 159.

teachers, which Ivani stresses as the one of the main themes of Serbian fiction of that time.19
So, at the end of this book review, Ivani's seemingly generous starting point, about such a rare
example of having the collected works of a female author, is revealed as a false, echoing a big
irony, because in his conclusion Ivani judged Draga Gavrilovi as a writer of marginal value
only.20 Therefore, his initial statements that ecriture feminine of Serbian literature has got an
unexpected newborn21 and that her hardly reachable fiction, now becomes part of a living
literary tradition22 do not announce the birth of the literary work and its female author as it
might at first appear; rather, Ivani proclaimes their death.
The crucial element of Ivani's interpretation of Gavrilovi'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,23 Ivani firmly divides social
values of two genders. The fact that at that time, in 1991, there was no history of Serbian fiction
of female authors does not prove that Ivani'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.24 In the academic studies, which Ivani published many years after
19

jedna od glavnih tematskih kompleksa srpske proze, D. Ivani, Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilovi, p. 159.

20

pisca marginalne vrijednosti D. Ivani, Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilovi, p. 159.

21

ensko pismo srpske knjievnosti dobilo neoekivanu prinovu, D. Ivani, Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilovi,
p.157.
22

jedva pristupana proza Drage Gavrilovi postaje sada dio ive knjievne tradicije, D. Ivani, Sabrana dela
Drage Gavrilovi, p.158.
23

u istoriji srpske enske knjievnosti, D. Ivani, Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilovi, p.158.

24

The first history of Serbian and Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature written by female authors was published nine
years after Ivani'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 Gavrilovi. Since

this review, no women writers are included despite the growing number of well argued
researches on the topic of literary value of female authors' work.25 By claiming the acceptance of
women only inside women's culture, one recognizes the old but prevalent patriarchal prejudice
which protects the idea that women's intelect 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.
Consequently, 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 multiple clouding and misinterpreting - of
Gavrilovi's feminist efforts in her writing, of the importance and value of her work, and last but
not least, of Ivani's own authority which in this case scholarly research of the text does not
prove as objective.
It is not suprising then that other essays about Gavrilovi's fiction, published after
Ivani'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)26 and in Jasmina
Ahmetagi's preface of Gavrilovi's selected works (2007). Mirkov cannot explain the
fundamental paradox that while Gavrilovi publicly gained certain importance, her work was
never honored with truly scholarly interest and appropriate research methods. Mirkov admires
and praises Ivani's role, citing his judgments about Gavrilovi's work from his study published
Hawkesworth relies on the weak arguments of Predrag Palavestra and Zdenko Lei, with no interpretations of her
own, it seems that the work of Draga's female peers need to be (re-)evaluated.
25

For example, there are two important researches about Jelena Dimitrijevis work Pisma iz Nia. O haremima,
which is the second novel written by a female author in Serbia and published in 1897. See, Slobodanka Pekovi
Jelenina pisma Jelena Dimitrijevi Pisma iz Nia. O haremima, Beograd: Narodna biblioteka Srbije, 1986;
Svetlana Slapak Haremi, nomadi: Jelena Dimitrijevi in ene, slike, izmiljaji, ed. Branka Arsi (Beograd:
Centar za enske studije, 2000).
26

Nada Mirkov Draga Gavrilovi, ProFemina (Belgrade: 1999), Vol. 17-19, p. 137 - 140.

10

in 1988, which he repeated in the above mentioned book review.27 She stressed for the first time
the fact that Gavrilovi was the first female fiction writer in the Serbian patriarchal society.
However, neither Mirkov nor Ahmetagi considered a crucial point regarding this authors
literary achievements and that is what it meant to be a female writer in a culture whose
fundamental definitions were and still are patriarchal. Mirkov, however, pointed out the
complexity of Dragas narrative and her continuous efforts to be well informed about womens
emancipation in Europe at the end of 19th century.
The editor of a recently published Selected works of Draga Gavrilovi, Jasmina
Ahmetagi, incorrectly presents and inadequately states facts. In a note about Draga Gavrilovi,
Ahmetagi wrongly attributes the work U meuprostoru to Draga Gavrilovi, although that work
was written by another female author, who was born in 1954 in aak and had a similar first
name (Draginja) and the same surname (Gavrilovi).28 Furthermore, in preparing a new edition
of Draga Gavrilovi's selected works, Ahmetagi omits stating the criteria for selecting the works
and the years when Gavrilovi's narratives were originally published. Moreover, Ahmetagi's
preface Vrlinska bia Drage Gavrilovi [The persons of Virtue of Draga Gavrilovi'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 Gavrilovi's fiction, or the link between
Gavrilovi and a newly established tradition of female fiction writers. Ahmetagi's study had
started up from a contradictory hypothesis that in Gavrilovi's work feminist ideas are not part of
her gendered identity and difference, which lead her interpretation to the marginal problems in
27

Duan Ivani Zabavno-pouna periodika srpskog realizma: Javor i Strailovo (Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1988),
p. 227.
28

The maiden name of this contemporary author was Balti. See the biographical notes on a book cover of Draginja
Gavrilovi's collection of stories: U meuprostoru (Vrac: KOV, 2004) and compare with Beleka o piscu
Jasmina Ahmetagi, in Draga Gavrilovi Izabrana proza, 2007, p. 373.

11

Draga Gavrilovi's works, as of Gavrilovi's own textual and Biblical quotations. As Nada
Mirkov had done, Ahmetagi incorporated Ivani's judgments, repeating his interpretation of
Gavrilovi's female characters as persons of virtue, which is her main focal point.
From the very beginning of her literary work, Draga Gavrilovi had developed an
awareness of the need for strong resistance to the patriarchal culture 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 century, who were considered to be supporters of
womens rights Dositej Obradovi (1744-1811) and Svetozar Markovi (1846-1875),
Gavrilovi called for more intellectual women who are supposed to be aware of their subjugated
position in order to change it. As noted by a lucid critic, Milan Bogdanovi, both of these above
mentioned cultural figures described the ideal woman in almost with identical words, purity and
sainthood, thus projecting the idealized image of their mothers.29 This fixation of female
identity to the role of mother, which also means a married woman who is subjugated to the
limited space of domesticity, Draga Gavrilovi perceived as problematic. From her early
childhood she was asking why a single woman is not respected in the same manner as married
women and how can a woman live as an honorable person if she does not want to marry. Unlike
many other young girls growing up at the time, Gavrilovi had the opportunity to be educated.
As a female student, she experienced some frustration 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 general. She was willing to pass on another kind of specific and gendered knowledge.
This determination sums up her struggle for asserting a new female identity that of women
thinkers, creators, and artists.

29

Milan Bogdanovi Milica Ninkovi in Stari i novi, IV (Beograd: Prosveta, 1952), p. 49.

12

As an intellectual, Draga Gavrilovi could not accept the fact that Serbian society
allowed educated women to work in public only as teachers. She thought that this rule needed to
be changed since it harshly restricts womans intellectual abilities and strictly keeps limits of
womens possibility to gain public respect. She wrote how women in some European countries
and it the USA became doctors, lawyers, and writers. Therefore, she decided to work as a female
writer.30
In contrast to her female literary predecessors, Gavrilovi does not use pseudonyms or
initials. She neither hides nor feels frightened by public judgment. She does not show any signs
of anxiety of authorships, so typical for the literary beginnings of female writers.31 Gavrilovi
decided to use her pen for fearless and uncompromising critical energy against societys habits
and prejudices, which she defined as powerful enemies of progress and truth. She holds the
Western society as a model, and dedicates herself to strengthening womens cultural authority. To
do so, she chooses to write about completely new female characters and personalities - of
intelligent young girls, sisters, daughters, female friends, female students, female teachers, an
actress, and women writers, whose characters did not exist in a Serbian fiction.
Serbian male realist authors, who published their work before Draga Gavrilovi, such as
Milovan Glii (1847-1908), and Simo Matavulj (1852-1908), or after her, such as Janko
Veselinovi (1862-1905), Stevan Sremac (1855-1906), Svetolik Rankovi (1863-1899), Lazar
Komari (1839-1909) and Dragutin Ili (1858-1926) constructed female characters mainly as
30

Draga Gavrilovi herself wrote the listings of her published fiction entitled Spisak mojih knjievnih radova
[The Listing of My Literary Works] which Vladimir Milankov found in the Archive of manuscripts of Matica
srpska, in Novi Sad, No. M 1608 and presented in Draga Gavrilovi ivot i delo [Draga Gavrilovi's life and
work], p. 119. and p. 121.
31

Sandra M. Gilbert & Susan Gubar The Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000):
Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety od Autorship, p. 45-93

13

fairies and dolls.32 Draga Gavrilovi did not accept that limiting and simplistic reduction of
female reality which saw only mothers who sacrified their lives, and who were also wives who
suffered in their marriages. For her, these female literary characters were all constructions of
idealized emptiness, or abstract and distant mysteries.
Most importantly, Draga seems to be the first author who in a overtly feminist way
criticized the Serbian realist narration for its representation of male rotten taste, hypocrisy and
selfishness which poison women 33 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 hundred
years later.34 Draga Gavrilovi decided to present a different reality, constructing for the first time
literary characters who are intelligent and courageous young women, educated and rebellious,
and who critically perceive family, education, culture and society in general. These young
women she identifies as mislee enskinje which means women who think or thinking
women simultaneously specifying one of the key theme in her work.

vile i lutke: Draga Gavrilovi Izabrana proza, Devojaki roman [A Novel of a Young Woman], (Beograd:
Multinacionalni fond kulture - Kongras, 2007), p. 91.
32

33

nego nas tim vaim trulim ukusom trujete i u knjievnosti, u spisima vaim. Belo lice, rubin-usne, vrane
obrve, viti stas, i to sve u najjaoj nijansi, to su maije koje zanose i vezju nae junake. Ba kao i u ivotu... Pa
je li onda udo to enskinja pada u tu pogreku?Draga Gavrilovi Izabrana proza, Devojaki roman, p. 91.
34

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), Adrienne Rich When We Dead Awaken: Writing ReVision, College English 34 (1972), Judith Fetterley The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American
Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), Annete Kolodny A Map for Rereading. Gender and the
Interpretation of Literary Texts, The New Feminist Criticism, Esseys on Women, Literature Theory, ed. by Elaine
Showalter, (New York : Pantheon Books, 1985), p. 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), p. 485-505.

14

No one in Serbian 19th century literature had ever before her introduced characters of
Serbian female writers, or the emancipated characters of American female writers, which further
implies the promotion of American freedom and democracy.35 By multiplying the characters of
female writers and by resolving all of their conflicts in their own favor, Draga Gavrilovi
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 (1832-1888), one of the well known American female writer, omitted
authorship in her work although it is constantly implied.36
The main character of Gavrilovis story San [A Dream] (Novi Sad: Javor, 1889) is an
unnamed American female author who speaks boldly, argues persuasively and immediately
attracts the audiences attention by confronting a Serbian male writer in front of an international
literary audience of all religions 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 Zamislieva, and she succeeded in debating with a man that everything
depends on character - Ona je srce mu kae [She is the One His Heart Tells Him] (Kikinda:
Sadanjost, 1890). As in other of Gavrilovi's fiction, the naming of characters makes readers
think about these new personalities in 19th-century Serbian narration. Zamislieva is Jovanka's
second name, and its meaning is multiple. This word can be literaly translated as a female
person who is capable to penetrate into imagination, but it is associated with many other words
35

When introducing into her narrative the literary personality of young women in the USA, Gavrilovi does not
give geographic details, that could be an indication not of her practically lived but transcendentally gained
expirience, by reading about contemporary political changes in European countries and the States. She herself could
have been 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 Gavrilovi ivot i delo, Iseljavanje u Ameriku (do
1919), p. 18-19 .
36

Elaine Showalter A Jury of Her Peers: Celebrating American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie
Proulx (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), p. 169.

15

as well, such as meditating, thinking, delineating, or rendering. All of the suggested

associations situate the heroine, the writer, her literary work and her readers into a transcendental
sphere of imaginative power, which Gavrilovi 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.
Another story is a vigorous support expressed by an unnamed Serbian female teacher and
a writer to an unnamed Serbian actress who despite her great talent is not yet publicly
acknowledged - Misli u pozoritu, Jednoj srpskoj glumici [Some Contemplations in a Theater:
To a Serbian Actress] (Kikinda: Sadanjost,1884). While watching a theatrical performance
featuring the actress, the teacher experiences another and 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 societys prejudices regarding new female professions and arguing against
nonprofessional criticism. 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!37 Here, a point is made about defending female artists, their right to
create and gain authority. While Nada Mirkov asserts that Draga Gavrilovi is writing to an
imaginary Serbian actress,38 it could be argued that Gavrilovi could have had Milka Grgurova
in mind, whose fame was at its peak at that time.39
37

Kad su muki u svaem napredniji, pa i oseaje nae bolje razumu od nas samih, zato nas bar svuda i ne
zamenjuju!: Draga Gavrilovi Sabrana dela (Kikinda: Knjievna zajednica Kikinde, 1990), Vol. 2, p.59.
38

N.Mirkov, Draga Gavrilovi, p. 139.

39

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 Gavrilovis
story, the teacher states that she could hardly wait for a school year to end, so that she could head for your capital
to a theater. In contrast to Draga Gavrilovi, who lived in a poor village in Austro-Hungary, or todays Vojvodina,

16

For the main female character of her novel Devojaki roman [A Novel of a Young Girl]
(Novi Sad: Javor, 1889) Gavrilovi chose an intellectually and ethically powerful young woman,
Darinka, who knows how to act in front of double-faced parents, pseudo intellectuals, a sly
owner of a large estate, or a sugarcoated but Machiavellian fianc whom Darinka rejected as a
mean person. None of these men know how to talk to Darinka, and none are able to find counterarguments for her rhetoric, which dazzles them as a manifestation of free and critical thinking.40
The crucial part of this truly feminist novel is Darinkas fights and debates with her father. This
father-daughter plot reflects struggle between two opposite, patriarchal and emancipated
principals of a womans life. Darinkas critiques of social traditions (literary, cultural, and
educational) are a starting point for her self-justification. 41
Particularly because of Darinkas strong personality, the ending of novel seems to have
quite the opposite meaning from the interpretation of a happy marriage clich, which Ivani
firstly concluded and which Mirkov and Ahmetagi lately confirmed.42 At the end of the story,
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 Dejanovi (18401871), 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 Aleksi-Grgurove. Prva sveska. Vera.
erdan od bisera. (Beograd: Dravna tamparija Kraljevine Srbije, 1897) . The author owes a deep thanks to a
dramatrug, Ms. Irina Stojkovi-Kiki of the library of The Museum of Serbian Theater for sending a part of the
monograph of Milka Grgurova written by Vera Crvenanin Svitanja i suton Milke Grgurove (Beograd: Muzej
pozorine umetnosti Srbije, 2003) and to a theatre expert , Mr. Zoran T. Jovanovi, 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 Duan Mihailovi.
40

Free and critical thinking are also crucial motives of Gavrilovis earlier poem Za slobodu[For Freedoom],
published in the reputable Serbian cultural magazine Javor (Novi Sad), in 1879.
41

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).
42

Duan Ivani Srpski realizam, p. 121; Duan Ivani Ka poetici srpskog realizma, p. 209; Nada Mirkov, Draga
Gavrilovi, p.140; Jasmina Ahmetagi Predgovor: Vrlinska bia Drage Gavrilovi(vii-xvi) in Draga Gavrilovi
Izabrana proza, xi.

17

Darinka meets and marries Neznanko Neznankovi [Mr. Unknown Unknowingly] but some
textual facts, excluded from mentioned interpretations, reveal this ending to be far from a
standard clich, a happy end, or a marriage. For example, it might be argued that Draga named
Darinkas new fianc as Neznanko Neznankovi [Mr. Unknown Unknowingly] 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 Gavrilovi usually does when introducing important male characters in
the story. Additionally, a newly married couple moves into a place named in a Utopian manner
Srenice [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 fianc 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, Gavrilovi 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 a happy marriage of her
heroine, she would probably have chosen a rather different title for her novel. Gavrilovi had
changed it from Devojaki san [A Dream of a Young Girl] to Devojaki roman [A Novel of a
Young Girl]. In searching for the proper words, she chose to insist on a girl's standpoints, which
focuses her gendered location and its opressed position. While obcuring this dreaming and
desiring incentives, for which Gavrilovi 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 unnamed place with Serb inhabitants. Therefore, the
18

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 encourment of young girls' emancipation and their own lives' choices.
What Ivani stated about Gavrilovis novelistic main theme, that it is about the awakening of a
young being43 is not compatible with the character of the heroine nor with the theme of the
novel, which is all about Darinkas uncorrupted intelligence and her bold critical thinking.
In her longest story Iz uiteljikog ivota [From a Female Teachers Life] (Novi Sad:
Javor, 1884), Gavrilovi created quite an unusual male character. Kosta is a husband on whose
perception of womens emancipation his wifes intellectual female friends made a strong impact.
He came to share their views and became convinced that women need mens support for
emancipation, honestly stressing the need of mens 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 Gavrilovi elaborated the idea that womens rights cannot
be gained without support of truly emancipated men. In a polemic Pismo pobratimu [A Letter to
a Blood Brother] (Kikinda: Sadanjost, 1894) she writes that the battle for respect of women
intellectuals authority must begin with the emancipation and education of men, since they held
and controlled powerful positions in a society. For Gavrilovi, womens emancipation and
education comes after reaching a society peopled by new and liberated men.
The reason why Draga Gavrilovis representation of womens condition is so much more
convicing than that of her contemporary male authors lies in the fact that her own experience was
the basis for the situations she portrayed and for the issues she treated in her work. Having been
a female student 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, Gavrilovi
43

buenje mladog bia: Duan Ivani Srpski realizam, p. 121. The same statements can be found in Duan Ivani
Ka poetici srpskog realizma, p. 209.

19

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 epistemic privilege, which is complexly incorporated into her narrative. Consequently, this
explains why other stories dealing with Serbias female teachers and written by male authors
could not reach the profound scope of Draga Gavrilovis narrative. This holds true for work by
male authors published before her fiction, for example stories kolska ikona by Lazar Lazarevi
and Uiteljica by Stevan B. Popovi, both published in 1880, as well as those published after her
work, such as Bela vrana, a story by Janko Veselinovi from 1890, or Seoska uiteljica, a novel
by Svetolik Rankovi from 1899.
The other crucial part of Gavrilovis narrative is presenting the essential messages
through young womens 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 Teachers Life [Iz uiteljikog ivota]
(1884) and in her novel A Novel of a Young Girl [Devojaki roman] (1889), Gavrilovi
underlines the most dramatic part of a female students confession which is that male
professors at her high school uproot the wheat instead of the chaff,44 marking them not as
sophisticated but as non-intellectual educators. Gavrilovi 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 conditions and higher
salaries. Thinkers will be degraded by being left behind in the job market, to wait some 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

44

upaju mesto kukolja ito, Draga Gavrilovi, Devojaki roman, p. 137.

20

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 confessions of her heroines about the teacherstudent relationship, the fundamental problem revealed is the issue of guilt. The heroines do not
feel guilty for finding and saying 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 institutions, did not reject misogyny. Gavrilovi
underlies 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 todays 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.45 In Gavrilovis fiction, the education of girls and young women is contextualized from
within the societys rigidly gendered norms. Female teachers often fail to make any further
personal or collective progress. After years of trying to combat villagers prejudices and
resistance, these teachers are discouraged or left to vegetate in a devastated life. Judging from
how she treats in her work the issue of sexual harassment, it is evident that Draga Gavrilovi had
a sophisticated perception of reality compared to the narratives of Veselinovi and Rankovi. The
female protagonist in Gavrilovis 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

45

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 (New Jersey:
Princeton Univeristy Press, 2010).

21

manipulation. While professors manipulated their institutional power, some of their female
students manipulated their sexual identity. In Veselinovis story Bela vrana and Rankovis
novel Seoska uiteljica focus is on men who use their political power in the village to engage in
sexually abusive behaviour. Both of these authors chose not to present the feelings of female
teachers, specially Veselinovi who makes her a humilated woman and a degraded teacher.
Gavrilovi gives many details in describing poor economic conditions which are reflected
particular in the living conditions of single female teachers but which also slow down general
social progress. It is therefore not surprising 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 Teachers 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 husbands farm, milking the cow at
dawn and raising a child. Her friend, Milica, will chose to marry merely because of her partners
high social status and salary. Only Darinka will choose to struggle for different norms. Only she
will continue to teach female children because they need to be educated.46 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,
Darinkas resistance reveals the identity model of her professors and her school. She must fight

46

When describing her teacher's 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 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 Boinovi ensko pitanje u Srbiji u XIX i XX veku (Beograd:
devedestetvrta: ene u crnom, 1996), p. 80.

22

for her new identity of 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
societys progress. They appear as the very enemies of the idea of educated women. As
institutions with social goals, schools of this kind did not impart skills or ethic values. Instead
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 societys reality in two incomparable acts, functionalizing the biggest
irony: professors and school are fighting not for the societys progress but for its regress. As
educators, 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 teachers real merit shows (only) in
the virtues of those he or she had once taught.47
After fourteen years of literary work, Draga Gavrilovi decided to abandon it. She wrote
her last work, and that was Pismo uredniku jednog srpskog lista [The Letter to an Editor of a
Serbian Magazine] (Kikinda, Sadanjost, 1900). Milankov assumes that she had had an editor of
Sadanjost in her mind (Ivan Veselinovi) because she signed the letter as the faithful female
contributor to your magazine.48 In this letter, she provides, in a very confessional way, the
answer what it meant to be a female writer in a patriarchal society. For Gavrilovi, to be a female
writer meant not only to fight with prejudices and societys strict gender norms, but to sacrifice
Uiteljeva prava zasluga opaa (se) tek u vrlinama ljudi koji nekad behu uenici
njegovi:Devojaki roman(Draga Gavrilovi Izabrana proza, 2007), p. 151.
47

48

V.Milankov, Draga Gavrilovi, p. 130.

23

one of the outstanding personalities. She admits that she accepted living an isolated life because
of hostile pressure, which was hard to bear. What exactly were the words Draga Gavrilovi may
have heard and what precisely were the actions she may have endured, at the time as the 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 one of the women who think.
At the end of the first part of her letter, Draga Gavrilovi complains that my way of
writing brings alone to me many bitter hours and for that reason I withdraw myself from
literary work almost comletely, hoping that public pressure will relent.49 Nevertheless, the
pressure of some people continues to grow when convincing other people that she becomes a
senile female writer[ishlapela knjievnica]. For that reason, she wants to assure everyone that
she has not become a senile, and that her withdrawal was of her own free
will[svojevoljno]. To mark a womans bold intellect as a mad one is a typical patriarchal
strategy of using its power in all sorts of violent actions. Talking about Gavrilovi as a mad
woman was not only a rhetorical violence, but a judgment which, by identifying women who
think as mad, demonstrates away of sustaining male supremacy and power in a patriarchal
society .50
Another drama needs to be recognized within this confession. First, Gavrilovi writes
about pressure, saying that it made her withdraw. Later on, she wants readers to accept her own
49

I moj nain pisanja donosio mi je dosta gorkih asova. I ja sam se povukla sa knjievnog polja skoro sasvim
Sabrana dela Drage Gavrilovi, knjiga 2, (ed.) Vladimir Milankov (Kikinda: Knjievna zajednica Kikinde, 1990),
p. 98.
50

For further details about the patriarchal types of violences, see The Violence of Rhetoric in Teresa de Lauretis
Technologies of Gender, Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 3150.

24

free will, as an essence of her decision. By converting the attribution of power, from the
aggressive and primitive patriarchal 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 the
patriarchal society regarding a 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 of literary work almost completely, nor was it a renouncement
from it since at the end of her life she herself 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 possible.
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 Gavrilovi's short stories nor her novel can be
defined as an attempt at literary work. That claim was merely a strategy for discrediting the
work of female writers, in Dereti's and Ivani's interpretations. As the first female fiction writer,
Draga Gavrilovi appears well-prepared in formal and intellectual aspects of narration. She
writes interestingly and composes craftly. The structure of her novel is more complex that any of
her contemporaries. It does not have a compact organisation of narrative as Rankovi's Gorski
car (1897), but offers a complicated arrangment of narrative parts, as of a retrospective
introduction, developed conversations, different kind of letters and confessions. Some of
Gavrilovi's stories seem to reqiure more elaboration, for example, Razume se, onu lepu 1886,
Blagosloveno ricin-ulje, 1890, specifically because of their inconvincing resolutions, which shed
light on the undeveloped characters and their unreasonably supported motivation. Compared to
Gavrilovi's work, the perception of female characters and gender issues in the literature of
25

Glii, Matavulj, Veselinovi, Sremac and Rankovi appears as retrograde. Even after
Gavrilovi's work, if female characters were given the roles of protagonists, they remained
empty and almost meaningles female identities. As a case in point one can cite Matavulj's
collections of short stories Iz raznijeh krajeva 1893, Beogradske prie published from 1891 to
1908, Stevan Sremac Zona Zamfirova 1906, Dragutin Ili Gospoa Marija, 1917 and so on. In
rejecting and changing the repression of Serbian culture to women, Draga Gavrilovi made a
progressive step toward modern woman identity. She suceeded in what no male Serbian writer
could have done.
Instead of incorporating Gavrilovi's work, Serbian literary history and criticism
rejected 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.51 Rather than appreciating Gavrilovi's works, Serbian literary
historians and critics chose to labeled it as an enemy, erasing the importance of her contributions.
By excomunicating her work from the literary tradition, she was sentenced to the same destiny as
her heroines: Draga Gavrilovi was guilty for revealing the mysogyny of writers, literature and
society of her time. Her literary work was punished since the authorities of Serbian educational
and cultural institutions did not grow out of their misogynic attitudes. Even today, literary
historians, university professors and academic critics fail to appreciate Gavrilovis ability to
critically think and create as a writer. She herself was also one of the women who think and
consequently not compatible with the politics of a patriarchal and cultural canon. Therefore,

51

The editor of a reputable cultural magazine Javor/Javor (Novi Sad), Ilija Ognjanovi, frequently placed one of
the earliest published Draga Gavrilovi's stories on the first page, obviously considering her work as serious and
important, at the same time giving the primary attention to her new narrative. Another editor of Sadanjost/The
Present Time (Kikinda), a teacher, Mihajlo Kosti, encouraged Draga Gavrilovi to publish her novel as a book.
Both of these facts are presented in Vladimir Milankov, Draga Gavrilovi, ivot i delo, p. 111. and 119.

26

neither Gavrilovi 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
side, the academic misinterpretations of this artist's work make a negative impact on the Serbian
culture. On the other side, by publishing Gavrilovi's collected and selected works, Serbian
culture demonstartes 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 Gavrilovis collected works? And, what if intuition had not attracted a male journalist,
Milorad Antoni, to further explore the work of Gavrilovi and to publish that authors selected
works in 2007? Both writers believed her talent to have been significant for Serbian literary
tradition and culture. Besides offering some new insights by this author, this work acknowledges
their efforts to find and reveal the value in Gavrilovis work and establish her place of
importance in Serbias literary tradition.

27