PRAISE AND PUNISHMENT FOR THE “FAIRER SEX” FOR SUPPORTING THE PARTY OF RIGHT IN CIVIL CROATIA DURING THE 1880s

U izvornom gradivu iz Hrvatskoga državnog arhiva u Zagrebu te pravaškome političkom tisku od početka 1880-ih mogu se pronaći zanimljivi podaci koji potvrđuju da je Stranka prava u vrijeme prerastanja u nacionalni pokret imala simpatizera i među ženama. U radu se prikazuje na koje su načine žene iskazivale svoju privrženost Stranci prava i njezinim prvacima, a središnje su protagonistice učiteljice Anka Tkalčić i Vera Tkalec, koje su simpatiziranjem pravaštva privukle pažnju vlasti i ugrozile svoje egzistencije.In original documents from the Croatian State Archive in Zagreb as well as the Party of Right’s publications from the beginning of the 1880s interesting information can be found which shows that at the time when the Party of Right grew into a national movement it had support among women. While the “fairer sex” in the satirical and humoristic pages of the Rightist press was ridiculed for an exaggerated interest in dance and entertainment, fashion-consciousness, extravagance, haughtiness, the reading of foreign, German and French, novels, and most especially a lack of interest in the situation and fate of the Croat people, even a hatred toward Croatia, the Rightist political press also noted various public expressions of sympathy and support by female “fatherlanders” for the Party of Right and its leaders. While women, primarily from the artisanal, merchant, and peasant classes, expressed their sympathy for the Party of Right through greetings to Ante Starčević on his patron saint’s day, applause and hurrahs from the galleries of the Sabor, the decoration and showering of Party of Right leaders with flowers, and other such expressions of support, the authorities paid little mind to them for the most part during the 1880s. However, already in 1882 the report that female teachers were adhering to the “revolutionary ideas” of the Party of Right led the authorities to react promptly and with rather harsh penalties. The main protagonists of this article are two teachers, Anka Tkalčić and Vera Tkalec, who by their sympathy for Rightism drew the attention of the authorities and endangered their livelihoods. For inculcating the youth with “revolutionary ideas,” discovered in the “traces” of the school assignments of her students, Anka Tkalčić was not only dismissed from her position at the school in Bakar, but also permanently barred from the teaching profession. Some months later, in the case of Vera Tkalec, merely the “great suspicion” that she was a supporter of the Party of Right was sufficient for a recommendation to be made to Ban Pejačević to subject her to the “strictest surveillance” and transfer her from Senj to a village