“Word Made Flesh”: Czech Women’s Writing From Communism to Post-Communism

This article explores the changes in Czech women’s fiction from communism to post- communism, focusing in particular on Czech women writers’ relationship to literary discourse and feminism. It contends that women writers’ rapport to ideological discourse and literary production under communism is a determining factor in women’s relationship to both writing and feminism. It examines this literary legacy in terms of post-communism, surveying the differences between a totalitarian socialist regime and that of a materialist, capitalist economy, as exemplified in Czech women’s literature. The article offers a survey the major post-communist women writers, including Hodrová, Boučková, Kriseová, as well as delving into a comparative close-reading analysis of two representatives of both communist and post-communist women’s writing: Eva Kantůrková’s Přítelkyně z domu smutku (Companions Of The Bleak House) and Iva Pekarková’s Kulatý svet (The World is Round). Both these texts offer a challenging vision of “women’s community” for today’s global order