“Woe to Us, Women”: The Female Issue in the play “Tergovci”

Abstract

The relation between fathers and children is one of the ideological points of the play chosen by E. Janković, according to the parameters of a bourgeois and mercantile society looking at a useful and modern education and instruction, organic to the needs of the community.
The pedagogical commitment of the author from Novi Sad could not ignore some considerations on the key role played by women in the organization of society as a girl, wife and mother, that was to be redefined on the basis of new demands during the 18th century. Goldoni tried to deal with the debate on female education thanks to the lively confrontation between Giannina and Beatrice, being the first model of educated and learned woman, and the latter, prototype of domestic virtue modeled on ancient customs. Behind the comparison between the two figures, Goldoni couldn’t neglect a burning issue of the Enlightment between progressive openness and conservative positions concerning the female question. The work aims at analyzing the two characters in a dialogic interaction that seems to reveal, in the Italian text, a dialectic of opposing models, shaped by Janković in ambivalent and complementary forms. The choice made by Janković, to translate a comedy where the woman is revaluated, by presenting her as main character and by focusing on the problem of her education and instruction, is one of the values of his enlightened program.