Oldal 393 [393]
OCR
‘A Woman from a Newspaper’: A New Face for Ideology and Old Habits representational program. In this sense, almost all photographs are taken for the same ‘gaze’ suggesting the objectified and authenticated record of reality, whereas the subject of the photograph is just another piece of decoration. The aforementioned interpretative trails, the ethnographicness and the theatralisation of photographing, may be employed to deconstruct the visual image of the women depicted in daily newspapers in the 1950s in the Polish region of Opole Silesia’. Obviously, one cannot discuss the complex gender relations displayed on an Opole Silesian ‘press-stage’ in the times of socialism without touching upon the very specifics of the region. Its history was largely shaped by various socio-political events and the significant context of separation from Polish territory. The region’s long-lasting period of being situated outside the state borders resulted in “selfenclosedness”, an “instinctive tendency to defend internal socio-cultural values” and the “self-preservation of national and class character” (Gérnikowska-Zwolak 2000: 83). Such circumstances, eventually, influenced the construction of specific gender roles within the social community. Interestingly enough, according to contemporary historians of the Silesia region, the woman's socio-cultural position before the war is described as pivotal and satisfactory. In such historical accounts, one can however notice a concealed and problematic idea that there was no reason for a Silesian woman to change and transform her living conditions since the circumstances and gender relations were sufficient, if not better than in any other Polish region. Such conclusions are at odds with ethnographic descriptions that depict women as subordinated to the existing patriarchal patterns, with a main role of maintaining the continuity of indigenous cultural heritage. The idea of the Silesian family was rather an authoritarian and hierarchic one based on the system of economic distinctions, which attributed to a woman solely the tasks of caring and nurturing (cf. Marek 1996). Moreover, it was rather difficult for a woman to summon the will to change gender values and relations, since they were strongly fortified by tenacious traditional convictions preserved in aspic by male guardians. In other words, a woman's position was determined by such values as virtue, faithfulness, religiosity and righteousness, which limited her roles to the figure of a wife and mother (see Ibid.: 15-19). Thereby, the advocates of traditional patterns accepted the employment of women only reluctantly; after all, a working woman was endangering the existing dichotomy of the public and private spheres (cf. Korfanty 1927). Importantly, such social, cultural and moral positioning of women for a long period of time restrained the emancipatory possibilities and progress in Silesia. It ' Tn this case the dailies and weeklies seem particularly interesting. I have analysed three newspapers regularly published in the 1950s: Trybuna Opolska (‘Opole Stand’), Kalendarz Ziemi Opolskiej (‘Opole Region Calendar’) and Glos znad Odry (“The Voice of the Odra River’). In my opinion, the photographs published in popular newspapers are of particular interest to researchers who are tracking the stories of mundane life. It is precisely in such images that one may find both dependencies and contradictions between official state ideologies and the assumed social and cultural roles of the woman in the post-war Polish society. 391
