Julija Benešivičiūtė

(Žemaitė)

Plunge (Lithuania) 31-05-1845 ‖ Marijampole (Lithuania) 07-12-1921

Period of activity: From 1883 until 1921

Geographical classification: Europe > Lithuania

Socio-cultural movements

Late modern period / Contemporary period > Realism (art and literature)

Groups by dedication

Writers

Context of feminine creation

Lithuanian writer, democrat and educator Julija Benešivičiūtė (Žemaitė) was greatly affected by the 1863 revolution in Lithuania. Her family actively supported the rebels. In her autobiography, Žemaitė remembers this time as meaningful national activity.

After her husband died in 1900, Žemaitė became actively involved in the life of the emerging Lithuanian society. In 1907 she participated in the first Lithuanian Women's Congress in Kaunas. In the same year, she came to the first exhibition of Lithuanian art and wrote about it to the newspaper "Vilniaus žinios ". She insightfully discussed the connections between the paintings of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis and Lithuanian mythological imagination. From 1914 to 1915, Russia and the United States collected money to help victims of the First World War. Žemaitė became famous as a mesmerizing orator of great eloquence at the Women's Congress, Lithuanian public events in Vilnius, and the gathering of the Lithuanian diaspora.

Other Lithuanian women writers of the same period were Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė, Lazdynų Pelėda and Liudvika Didžiulienė-Žmona.

Review

She was born in the XIX century and started a writing career when she was 40. In those times, it was pretty late. But she was one of the first women who started talking about women's situation in families and that those women experience violence from husbands in Lithuania. She wrote in Lithuanian and in Samogitian language.

Justifications

She was a writer.
She stands for women's rights in her books and talks about family violence.
She wrote a lot about peasant life.
She was a public figure who helped the poor or those affected by the First World War.
She was writter that wrote in Lithuanian and Samogitian language.

Biography

Žemaitė (literally female Samogitian) was the pen name of Julija Beniuševičiūtė-Žymantienė (4 June [23 May] 1845 – 7 December 1921). She was a Lithuanian/Samogitian writer, democrat and educator. Born to impoverished gentry, she became one of the prominent participants in the Lithuanian National Revival. She wrote about peasant life in the style best described as realism.

In her lifetime Žemaitė wrote 354 tales, novelettes, essays, over a dozen of plays, stories about her childhood, as well as several articles and correspondences. Her works have been published in Ūkininkas, Varpas, Vienybė lietuvninkų, Naujienos, Darbininkų balsas, Vilniaus žinios, Lietuvos ūkininkas.

Žemaitė wrote about peasants in a vernacular that closely resembled their language – lively and rich in vocabulary. Her works are usually dark as she depicts poverty, materialism, and arguments within a family. The author paints realistic images of everyday life with petty conflicts, lively conversations, impoverished surroundings, and beautiful nature. Throughout her work, a particular emphasis has been placed upon a woman's role in the family, domestic life and society as a whole, which significantly impacted the development of feminist ideology in the region. Simply by describing poverty, moral indecency and its effects on interpersonal and family relations, Žemaitė unravelled widespread violence against women, the vulnerability of minors and the general patriarchal nature of society at the time. Nevertheless, despite being born to a gentry family, she did not describe gentry life as foreign and unfriendly to her.

Works

English

Marti

She wrote her best works from 1896 to1898. Among some 150 works, the best known are:

Marti (Daughter-in-Law)
Topilys
Petras Kurmelis
Sučiuptas velnias (Caught Devil)
Sutkai
Gera galva (Good Head)

Bibliography

“Žemaitės stebuklas”, Donatas Sauka, 1988. Brigita Bučytė, “Žemaitė”, šaltiniai.info (http://www.xn--altiniai-4wb.info/index/details/1107)

Irena K. Šebedienė, “Žemaitė”, Švietimo taryba (https://www.svietimotaryba.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/zemaite.pdf)

Didactic approach

Lithuanian Literature.