Postac z cieniem

Analyzes the image of the Jewish woman in Polish literature from the late 19th century to 1939 by presenting two model types of Jewish women in two literary epochs, the positivist and the modernist. During the period of Jewish assimilation and emancipation of women there were new images of both models which were stereotypical and included racist, antisemitic, and sexist elements. Surveys literature written in the Polish language, both by Polish and Jewish writers, and notes changes and evolution in the modernist period in describing the internal lives of literary figures. Argues that in nearly all modernist novels with Jewish heroes there is a Jewish existential problem, with Jewishness being a flaw - a feeling of strangeness and "otherness" which can not be removed. Figures of Jewish women in literature have a "shade", which means that being a Jewess is an ethnic, social, and religious problem. In Polish literature, description of the Jew as a neutral non-stereotypical figure is very rare. Analyzes similarities between images of women and of Jews. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)