REFLECTIONS ON MOTHERHOOD AND WIDOWHOOD IN NINETEENTH CENTURY NOVEL

The present article intends to provide an analysis of maternal roles in Ioan Slavici’s novel Mara (1894) and the means the author used to portray his female characters in a social, economic and historical background of the multicultural society of nineteenth century Romanian Banat under Austrian Empire. The movie directed by Mircea Veroiu in 1976 bearing the name Dincolo de pod (Beyond the Bridge) used the symbolic meaning of ‘bridge’ as the border between the many religious (Orthodox, Catholic, Reformed and Lutheran) and ethnic (Romanian, German, Hungarian, Austrian, Serbian, Jews) worlds that lived together in that part of Banat in the mid-nineteenth century.