Full text of the paper:
Proceedings of the Faculty of Law, Novi Sad
2024, vol. LVIII, br. 3, p.659-678
Working language: English
Review paper
udk:347.62: 655.535.6(497.5)”18/19”
doi:10.5937/zrpfns58-53609
Author:
Višnja Lachner
Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek
Faculty of Law Osijek
vlachner@pravos.hr
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-0661-8931
Ljubica Kordić
Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek
Faculty of Law Osijek
kordic.ljubica@pravos.hr
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2900-7906
Summary:
The authors explore the social and legal status of unmarried wo- men and social rules and customs affecting their behavior related to marriage and the relationship between men and women in the 19th and early 20th centuries in Croatia, which was then a part of the Austrian Empire i.e. Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The research is founded on two different corpora. The first encom- passes relevant legal acts regulating marriage at that time, including special rules for royal soldiers regarding their rights to get married. The second part of the research is founded on newspaper announcements, specifically: matrimonial and contact ads, in which men and women express their wish to meet a potential spouse or lover. The corpus of ads is excerpted from the local newspapers of Osijek Die Drau and Slavonische Presse, published in the German language in the explored historical period. The issues of both newspapers published between 1870 and 1938 are available in digitalized versions. Matrimonial and contact ads by men and women as potential spouses or love couples represent a valuable so- urce of information about social rules and customs related to marriage and the relationship between men and women when social communication and social media were very limited. The paper aims to present legal rules regulating men’s and women’s rights and duties relating to marriage but also to shed light on how communication between potential love partners or spouses through printed media influenced the social position and identity of women by analyzing relevant new- spaper ads from legal, socio-psychological, and socio-linguistic points of view.
Keywords:
legal aspect of marriage; social rules; love and marriage; new- spaper ads; Croatia.