Page:Czechoslovak stories.pdf/147



, the wife of J. Vik, an official in one of the large sugar factories of Czechoslovakia, adopted as a pen-name “Kunětická,” after the place where she spent her childhood.

The discrimination practised against womankind in the social and economic world forms the basic idea of many of her stories and novels. Her introduction to literature was, however, in sketches of the less vital but fully as painful, sordid, little tragedies of a woman’s life of which “,” which follows, is an example. Mrs. Víková-Kunětická has eight collections of short stories to her credit and six longer romances—“Vdova po Chirurgovi” (The Surgeon’s Widow), “Minulost” (The Past); and “Justýna Holdanova” and “Medřická,” named for their chief characters; “Vzpoura” (Revolt) and “Pán” (The Master).

She stands as the champion of women for the preservation of their individuality against total submersion in the being of their husbands and she is often accused of extreme feminism. She never relinquishes for a moment her demand for equal personal purity in the parties to a marriage contract.