Adela Xenopol was a Romanian feminist and writer. She published both literary works and feminist tracts, founding several magazines. In 1914, just prior to the advent of World War I she and other feminists presented a petition for women's suffrage to the Romanian Parliament. In 1925, she founded the Society of Romanian Women Writers to encourage women to publish their works and the following year founded an influential journal as the publishing arm of the society which published works by both women and men on feminist topics.
Early life
Adela Xenopol was born in 1861, in Iași, the capital of the Western Moldavia region, to a family of intellectuals headed by Dimitrie Xenopol. The family origins are obscure, because of discrepancies between the explanation offered by Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol and one of his contemporaries, Iacob Negruzzi. Negruzzi claimed that Dimitrie was Jewish and had migrated to Moldova during a large migration which occurred around 1829. Alexandru, Dimitrie's son, and Adela's brother, claimed that his father's parents were German and English. That his paternal grandfather was named Brunswick and his wife's surname was Smith. After being denied the right to marry the woman he had chosen, the couple ran away and boarded a ship. The fiancée was lost at sea, but Dimitrie was rescued by fishermen and put ashore in Norway or Sweden, where he spent time before moving to Constantinople. From there, Dimitrie made his way Galați, where he was converted from Protestantism to Orthodoxy and adopted the surname Csenopolu, meaning foreigner, which was later changed to Xenopol. After his arrival in Romania, Dimitrie married Maria Vasiliu, daughter of a shingle maker and became a clerk at the Prussian Consulate in Iași. The couple had six children, including Alexandru, who would become a historian; Filip, later a noted architect; Maria; Nicolae, who would develop into a statesman; Lucreţia, later a secondary school teacher and the first woman admitted to the Geographical Society of Bucharest; and Adela. Xenopol was educated abroad, in Paris taking classes at the Collège de France and became one of the first women to audit courses at the Sorbonne.
Career
After completing her education, Xenopol returned to Iaşi and began a career as a writer. Her first published work Chestiunea femeilor was published in Femeia Română in January 1879. The article focused on liberal feminist ideals and the elimination of legal and moral restrictions which subjugated women's rights and made the subordinate to men. In addition to feminist tracts, she published lyric pieces in the Suceava journal, Revista politică and then published Versuri şi istorisiri in Iaşi in 1888. She founded the monthly magazine Dochia in Bucharest in 1896 and then between 1896 and 1898, she served as its editor of the monthly journal Dochia, a women's rights publication. Xenopol solicited articles from leading cultural figures including Maria Cunțan, Smaranda Gheorghiu, Cornelia Kernbach, Cincinat Pavelescu, Elena Sevastos, Vasile Urechia, among others to provoke debate on women's place in society. She supported emancipation in economic, intellectual, legal and political spheres. Xenopol published Între sfinţi. Comedie într'un act in 1902 in Iaşi and the following year, Spre lumină in Bucharest. Between 1905 and 1906, she edited Românca in Bucharest and in 1910, published in Paris a collection of works in French, Comédies. Tableaux de la vie roumaine. The collection included the stories "Un conflict céleste" ; "Aux Eaux" ; "La Boite aux Lettres" ; "Le Poète" ; "Entre Artistes" ; "Le Revenant" ; "La Fille aux Mains d'Ouate" ; "Le Trésor" ; "Bois, pourquoi te Balancer?" ; "Romance"; and "Paroles et Musique". Another French work published in 1910 in Geneva was Education et religion. Essai sur l'origine du Christianisme. Between 1912 and 1916, Xenopol edited Viitorul româncelor. In 1913, she published the historical novelPe urma războiului Roman and in 1914 she led a group of other feminists in presenting a petition to the Romanian Parliament requesting women's suffrage. As the women were aware their concerns would be opposed by those politicians who felt women were unprepared to be active participants in society, the petition tempered their demand, asking for the right to vote for intellectual women and apply to local elections. Due to concerns over World War I, politicians did not take the petition seriously. Though she supported the participation of Romania in the war as a nationalist, she favored pacifism and throughout the war, spoke against conquest and in favor of equal rights citizens as a way to achieve peace. Xenopol published her second historical novel, Uragan in 1922. In 1925, she founded the Society of Romanian Women Writers, as an organization to encourage women to publish their works. The following year, she founded a journal for the society, Revista scriitoarei and served as the editor-in-chief through 1928. The journal featured portraits of prominent feminists like Maria Baiulescu, Alexandrina Cantacuzino, Elena Văcărescu and published works by prominent male literary figures, as well as women. Some of the women who wrote for the journal included Constanța Hodoș, Mărgărita Miller-Verghy, Sofia Nădejde, Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu, and Izabela Sadoveanu-Evan, among others. She published Prin Cetatea Carpaților in Bucharest in 1928 with the Royal Court Press.
Death and legacy
Xenopol died on 10 May 1939 and with her death, the Romanian feminist and democratic movements lost one of their most ardent proponents.
