Relations of Power and the Rhetoric of Gender Politics

Since Lazarević's story presents another kind of women's speech, different from the one Nikolić interprets as "psychological unburdening," in this section, Lazarević's revelation of women's political impotence will be discussed. Lazarević even presents Marica's silences differently than how Nikolić understands them. Therefore, this article examines, on the one hand, the character of Marica as a woman who fights for her own direct, rational, and argumented speech and, on the other, the character of Mitar, a man who expresses his patriarchal power through the rhetoric of violence. Within these analyses, this article concludes that Marica's superior self-awareness, by intellectual and moral reasoning, rejects her husband's value system.