Commodification and the Repression of Agency in Zsigmond Móricz's Novel Gold in the Mud (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
With a focus on the aspirations of the protagonist of "Gold in the Mud," Dani Turi, and his wife Erzsi, this paper will demonstrate Móricz’s accomplishment in showing how reasonable agentic projects intended primarily to ensure the happiness and flourishing of the fictional agents who desire and act on their fulfillment are thwarted by social, legal, and economic structures imposed largely from the outside, structures they are powerless to counter in any substantive manner, and will thus argue Móricz’s status as a key contributor to the literary Realism that thematizes figures who find their agency obliterated by circumstances over which they have no control. In Gold in the Mud, Móricz successfully transforms erotic motifs from Naturalism that emphasize sexual transgression as a manifestation of biological determinism and moral decay, and uses them to demonstrate how potentially alterable social and economic structures conditioning the mechanism of commodification in the flawed international capitalist system doom aspiring agricultural entrepreneurs to rely on illicit and socially unacceptable means to engage in the economy, thereby thwarting their success in achieving a stable and secure life for themselves and their families, and undermining the overall progress of Hungary’s agricultural economy. The revealing light he thereby sheds on the rural Hungarian society of his day assures Móricz’s uniquely important status as an author of European Realism.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Virginia L. Lewis earned her Ph.D. in Modern German Literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989, and she is currently Professor of German at Northern State University, where she has taught since 2005. She has translated several novels by Zsigmond Móricz and is currently authoring a book-length study on Móricz that is under contract with Peter Lang Publishing.