Transylvanian Romanian Journals and their Role in Shaping the Image of Romanian Women and Family Relations

The present paper aims at revealing the historical value of one of the mass media used by Romanian elites in their effort of redefining the roles women and family should have in the Romanian society of the 19th century. Two were in fact the main objectives we aimed at achiving: first to stress the importance that printed press has as an historical resource for the study of women and family history and, secondly to reveal how press perfectly mirrored some of the great debates of the Transylvanian society during this century As a society has at its basis the women and the family, what we intended to point out is how the Romanian journals, such as Gazeta Transilvaniei, Familia, Amicul Familiei were used as disseminating and formative tools for educating the women or correcting some bad habits caused by the modernity in the family areal. Moreover, our intention was also of studying the journals form a gender perspective as they represent indeed a major media in which the debate over women's condition and role in the society developed.