Helena Malírova

Born Oct. 31, 1877, in Prague; died there Feb. 17, 1940. Czech writer. Member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (1921).

In 1912, Malířová was a nurse at the front during the Balkan War. She was arrested several times for her revolutionary activities. In 1929 an ideological crisis caused her to leave the party, although she did not break her ties with the workers’ movement.

The central theme in Malířové’s works was the problem of women’s liberation; her works on this subject include the collections of stories The Human Heart (1903) and Tender Blossoms (1907), the novels The Right to Happiness (1908), The Heart Knows No Peace (1918), Victory (1918), and The Blessing (1920), and the drama Brotherhood (1905). Among her most interesting works is the series of novels The Color of Blood (1932), The Inheritance (1933), and Ten Lives (1937), about women’s equality and the Czech liberation movement of the 19th and 20th centuries; using romantic colors to depict her heroes, Malifova also gives a complete description of their social background. The novel Mariola (1940, published posthumously) was based on the history of the Czech theater.