Abstract

The paper intends to focus on the unfinished character of a slow-modernity where women are still in the balance between legitimacy frame concerning their emancipation in the public sphere, and representation frame of traditional roles of spouse and mother in private life; between postmodern values, accepted rationally, and premodern values, internalized emotionally. It often happens so that even the most educated women of the middle and upper class accept and legitimize in the private sphere the symbolic and indirect violence, and sometimes the physical violence by their partners in an effort to reconcile public post-modern expectations and private pre-modern expectations. As the «Acrobat on the wire» of a painting by Chagall, women are continuing to walk in the balance between emotional oppression and emancipator reason.