Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Fall 2025
Abstract
The present paper analyzes two texts set in the mountains of central Europe in the 1920s and 30s. Arnold Fanck’s film The Holy Mountain, filmed in the Swiss Alps and released in 1926, and Mihail Sebastian’s novel The Accident, published in 1940 and set partially in the Southern Carpathians, both depict women engaged in mountain sports from a male point of view. However, the two differ in their presentation: whereas The Holy Mountain treats women as a decorative aspect of the film and women’s skiing as a product of necessity rather than enjoyment, The Accident allows its female protagonist to excel at the sport and even instruct her male counterpart in it. The paper reads this discrepancy as a shift in the acceptance of female skiers by 1940, as the sport became more popular in both locations.
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Recommended Citation
Millard, Eleanor, "Perceptions of Skiing and Gender in the Alps and Carpathians in the Interwar Period" (2025). Mountains and Modernity. 5.
https://scarab.bates.edu/mountains_modernity/5