While “Bewitched Bára” is one of her earlier stories, it nevertheless represents her manner and her choice of material. Superstition is now by no means generally characteristic of the Czechs and Slovaks, but at the time Němcová wrote her story, about sixty-five years ago, rationalistic teachings were not as widely disseminated as now. This story had the effect of weaning the people from much ignorant credulity and beliefs in omens, signs and the power of so-called supernatural beings.
Němcová has evolved a character at once strong, beautiful and independent in the person of the dauntless Bára who through her own investigations—she was practically self-trained—had freed herself from all the superstitious fears which enchained the souls of nearly all the others in the village. Then, too, Němcová clearly shows here the value in education of nature and natural methods, a subject she introduces, together with other social reform tendencies, in her “Pohorská Vesnice” (The Mountain Village), which she regarded as her best work, placing it above her “Babičká,” which has been far more widely loved. The friendship of the two girls, Bára and Elška, whose social advantages were so widely different, is a wholesome, happy picture. For the sake of her devotion for Elška, Bára carries out the traditional custom of young girls in Bohemia who seek to know whence their lover will come, by casting wreaths of flowers into a stream before sunrise of the Day of St. John the
