Бунт жінки в маскулінному просторі війни в романі «Доця» Тамари Горіха Зерня

Abstract

The article is based on the example of the debut novel «Daughter» by the volunteer and translator Tamara Horikha Zernya, who won the Shevchenko Prize-2022 (the highest literary award in Ukraine). It analyzes the peculiarities of the formation of military discourse in modern Ukrainian prose through the perception of a female writer. The article describes the place of a woman in the hegemonic masculine space, characterized by militarism, aggression, and violence. The paper has been traced the process of internal transformation and, as a result, a woman's rebellion against the established gender models of behavior in war conditions by asserting an active civic position and participation in the country's social and political life (volunteering). The writer not only joined the isolated female voices to highlight the topic of the Russian- Ukrainian war in all its manifestations, but she also became almost the only author who brought to the public the irritating topic of gender role polarization in wartime. She raised her voice against the forced removal (taboo) of women from the military discourse. The writer touches on the problem of gender stereotypes in tragic wartime, when men and women, faced with the threat of losing the nation, the motherland, and their own lives, are induced to try on different gender roles, actualizing the manyfolded tragedy of a person at war. Women's voices in understanding war topics play an important role inasmuch they record local, mental, socio-political and other changes in society. Women, being involved in the state of war, analyze the reasons that led to the inevitability of armed conflict, but first of all, they raise the issue of gender polarization roles in the conditions of martial law, in particular the forced removal of women as the weaker sex from the military discourse. The novel «Daughter» by Tamara Horikha Zernya allows you to trace the path of the internal transformation of the heroine under the influence of external circumstances, genetic, mental and psychophysical characteristics. The spiritual and value-based transformation naturally leads to a woman's rebellion against the stereotyped gender models and results in active volunteer activities. The artistic text is the first-person narrative, the real name of the heroine is not mentioned in it, instead the generic designation «Dotsia» is used to highlight the fact that the fate of the protagonist is not unique in our society. The writer is involved in her volunteer experience as the documentary evidences. Thus, the protagonist strives to integrate into the masculine militarized world to realize the desire to be involved in the process of nation-building and restoration of state sovereignty. Keywords: war, masculine space, women, military prose, women's prose, military discourse.