Gender Stereotypes and Their Manifestations in Kate Chopin’s «Elizabeth Stock’s One Story»

Abstract

The article deals with the peculiarities of gender stereotypes in Kate Chopin’s work «Elizabeth Stock’s One Story». The Feminist criticism statements aiming at the revealing of femininity manifestation in a text are analysed. Characteristic features marking «female writing» are given, among them besides specific woman’s life experience, gender identity and ecstatic communication with the world, peculiar «two voice» discourse is also distinguished (it traces its roots back to the Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas about «someone else’s» word through the French poststructuralists). «Elizabeth Stock’s One Story» is the only example of Chopin’s reference to the problem of women’s creativity. The assessing voice of the society intensifying clichés of the woman’s «natural role» can be detected in heroine’s ironical presentation of her own literary experience. The heroine is interested in literature and it’s not only an art for her but also a means of self-expression and a way to self-identity. Despite of the intimacy of Elizabeth’s story her narration is filled with the description of public morality and details which join it into the social life of the whole country. In Chopin’s short story the heroine’s claim of identity being through traditionally men’s forms of self-identification is truly significant.