On the Margins and Beyond: Girl Protagonists in Novels by Svetlana Vasilenko, Dina Rubina, and Elena Chizhova

Abstract

This article addresses fictional characters who can be characterized as vulnerable, boundary, or liminal figures in novels by Svetlana Vasilenko, Dina Rubina, and Elena Chizhova. It will be suggested that these heroines represent liminal subjectivities; subjects‐in‐process, subjects in the process of becoming. The concept of liminality has attained much attention in contemporary literary scholarship, especially in the context of postcolonial literary studies. Writers, readers and researchers alike are interested in phenomena and personae that are hybrid, in‐between borders or boundaries, or on the margins. The main characters of Vasilenko’s, Rubina’s and Chizhova’s novels are situated on the margins of society: they appear “abnormal”: physically or mentally disabled, or socially disadvantaged, and they are on the border in relation to the norms and practices considered “normal” in society. The narratives, however, render these vulnerable subjects their own voice and show how their position as liminal, boundary subjects opens an opportunity and the potential for the creation of new possible narratives of the past and the future. It will be suggested, that the novels offer us powerful fictions of liminal subjectivities; subjectivities of becoming (woman, self, other); in the context of shifting values and cultural processes in contemporary Russia.