Practices of Flanerie in Lesya Ukrainka’s Pity and Carmen de Burgos’s Pursuer: Female View

Abstract

Urban culture has undergone significant changes since women appeared on the streets of the city. European female writers are participants of this process, and they express their reflections on how women’s place and behavior change in an urban environment. In Ukrainian and Spanish texts the mentioned changes were pictured by Lesiya Ukrainka and Carmen de Burgos, who experienced the pressure of patriarchal society in their lives and took action with the aim to empathize on the necessity of changes in the modern outlook.This paper provides a comparative analysis of Lesiya Ukrainka’s “Pity” (“Zhal”) and Carmen de Burgos’s “Pursuer” (“El Perseguidor”) aiming to construct a particular notion of female flânerie. Both characters, Sophia and Mathilda, are approaching the image of flâneuse, trying to broaden their possibilities to adjust themselves to the modern world. The comparison shows that such practices as contemplation of social life (in “Pity”) and travelling (in “Pursuer”) can be evaluated as practices of female flanerie. By using them, both heroines try to avoid shared experience of pressure caused by patriarchal society. The ways of expression of the patriarchal pressure chosen by writers have the same function. Sophia’s constant sentiment of pity and Mathilda’s fear of pursuer are existential and limiting.The results of the study lead us to a conclusion that female flanerie has significant differences from male practices, and it depends on the strategies that women used to avoid the patriarchal pressure. This statement draws the perspective for further profound comparative studies of Ukrainian and Spanish literature.