REPRESENTATION OF FEMININITY IN MODERN UKRAINIAN NOVELS

Abstract

The paper deals with the main tendencies of the artistic reception of women images in modern Ukrainian novels. The principles of modeling femininity in literature have been considered from the positions of the gender studies, postcolonial and psychoanalytic theory. It is proved that the peculiarities of this modeling are determined by stylistic and genre tendencies of the Ukrainian literature. The interpretation of feminine images typical for the national literary tradition (mother, family-keeper, demonic woman) has been demonstrated in numerous examples. These images correlate with the fundamental artistic principles of the turning points in history (actualization of the archetypes, attention to the irrational manifestations of human psychics). They display the ‘masculine’ literary tradition (representation of a woman as an external object), but at the same time demonstrate a new accent in the understanding of the gender roles (woman as a mentor of a man). The alternative types of the feminine identity represented by feminist and culturological women’s writing have been explored as well. Special attention has been paid to procreation as the main woman’s ability, which forms different models of feminine mentality – from the essentialist mother-type to the image of a child-free woman. The modeling of a feminine artistic worldview becomes an actual strategy in overcoming the postcolonial trauma. It is explained by the peculiarities of the postcolonial literatures, which fulfill their historical reflections in the local family stories. In this context, feminine conscience gets the status of a memory-keeper and shows the ability to trace the development of national history in its everyday dimensions. Based on the large-scale generalization of the last decades’ artistic practice, the researcher determines the main worldview intentions of modern novels, in particular the tendency to achieve gender parity, the full-fledged dialogue of men and women as the equal subjects of culture creation.