THE FLORISTIC WORLDS OF MODERNIST WOMEN’S PROSE: DOROTHY RICHARDSON, VIRGINIA WOOLF, AND DARIYA VIKONSKA

Abstract

The article concerns the issue of the functioning of floral imagery as a distinctive manner of female self-expression in the space of prominent women writers’ fancy for modernist literature at the beginning of the 20th century. The selected short stories written by British women authors Dorothy Richardson and Virginia Woolf as well as those by the Ukrainian writer Dariya Vikonska are the subject matter of the article. According to the comparative, structural-semiotic and feminist critique approaches to the texts of the women writers mentioned the main semantic codes of floral symbolism were revealed and the key images of flowers were singled out and characterized. The notional connotations of plant symbolism as a means of art expression of female self-identification, a deep essence of the personality of a woman and the mystique of the feminine “self” have been rooted in the organic connection between a woman and nature. At the same time some peculiarities of the individual manner of the writings by D. Richardson, V. Woolf, and D. Vikonska were elucidated in the article. It was noted that Dariya Vikonska resorts to concrete plant images, while the British authors involve both concrete and abstract flower images which allows them to go beyond the emotional world of their female protagonists and approach the horizon of the philosophical notions of life, death, and time. A distinctive feature of D. Vikonska’s writing is a coloration of her floral symbolism as well as an ecclesiastical realization of the feminine identity as a dominant aspect of her texts. On the other hand, the female-centered poetical prose of both D. Richardson and D. Vikonska as a proper trait of their artistic consciousness points to certain homoerotical elements in their writings, Conversely, a deep reflexiveness of the literary expression and a tendency towards the impressionistic manner of writing brings closer together the writing manner employed by D. Vikonska and V. Woolf. Keywords: modernism, women’s prose, flowers, floral imagery, floral symbolism, feminine identity.