The Image of Laurence in the Novel Simone de Beauvoir "Magic Pictures"

Abstract

Self-determination of a woman is important for her self-realization at the beginning of the XXI century. A modern woman successfully combines two careers. She presents herself as a specialist and wife / mother. French writer S de Beauvoir drew attention to this in her novel "Magic Pictures" in 1966. Her heroines make it possible to understand the psychological problems of women. The classification of archetypes of goddesses in accordance with the stereotypes of modern women was applied. This concept logically complements feminist criticism and helps to investigate the way the archetypes of the goddesses are manifested in the images, respectively, "feminine", "feminist" and "female" concepts. This will contribute to the clarification of the parable in the works of S. de Beauvoir. S. de Beauvoir uses psychoanalytic approaches to distinguish conscious and unconscious in heroines of literary works, and great attention is paid to unconscious motives and feelings. The writer distinguishes psychoanalytic symptoms, conditions of women to display their personal "psychodrama", which is reflected in literary conflicts. S. de Beauvoir interprets conflicts as external and internal. During the analyses of the writer’s works we also differentiate the conscious and unconscious in her heroines, observe conflicts between men and women, between generations, between the desires of one person, in order to understand better the "mental" state, which promotes character’s development as an existant. The writer made an extremely important artistic and aesthetic contribution into the creation of "feminine" artistic images, which reveals the archetype of Aphrodite, that through the issue of choice introduces the idea of the importance of "love", deprives of feelings and the status of the "Оther" as an inferiority complex, reaching the level of self-realization of an existant.S. de Beauvoir explores the phenomenon of literary existentialism as a problem of choice which a character has to face and contributes to its evolution. S. de Beauvoir’s creation of influential characters, according to "feminine" concept, achieves the highest resonance in the mid ХХ century and extends to the beginning of ХХ–XXI century.