On the communicative nature of «female prose»
Table of contents: The Kazakh-American Free University Academic Journal №3 - 2011
Author: Abdullina Lutsia, East Kazakhstan State University in honor of S. Amanzholov, Kazakhstan
“Female
prose” is a socio-cultural phenomenon, which appears in the process of women
mastering the public space, and as such it has a communicative nature.
Appearance of literary texts which describe the global and social experience of
women, from their point of view, is nothing else but an attempt to join the dialogue.
In their works the authoresses propose to society not only new themes, but also
new models of behavior, defending the right of women to have independent
choices and an independent fate.
One of the productive schemes of studying “female
literature” is the analysis of the literary authorship of a woman-writer in the
aspect of “author-work” relations. The biographical personality of the
authoress, her psychological appearance are correlated with a social status,
position of women in society. The specific character of female creative works
is caused by special features of a female world-view, female type of
consciousness, by its social and psychophysical parameters. The uniqueness of
appearance of the author with a female face is manifested in the frankly
personal tone of works. In this case the one of a kind woman’s world is
represented as an art object. The first professional Russian writers of
Pushkin's time declared about their right to creation as the possibility of a
valuable dialogue “on equal terms” with the male writers.
In the 19th century a woman used to be the mistress of the fashionable literary salon, who
wrote poems for her own home album. That is why it was very difficult for a
woman to become a professional authoress. The problem of literary fortune was
directly connected with women’s self-affirmation because of their long social
isolation in Russia. The works of the first authoresses such as Durova N., Gan
E., Rostopchina E. touched their contemporaries on the raw first of all because
they portrayed a woman.
Biography, autobiography sometimes self-portrait in the narratives
of the literary women reproduced the specificity of women’s thinking and psyche
without reference to her social status. Authoresses studied the nature of
inward life of their heroines and through the specific author’s position.
“Poetics of woman mind”, concentration on personal experience, compassion,
family life – all this helped the authoresses to elaborate a new type of a
heroine.
N.A. Durova took part in the Patriotic war of 1812 and she ruled the
destiny in her life and literature. The figure of a woman citizen in the
memoirs of Durova became a literary prototype for the subsequent prose of
Turgenev, Tolstoy.
Works of E.A. Gan correspond to the “anthology” of a woman mind,
woman heart. In the story “Ideal” the heroine stand against the public, shows
her own will and derives her strength from “the inner sources”. Confession of
the heroine and a psychological description of her image make the portrait of
the contemporary look quite true.
The novel “A Happy Woman” by E.P. Rostopchina – a poetess with an outstanding
manner of writing – is in many respects autobiographical. In the form of prose
she wrote about a woman who had self-realized against the background of high
life.
The image
of a woman in the works of the first Russian authoresses takes on a “double
effect”: this is both a heroine and an author. So we may conclude that a professional
literary woman is of great interest as an exponent of literary heritage.
Female
belles-lettres of the 19th century did not pretend to the global artistic
comprehension of reality. The center of attention was the unknown sphere of
this reality – “dual existence of a woman”.
A woman in Russia was “condemned” by secular conditionalities to the silence,
perceived the sharp need to be expressed on paper, she stated about her
independent right to be an authoress. In the prose of women the very carrier of
the text, the method of narration and the manner of contact with the reader
became the main motive power of the subject. Russian woman-writers were looking
for specific ways of drawing their author's line.
Communicative
chain “author-narrator-listener-reader” is represented in the female prose in
different modifications. The image of a reader is divided into component parts,
and these parts interact with each other in a specific way in accordance with
the individual stylistic manner of each writer.
“Female
prose” as an archetype, its communicative nature is manifested with the
analysis of the literary creation of the contemporary Kazakhstan woman- prosaists at the turn of the twentieth century. Contemporary Kazakhstan female literature is at the stage of formation and active development. Archetype as
“through model” [2] passes from generation to generation, in the new temporary
paradigm on the material of another national cultural tradition.
The works
of three Kazakhstan women-writers – Umit Tazhikenova, Svetlana Nazarova and
Liliya Kalaus – in our opinion help to draw preliminary conclusions in the
comprehension of typology and poetics of the female prose of Kazakhstan [3,4,5]. The works of the writers, from our point of view, present the contemporary Kazakhstan female prose of the period of independence. The personal everyday experience of
the woman- author appears as a material for the artistic creation of writers.
Author's ideological concept reflects a specific character of the female type
of consciousness.
Woman-writers of the twenty first century, each in a recognizable
artistic manner, as before , defend the existence of a special woman space,
which absorbs into itself the entire multifaceted, deeply heart-felt and
experienced reality. Thus, for instance, the subject of the Umit Tazhikenova’s
novel “Rod of tamarisk” is based on the writer’s experience of establishing a
business, and in the work “On the Ararat mountain” Svetlana Nazarova’s experience
in Armenia is reflected.
N.
Fateyeva notes the “increased dialoguing” of female literature, “there is
always a dialogue in it, either in the form of direct or indirect speech” [6].
The
communicative message in the works of U. Tazhikenova is frequently declared at
the level of titles. For example: “The word, which is the one of the Creator’s
names”, “And here is the end of the wandering… it was short, too short”,
“Women’s thoughts and men’s rules of the game”, “Eternally young Muse of a mature
woman”, “Day like any other, one after another”. The grammatical structure of
such titles in the form of a remark or a thought aloud transfers the intonation
of a conversation or a fragment of a conversation. This construction fulfills
the function of invitation to the dialogue, or even more – invitation “to touch
upon” the unique artistic world of the author.
U. Tazhikenova brings into the literature her experience of a woman
with man’s nature and man’s profession. She is forced to make vital decisions
on her own. In the female images of U. Tazhikenova the different sides of the
manifestation of a female archetype are represented, through the understanding
of her inner self she goes into the internal space of her heroines – women of
different age and different vital power. And vice versa: trying to understand
her contemporaries, the authoress discovers yet unknown facets of herself. The
story “Diluting of the image” is quite representative: “In the morning – inquisitive
view, directed toward the mirror. Counter sullen and lost . A tired face – as
if it’s not mine… the home mirror, which stands in the customary and smoothing
out perspective, it spares. But you randomly shoot a glance at the unknown
public mirror, br-r- r – is this really my unique “inner self”? [3, 41].
The
dialogue with herself is doubled and multiplied, it is superimposed on other
dialogues, participants of which are her different heroines. Thus, in the
stories “Women of the city” and “Dignity of sameness” the author artistically
convincingly expresses the female protest against the Soviet stereotype of a
“woman-toiler”.
The motive
of genetic memory is presented in the stories “The Radiant”, “The prayer”,
“About the female soul”. The feminine archetype shows itself in the
non-interrupted contacts with the departed close ones, and also with fauna and
flora. Indeed a woman – the keeper of ancestral memory – is capable of joining
this type of a dialogue, timeless and intercultural.
In the
prose of U. Tazhikenova there are many acknowledgements and statements in the
address of trees, plants, heavenly bodies, wind, sand and other phenomena of
nature. Through this contact with the prehuman world the author appeals to the
reader (stories “The miracle”, “A small bouquet”, “Each to his own”).
The
author's position and the author's presence in the artistic prose of U.
Tazhikenova can be seen in too conversational intonation and stylistics of the
narration. Stories, travelling notes in the first person, on behalf of a
woman-narrator or a teller – these are the complex, hybrid varieties of the
genre of the story: story-parable, story-miniature, sketch, philosophical
story, story- description, diary records. The author speaks toh someone, shares
thoughts with someone –vital topics and life problems of a woman in a modern
developing city of Kazakhstan being revealed in the dialogue.
The
stylistic manner of U. Tazhikenova’s prose is characterized by the inclusion in
the Russian stories of the set of Kazakh words and expressions, which impart to
works quite realistic authenticity and national coloring. The use of specific
expressions emphasizes the connection and relationship of the author with
people, life and history of her nation. Addressing to the reader the typical
etiquette phrases of the Kazakh language are often used: «айналайын», «уважаемые кудалар», «торде».
In the
prose of S. Nazarova the female characters personify in themselves the
different phases of a woman archetype. The writer combines the subjective emotionally
agitated enthusiasm of the author's narration with the moral analysis of the
modern world. The main heroines of S. Nazarova’s stories “Green-eyed Aruakh”
and “A free bird – the woman Arisha” are women at the old age, who have rich
life experience [4]. They are the embodiment of two different traditions, two
different nationalities and different cultures. In spite of such differences,
these two characters must be viewed together, because of the unifying common
ground – the archetype of the Mother-Earth.
In the
narrative of L. Kalaus “Dark sail” the elements of dramatic, tragicomic and
ironic discourse are combined [5]. Individual characteristics of the author as
the speaking subject and the engaging in a dialogue about their own life
present the aspects of female existence and the way of life in the urban world.
L. Kalaus describes her heroine as an unhappy woman, an abandoned wife, an
unmarried woman, a drinking woman, a lonely mother etc. Under the most
humiliating circumstances the woman in the prose of L. Kalaus in no way looks
small, oppressed or humbled. The passive position of the author-chronicler, who
only transfers events, dialogues, visual pictures makes it possible for the
writer not to judge, not to evaluate her heroes, but to represent a woman as
the entire peace, to which a man relates as a part to the whole.
The
contemporary “female prose” reveals the woman “strangeness” as “the special
feature of her own model of the world – different from the man’s, but equally
significant”. Through the heroines the authoress established herself. First of
all, the writer's inner “Me”, that enters in the relations with her own (in the
“female prose”, naturally, female) ego [7, 152].
At the
archetypal level of cultural, aesthetical unconscious the nerve of the
contemporary female prose is manifested: it tends to identify itself with the
world. T. Rovenskaya, in our opinion, is right to consider that in the “female
prose” there is the phenomenon of a speaking, or, a “talking out” woman [8,].
The female author in the formation of a communicative strategy of writing sees
the method of self-identification.
The
creative biography of the woman-writer composes the internal autobiography of
the plot lines: her life, designed as work, becomes the literary reality. In
the image of the authoress the concept, the final idea of the work is personified.
In her text the woman-writer composes a dialogue as she needs. The system of
the characters’ speech, their relationship with the author-narrator or
alter-ego – all this is a deliberate communicative act.
The study
of typology and poetics of the female prose in the contemporary literature of Kazakhstan is at the stage of initiation. The represented material is an attempt of
conceptualization of the specific character of the Kazakhstan female literary
works in the communicative aspect.
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Table of contents: The Kazakh-American Free University Academic Journal №3 - 2011
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