A Plot of Her Own

Female Protagonist in Russian Literature
Erscheinungsjahr 1995
ISBN: 978-0-8101-1224-7
Verlag: Northwestern University Press

Buch, Englisch, 196 Seiten, Hardback

Reihe: Studies in Russian Literature and Theory

Neither a discussion of literary works written by women nor a survey of female images in male-authored texts, this work can be said to be revisionist in several senses. It takes issue with the old, ""unconscious"" assumption of critics, male and female alike, that women characters in fiction - even if idealized - are marginal, mere appendages to male protagonists, not worthy of investigation in their own right. This collection demonstrates that when we transform these old habits of thought and old ways of seeing and enter texts from a new and fresh perspective, which foregrounds women and the female protagonist in particular, the results are fruitful. Authors discussed include Chekov, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Tolstoy, and the novels considered range from ""Fathers and Children"" to Zamyatin's anti-Utopian ""We"". Throughout, the contributors' revisions expand our understanding of the major works they address and reveal new significance in them.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Tatiana, Caryl Emerson;""oh-la-la"" and ""No-no-no"" - Odintsova as woman alone in ""Fathers and children"", Jane T. Costlow; the judgement of ""Anna Karenina"", Amy Mandelker; reading woman in Dostoevsky, Harriet Murav; Sonya's wisdom, Gary Saul Morson; the uses of witches in Fedin and Bulgakov, Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour; the mismeasure of 1-330, Sona Stephan Hoisington; ""Cement"" and ""How the Steel was Tempered"" - variations on the new Soviet woman, Thea Margaret Durfee; mother as mothra - totalizing narrative and nurture in Petrushevskaia, Helena Goscilo.