The evolution of female characters in the historical prose of A. Kaschenko
Abstract
The article traces the development of female characters in the historical prose of the Ukrainian writer A. Kaschenko (1858–1921). The studied – the historical stories “Zaporizhska Slava” (1906), “Slavni Pobratymy” (1913), the historical novels “Pid Korsunem” (1913), “Borci za Pravdu” (1913), “U Zapali Boroty” (1914), “From the Dniepr to the Danube” (1914), “The Destroyed Nest” (1914) – reflect the situation of Ukrainian women during military aggressions by the Ottoman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire.
The history of the creation of the analyzed works, the genre features of these historical stories and novels, and the plot and compositional elements of the works were analyzed in order to determine the place of female characters in specific historical circumstances and their role in the development of events. The fundamental stylistic devices used by the writer in creating these characters (portraits, dialogues, monologues, etc.) are recorded.
A comparative analysis of the central female characters in the studied works is proposed, which makes it possible to draw conclusions about the use of a single model for their creation, inspired by the romantic prose of the second half of the 19th century, as well as the influence of traditional constructions of female images in the collective memory of the Ukrainian people – the mother-guardian, captive girl, woman-fighter, etc. The ideological significance of some female characters is also emphasized, as they became not only the bearers of the author’s historiophilosophical position, but also the embodiment of the hopes of the Ukrainian society in the 1910s and 1920s.
An attempt is made to examine the peculiarities of the emergence and development of the male space, which is identified in A. Kaschenko’s historical prose with the Ukrainian Cossacks, and the coexistence of this space with the female space, which is a typical subject of contemporary literary studies.
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References
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