UKRAINIAN WOMEN'S NOVEL ABOUT THE WAR OF THE 20TH CENTURY: THE PROBLEM OF THEME AND GENRE

Abstract

The object of the study is the genre of women's novels about war. Attention is focused on how women's experience modifies the genre, changing the status of the event and adjusting plot schemes. The purpose of the study is to trace the peculiarities of the development of a women's novel about the war on the material of 4 novels of different periods: "Petrya Slymak" by Oleksandra Svekla, "Behind the Plow" by Varvara Cherednychenko, "Khreshchaty Yar" by Dokiya Humenna and "The Death of Cecil the Lion Made Sense" by Olena Stiazhkina. The novelty of the study is in the fact that it is the first attempt to analyze the genre of women's novel about the war in Ukrainian literature. The study is carried out in line with feminist studies and is based on the works of Nira Yuval-Davis, Cynthia Enloe, Miriam Cooke, Margaret Higonnet, and others.

As a result of the research, a number of features of Ukrainian women's novels about the war have been revealed. The genre develops as inscribing women into male plot schemes and creating herstories of war. In the plot scheme, the depiction of battles is episodic, but the depiction of events in the rear and the occupation becomes important. This significantly expands the understanding of war not only as a history of defeats and victories, life and death but also as suffering, patience, and hard work. Women's novels focus on the contribution of women to the provision of the army and social organization, but also on the suffering that women experience during the war. The wounding or mutilation of men in war also becomes a frequent motif, which undermines the standards of masculinity usual for male examples of the genre. 

Women's texts are also more attentive to female characters, giving them more subjectivity. In the texts of the first half of the 20th century, this subjectivity is a consequence of the lack of men in the public space, providing women with space for self-realization outside the private sphere. In later texts, the subjectivity of women is substantiated by their characters. The appearance of the sniper character marks the overcoming of the victimization of female images in war novels.