WOMEN’S CONSTRUCTED WORLD IN LITERATURE

IJASOS- International E-Journal of Advances in Social Sciences, Vol. III, Issue 8, August 2017 WOMEN’S CONSTRUCTED WORLD IN LITERATURE Salome Pataridze Phd student at Ivane Javakhishvili State University Tbilisi; Invited teacher at Ilia State University Tbilisi, Georgia, Abstract As literary texts are considered as a free area of imagination, which often reflect women's reactionary or progressive perceptions, their analysis is one of the best opportunities for the construction of cultural, social, psychological, historical images. Until the 1930-ies the traditional role of women was determined by the male construction: the woman is a mother and wife and is associated to domestic work and taking care of household. The main success of the woman was considered to get marriage and have children. However, the economic crisis caused by the Second World War and the need for women's resources changed the discourse and made the identity of the women of the time of war more complex: the woman undertook multiple role: feminine, working like man, spouse, ideal housewife. Poetic texts by two German female authors – Ingeborg Bachmann, Ilse Aichinge and by two Georgian female authors –Lia Sturua and Iza Orjonikidze were chosen as the objects of this study. As the historical contexts of Georgian and Austrian literature of the twentieth century reveal some similarities, such as the annexation, the Anschluss, a small country with a glorious past, a small county with a large neighbour etc., these similarities outlined the object of this study. The analysis of poetic texts by Georgian and Austrian female authors revealing on the one hand, contemporary and historical peculiarities of feminine narrative, and on the other hand, contrasts in cultural contexts, allow us to demonstrate and establish their national, individual and historical characteristics. The comparative analysis of the feminine narrative of the twentieth-century may also reveal sub-alternate status and marginalized role of women in the totalitarian regime. Keywords: totalitarian regime, women’s constructed world, marginalization 1. INTRODUCTION Modern feminist theories focus not only on the discrimination against women and emotional and psychological deficit in their lives, but on discovering, analysing and interpreting positive potential in women’s thought and individual, new concepts of perception of the universe and reality. As the historical contexts of Georgian and Austrian literature of the twentieth century reveal some similarities such as: the annexation, the Anschluss, marginalization of women in totalitarian regime, it would be interesting to interpret lyrical texts http://ijasos.ocerintjournals.org 679 IJASOS- International E-Journal of Advances in Social Sciences, Vol. III, Issue 8, August 2017 of Georgian and Austrian female poets serving to analyse their contemporary epoch and create a new, free space. Until the 1930-ies the traditional role of women was determined by the male construction: the woman is a mother and wife and is associated to domestic work and taking care of household. The main success of the woman was considered to get marriage and have children. However, the economic crisis caused by the Second World War and the need for women's resources changed the discourse and made the identity of the women of the time of war more complex: the woman undertook multiple role: feminine, working like man, spouse, ideal housewife. As Margaret Higonnet mentioned, propaganda reminded women that they were not natural, but behaving temporarily like men. Not only men could participate in political events, drive and observe world change. This is clearly exemplified by the fact that the events of the 1930-ies - Hitler’s rise to power and Spanish Civil War - led Virginia Woolf, Storm, Naomi Mitchison write their novels and essays on political and internal conflicts in Fascism. Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf is probably the most famous intervention text claiming that Fascism and Patriarchate were the seeds of dictatorship that would root through tyranny. There would no longer be line between public and identity. While the patriarchal society made women devoid of their fundamental right – citizenship over the centuries, fascism and socialism created a new image of a brother who had to be honoured. While, over the centuries, mothers and daughters were to be silent because they were women, totalitarian regimes started persecuting women with political, religious and racist marks. Therefore, new discourse emerges in feminist thought – the woman is no longer associated to a pretty body, but is related to the mind that feels irrationality of war and the destructive power of totalitarian regimes. 2. LYRIC POETRY AND FEMALE POETS OF WESTERN EUROPE AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR Western European lyrical poetry of the 1950-60-ies clearly shows marks of suffering from the Nazi Auschwitz and slaughterhouse. It reveals the same tendencies in Western European countries with similar themes and an acute sense of post-war reality. Post-war Western European and German lyric poetry use the same themes: night, anxiety, stone, fire, dissentience, resistance, disagreement, non-existence; Bright colours gradually disappear from the lyric poetry and it is replaced with the colourless, dim world showing through closed, hermetic lyrical forms or free verses by means of which poets run from existing reality and create new models of thinking. When speaking of new thinking models, forms and language of the verse, we should note Austrian poets - Ingeborg Bachmann and Ilse Aichinger from the German-language poetry, and Lia Sturua and Iza Orjonikidze from the Georgian poetry. These poets are characterized by the love of free verse poems frequently based on “roaring and marching”, with diversity of poetry, irrepressible thirst for sovereignty, diversity of poems, rhetoric linking achieved by repetition. Ingeborg Bachmann and Ilse Aichinger felt the destructive power of National Socialism: Ingeborg Bachmann saw Hitler’s troops marching into her hometown of Klagenfurt when she twelve and it was when her "playing" and childhood was finished. Ilse Aichinger, suffered because of her Jewish mother, so that her dreams and dreams were replaced with cold, dull reality. Ingeborg Bachmann does not cry for the past, but expresses complicated relation of the past to the present. The bitter feeling of impossibility of utopia with Bachman is accompanied by helplessness that makes her poems convincing and impressive. In her famous poem "Borrowed Time", the author warns us: "Harder days are coming." The human being is totally astounded in the midst of the present which does not have meaningful expression. But despite failure (no way out - typical for modernist poetry), it is necessary to start a new life, not to cry for the glorious past, but to create new present. One must lace up boots and go ahead. One may be ordered to be silent, may be considered to be mortal (...truncated)