1920년대 이기영 소설의 젠더 감성과 그 역학

Abstract

This article examines the scalability of gender sensibility represented in Lee Ki-young's novels in the 1920s. With the concept of ‘gender’ as a medium where the hierarchies of capitalism intersect, I analyzed the structure in which class and nation are connected to capitalist systems such as machines and laws. The first point that draws attention is the novel in which a poor male protagonist appears (“Poor People”, “Siljin”). The men in these novels wander to Japan and Seoul without taking on the responsibility of supporting their families. But at the same time, they feel suffering in the face of poverty, where they cannot fulfill thier role as a patriarch. In the process of expressing these contradictory emotions, the national problem and legal justification are presented as the cause of poverty, ending with tragedy. The second is a novel based on a love narrative. Lee Ki-Young's novel's romance narrative commodifies women, criticizing the traditional gender sensibility that emphasizes the authority of the patriarch, and revealing the hierarchical structure of a capitalist civilized society. In this case, the hierarchical structure is either revealed in the rural areas where women are commodified (“Minchon”) or is formed at the point where the relationship between class and male/female intersect (“Farmer Jeong Do-ryong”). This characteristic is similarly varied in the labor novels. The use of love narratives in labor novels with the theme of the awakening of the workers' subject is to reveal class and gender issues arising from the structure of capital accumulation and production (“People Who Rise the Paper” and “Reunion”). In this way, Lee Ki-Young’s novels in the 1920s crossed class, gender, and ethnic issues and sharply recognized the complexity of modern capitalist civilization encompassing the foundations such as machines and laws.