전후 ‘감상적’ 여성소설의 계보: 감상성과 시대성의 관련양상을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper intends to note that the sentimentality is the specific gendered feeling corresponding to the important social changes such as Korean war, democratic movement in 1980s. The sentimentality and sentimentalism can be evaluated as the specific feminine emotional structure to interpret the reality and the others. First, Kang Shinjae's short novels show a gendered perception about Korean war. 「History of Feast」, 「Winter's Flower」 dealt with the violence and madness of war through the sensitive writing style and melancholic feelings based on personal tastes. That kind of style, romanticism, and subversion previewed her unique sentimental popular novels in 1960s. Second, the representative example which dealt with the democratic movement in1980s not as the aspect of reason, politics of square, publicity but as the context of emotion, closed room, and depression is Kang Seok-kyeong's Room of the Woods. First, frequent uses of 'diary' for revealing Soyang's internal conflict, second, the narcissistic tastes and depression captured the conflict of subject who was the generation of democratic movement. The hatred and criticism about the politics of square, liberalism, and patriarchic ideology of bourgeois family is expressed through the making of her own room, the resistance as melancholic emotion. Third, Gong Ji-young's 'reminiscences novel in 1990s' can be called the rhetoric of excessive feelings about aspiration and dedication for the transformation(or revolution), moral innocence of 386 generation. Her novels call repeatedly the community of emotion referred to 'we', and the moral subjects who dedicated to the revolution, sacrificing even the desire, romance, and love. The sentimental and feminine writing about the authenticity and ethics of 386 generation is realized through the frequent uses of the ellipsis, form of letters, constant references of community of emotion such as 'we' in the dialogues or monologues. In conclusion, women writers have been reacted to the changes of modern history with feelings rather than reason, the subjectivity and internality rather than objective reality, and the private sector or experience rather than the public sector. They showed the various world of emotion, for example the sensitivity, depression, grief, anxiety, narcissism, sadness, sorrow, isolation. In that sense, the sentimentalism can not be underestimated as inferior, but needs to be re-evaluated as gendered reaction to the reality and Korean society. It means that the sentimentalism can be described as the methodology of female literary history.