체홉의 ‘팜므 파탈(Femme Fatale)’ 캐릭터 연구

Abstract

Femme Fatale is one of historic images existing from the biblical days and mythological ages in the ancient times. Femme Fatale means the attractive women driving a man toward destruction. Femme Fatale fever was the periodical trend hitting the literary and art world in Europe in the 19th century. It was the image of women as the dreadful existence as well as attractive one which was generated along with the tide of feminist movement clamoring for freedom and liberation of women and social and ideological change since the Industrial Revolution at that time. Such Femme Fatale fever in the art world in Europe directly had impact on Russia. Checkhov also published a series of fictions on Femme Fatale. His Femme Fatale fictions include「In Autumn (Оceнью)」(1883),「Morass (Tина)」(1886),「Wife (Cупpуга)」(1895),「Ariadna (Apиaднa)」(1895) and「My Life (Moя Жизнь)」(1896). Five fictions above have the same motif, “Femme Fatale.” This study analyzed the common features of heroines with Femme Fatale characteristics in those fictions. 1) All of them are beautiful. 2) They have negative characteristics including exceptional ability for hypocrisy, trickiness, lying, fickleness and seduction. 3) Egoistic life's attitude ― They think they are always right and are lack of ethics. 4) Absence of love ― They never love men. However, they pretend to love them according to their needs. 5) Incarnation of desire ― They pursue the life faithful to basic instincts including sexual desire, earthly desire, prodigal habits and gluttony. How do the male counterparts of those heroines act in the fictions? All of their counterparts are weak, immature and victim-like characters. Such characteristics are required, because the heroines can easily dominate and use their counterparts to satisfy their desires. Chekhov always tried to be objective and positive on women. He had good understanding on the unfair conditions on women at that time and thought such unfair conditions would be gradually relieved by education. With good understanding on the women, Chekhov didn’t overlook on Femme Fatale characters in various kinds of female characters in the fictions. His five fictions examined in this study will be the literary achievement related to those Femme Fatale characters.