‘신여성’과 ‘온천’의 문학적 코드 읽기 - 이광수 소설 『재생』과 『그 여자의 일생』을 중심으로 -

Abstract

This thesis conducted an analysis on Regeneration(1926) and The Woman’s Life(1935) by Lee Gwang-su, which are regarded as the most popular work of the author from the 1920s to the 30s, in order to discuss these literary codes that had shaped new women who were rising as new leading power of Joseon under the Japanese rule and hot springs which were enjoying the rapidly-growing popularity as the most luxurious tour of the times. In addition, in the discussion, the study looked into how Lee, Gwang-su, the most famous male intellectual of the times, would recognize the new women and if there were any limits in his recognition. It was the 1920s that new women presented their selves to the world, and when the 1930s came, they were advocating free love and free marriage as ways to win their modern independence. As you may understand from those new women’s love affairs covered in several press releases, the women were being described both to be ‘dangerous’ and ‘attractive’ for how they would be able to overturn the existing male-dominated traditional orders. Add to that, hot springs in Joseon were being consumed not for treatment but as a place of adultery and sexual sin between some of the men from the highest class and the new women. In other words, hot springs were thought to be ‘dangerous’ but ‘attractive’ at the same time. Based on the fact, it can be said that as for the new women and hot springs, they appeared to men in the highest circles as something not only that may cause danger but also that can be hardly refused. How Lee, Gwang-su looked at such new women and hot springs is even more clearly shaped in his best work, Regeneration(1926) and The Woman’s Life(1935). All these women who appeared as heroines of the two novels are individuals of the beautiful determination to serve their people and nation in cooperation with the youth in the period of patriotic enlightenment. However, experience of the extravagant and ‘hot’ bath in hot springs which would be possessed only by the highest class makes the women give up on their noble ideal as tempting them into this animal life in which only money and pleasure would matter. And after being tempted, the women end up bending to their desires and being concubines of men in the upper rank who would provide them with money and physical pleasure. As a result of such immoral life, the new women get tortured by severe attack from the public and physical diseases (venereal disease), and they eventually commit a suicide or choose to live as a monk. In terms of how the women made such choice, it can be understood that their desire for new regeneration via breakaway from the body (gender) which may be regarded as the main culprit of all these animal desires had been reflected. What provokes interest is, while the new women have to go through the cruelest consequence for they answered to their instincts, the men who lured the women simply continue their current life without any noticeable social criticisms. As discussed so far, Regeneration(1926) and The Woman’s Life(1935) of Lee, Gwang-su should be understood as novels that had shaped a male intellectual’s critical idea about free love (sexual freedom) of new women in the 1920’s and 30’s by connecting the idea to this literary code, ‘hot spring’. To male intellectuals, even though the new women advocating free love and free marriage in the two novels are presented to be dangerous enough to overturn the existing patriarchal orders, at the same time, free love with those women is described as irresistible allurement. However, the severe endings of the novels that the new women had to face with for being true to the instincts is told to be influenced by the idea of a conservative male intellectual who can never accept the women’s free love (sexual freedom).