1990년대 은희경 소설의 섹슈얼리티

Abstract

The paper aims to examine how easily women’s sexual freedom turns into exploitable for men within the patriarchal discourse combined with capitalism, while women’s sexual deviance and freedom lead to the emergence of new female figures through the discourse on sexual liberation in the 1990s. The female characters in Eun Hee-kyung’s novel are not the subjects of sexual freedom and liberation, but rather the ones located on the “border” between the existing sexual order and sexual confusion. They play the subject of sexual desire and pleasure, leaning on a popular image of women’s desires on the one hand, but also masquerading as a passive subject who wants to remain the object of male desire on the other. This is why Eun Hee-kyung’s novel, while raising the issue of male ideology, does not go as far as overthrowing paternal authority. Based on this point, this article aims to look at the sexuality of Eun Hee-kyung’s novel in the 1990s in two broad aspects. One is an analysis of the sex scenes reproduced in the novel, while the other is an analysis of the gender hierarchy between “Looking at Me” and “Seeing Me.” And based on this, the article reveals that the female characters of Eun Hee-kyung’s novel in the 1990s are still trapped in the gaze of the male-centered patriarchal system while challenging and resisting the limitations of the male-dominated system. The female characters of Eun Hee-kyung’s novel in the 1990s can be regarded as hysterical subjects in that they want to make themselves objects of men’s desires while rejecting such a masculine order.