노년여성의 귀환과 탈가부장의 징후들

Abstract

This paper aimed to reperuse the elderly life from gender perspective, while paying attention to the violent mechanism of modern humanism that defined youth as the human standard and inhumanely ousted the elderly in the same way as barbarians, madmen and women. The experience of the elderly life varies among different genders, ethnicities and social classes. For this reason, studies on the elderly life that overlook such differences are partial and abstract. This is the very reason why the elderly life must be interpreted from gender perspective. Lives of elderly women who lived or are living in patriarchal capitalism cannot be identical to lives of elderly men. The reality of an elderly middle class woman cannot be the same as the reality faced by a poor elderly prostitute. Recalling the existence of such diverse lives of elderly women, this paper focused on the female narratives reproducing elderly women. If women’s literature attempted to inquire microscopic lives of women or the others either omitted or concealed by the major or mainstream narratives in the peripherals of the male-centered literary world, it would be a meaningful effort to explore the reproducibility of elderly women deserting from the patriarchal capitalism through the female narratives that visualize the oppression, silence and struggle of elderly women. As a part of such effort, the author of this study examined the genealogy of narrative works that recorded or reproduced lives of elderly women, especially the ways in which elderly women were reproduced in modern women’s literature from the era of youth. Narratives of young modern women who longed for new finding of home and confronted the traditional patriarchy visualized lives of elderly women either excluded or omitted by the modern world, while on the other hand shaping new mothers and grandmothers who are differentiated from ‘devoted mothers’ imagined by the pre-modern patriarchs and ‘hateful old women’ denounced by modern youths. Despite such differentiated reproduction, it was rare to find works that depicted lives of elderly women because the desire and mission of modern female authors were to spread modern values through literature. Furthermore, there was almost complete absence of works that viewed lives of elderly women as human beings with their own needs instead of constraining them to the gender role of a mother or grandmother. As the entire world is welcoming the dusk of the modern era with global aging, how are female authors of the contemporary world dealing with the elderly and gender issues? This paper examined the ways in which lives of elderly women were reproduced in novels written by female authors of the so-called 386 generation who drove household revolution and wished for overturn of the patriarchal capitalism since 1987, such as Kyung-sook Shin, Soom Kim and Yeo-sun Kwon. In the midst of their stories about old women, the noble mothers and grandmothers invented by patriarchy are no longer found to be a matter of course. ‘Gyeong-ho Yoon’ in “Aunt” (Yeo-sun Kwon) simply grows old as an aunt instead of a mother or grandmother. ‘So-nyeo Park’ in “Please Look After Mon” (Kyung-sook Shin) yields to the gender-bound nicknames like mother and grandmother. ‘Soon-ja Jeong’ in “Women and Their Evolving Enemies” (Soom Kim) no longer remains to be a tamed helper of frustration. She runs away from patriarchal home as if she has gone missing (So-nyeo Park), she tries to be freed from maternity by destroying her existence (Soon-ja Jeong) and she lives an independent elderly life isolated from her family and the world (Gyeong-ho Yoon). These figures become unfortunate and rebellious mothers or women who confront the world instead of reconciling with it, revealing the violence and sorrow concealed underneath fake love and happiness created by patriarchy. The fantasy of intimacy is ironically imploded by these aging women, who have long been the guardians of their home and intimacy.