한국 근대 여성문학의 탄생과 형성 —근대 초기∼식민지기—

Abstract

This article examines the birth and formation of women's literature during the early modern and colonial periods. Instead of the typical approach, which is writer-centered, comprising flat female literary and historical description, this paper focuses on the discovery and development of modern female subjects, the rise and decline of the dominant social order, and the emergence of major trends and works indicative of turning points in women's literary history. In the first section, The Appearance of Learned Women and Individuals in Joseon, traces the emergence of women writing in public spheres such as newspapers and women's magazines in the early modern era, which marked the birth of women's literary history. Contributions by women readers to the Imperial Newspaper, the Independent Newspaper, Maeil Shinbo, and Mansebo adopted the prevailing national discourse of equality rather than one of difference or enlightenment. Na Hye-seok, Kim Il-yeop and Kim Myung-soon, who have been ousted from modern literary history, insisted that they were women and also writers; they combined enlightening, orthodox writing with literary, aesthetic writing. Their work clearly imprinted their presence in the public sphere: expressing voices of confession, revealing the situation of progressive women, i.e. New Women, in colonial Joseon, and showing the collective intelligence of the community through their narrative. In the second section, Colonial Reality and the Appearance of Socialist Women vs Reflective Intellectual Women, discusses the formative period of modern women's literature, with the emergence of writers of socialist realism such as Park Hwa-sung, Song Gye-wol, and Kang Kyung-ae, and also the transition from socialist women writers to reflective intellectuals around 1935. Women's literature in the first half of the 1930s is distinct from the previous period in that it realistically embodied the lives of women in the lower classes and those of older women, exploring the possibility of transforming these lives through socialism. Women's literature from the latter 1930s, has tended to be seen as the return of New Women in their 20s. These works showed the experiences and ethical situations of women, reflectively dissecting the love and marriage system as it affected young women and mothers. Some of these works criticized women for playing the role of the pliable, domestic woman, while caricaturing the established authority of men. In conclusion, this article, which gives a genealogical overview of the birth and formation of women's literature, shows that women in the early modern and colonial periods engaged in a variety of writing practices. Women's literature led to women's voices being heard in the public square, and was constantly creating gaps for resistance to widen. This paper significantly contradicts existing literary history, revealing truths and values which have been previously neglected or ignored.