‘유폐(幽閉) 공간’과 ‘지연(遲延) 공간’-나혜석의 글쓰기와 장소성(場所性)

Abstract

This study identified objective placeness throughout the writing of Na, Hye-seok, who was Korea's first female Western painter and early modern writer, and analyzed her spatiality around two keywords, "confined space" and "delay space." The investigator applied the concept of gender geography, which maintains that place experiences organize existence, and demonstrated the intrinsic aspects of placeness. First, confined spaces expressed the institutional contradictions of Joseon with the analogy of collapse and extinction. Inns and boarding houses were daily spaces and also temporary places of residence that she had to leave some day. Gyeongseong was a hybrid place of both success and failure. Secondly, Japan was a space of growth to study modernity and a delay space to escape from fear for Na. Her Western experiences underwent the procedure of discovering otherness inside a civilized state instead of self-colonization and asking questions about the places where she belonged. Na's place experiences and their connotations revealed in her writing show a gap between the ideal and reality of a subject facing her given destiny and between her inner conflicts. The present study demonstrated the daily conditions, social status, and characteristics of women through spaces beyond ideological placeness as a common idea, thus holding its significance. The specific daily and multiple nature produced in relations between a certain subject and the existential situation of a place will play significant roles in the theoretical extension of gender discourse in the future.