여성의 시간, 서사 그리고 민족 ― 張愛玲 『傳奇』의 징후 읽기

Abstract

This paper tries to analyse what the ‘anxiety’ is as shown in the Eileen Chang(張愛玲)'s short stories Chuanqi(傳奇, Legend) from the perspective of the women and national imaginary relation. The special edition of the Chuanqi was published in fall, 1946, when Eileen Chang was lashed out ‘traitor(漢奸)’ after the defeat of the Japanese Empire. She couldn't choose but explain about her being a ‘traitor’ in order to stand up again as a writer, and we can trace her explanation in the foreword “To the Readers(有幾句話同讀者說)” added to the special edition, the epilogue “Day and Night in China(中國的日夜)” and the new cover picture. Eileen Chang flatly denied her being a ‘traitor’ in the “To the Readers”, and in the “Day and Night in China” did she do the same indirectly through an emotional telling of everyday life right after the Liberation. She also wrote that she changed the cover picture with the intention to send the audience ‘anxiety’. Laying all this as background against which we can look at the word ‘anxiety’ she cast as a keyword in explaining the relation of women and nationhood, this paper tries out a ‘symptomatic reading’ of “To the Readers”, “Day and Night in China” and the cover picture, all three comprising an intertext. According to its findings, the cover picture of the special edition of the Chuanqi forms a metaphor of an outsider's perspective of hysterical female subject, of her narrative strategy and of the non-linear, accumulative time of the women returned through that strategy. In this regard, we can say that the ‘anxiety’ found throughout the Chuanqi is an effect out of a feminist narrative which anxiously transforms the male nationalist narrative of Enlightenment and supplements a heterogenous national imaginary. This kind of analysis will lead off from the pre-existing binarism towards a multi-layered conceptualization with regard to the relation between modern female subject formation and the national imaginary, and give a roundabout answer to the still persistent debate over Eileen Chang being a ‘traitor’.