여성의 생활과 정체성에 관한 고찰 -「그녀의 생활(彼女の生活)」을 중심으로-

Abstract

This study attempted at the analysis of ‘Her Living’ by Tamura Toshiko who is represented as a woman writer during the Taisho period using the Gender Theory. In addition this study attempted to consider what correlation there exists between the concept of gender and woman’s identity. The heroine Masako in the work ‘Her Living’ was well acquainted with the fate of a woman who was doomed to be under compulsion to play a role as a woman once she got married at that time. But Masako finally married Nitta due to Nitta’s sweet-talk wooing. In the course of lead a marriage life, Masako suffered a conflict with Nitta due to the inner contradiction while having to keep the compatibility between work and housework, and pregnancy and childbearing. At the beginning of her marriage life, Nitta shared housework with Masako, but he came to make it clear the division of the gender role while giving much weight on outside business under the pretext of family livelihood. The gendered division of labor logic could be abusive in that it suppresses only a woman. However, it was after Masako gave birth to a child that Masako began to show a change in her inner side who saw contradiction the male-centric social structure. Although people say that pregnancy and childbearing are a biological process, there was the imposition of legitimacy on women’s child care through the ideological working of ‘Motherhood’ behind the way of thinking that a woman should take charge of child care. Although Masako didn’t compete with or crash into the gender norm created socially and culturally, she herself internalized the gender norm after all. Further, due to the approval of the people around Masako, the possibility and limited nature of gender were simultaneously discovered from Masako. However modern a woman, who is ahead of her time, may be, identity is not fixed and consecutive, but a non-continuant thing that exists in the process which should be sought ceaselessly.