동아시아 문학과 여성 - 나혜석, 요사노 아키코, 장아이링을 중심으로

Abstract

Woman was a new subject with wide and various spectrums in themodern discourse of East Asia. When the discourse of ‘new woman’ (shinyeosŏng) emerged into the public from the long silence under the patriarchalsociety, this term became a new buzzword crossing over the boundariesbetween the new and the old, the premodern and the modern, andthe East and the West. The act and behavior of female subjects stands forthe direction of the modern civilization but also becomes an issue overtime, space, and ideological differences in East Asia that confronts theWestern modernization in the early twentieth century. Female subjects who are interpolated by the men are fated within thediscourse of the masculine society but the new woman’s movement beginsto arise in East Asia. New Women’s emancipating movements let them toimplement their own voice as “the language of the first-person,” whichwas the ultimate process of making their lives sensual and artistic. Theirvoices are multi-layered beyond the single-layered male voice. The un-precedented ‘new woman’ movement came from their dreams toward anew life. This paper looks at the pioneering aspects of these women: Na Hyesǒkin colonial Korea, Yosano Akiko in Japan, and Eileen Chang in China. These three women succeed in establishing the new woman character ineach East Asian society even beyond the differences of temporal and spatialbackground. In particular, it is worth to notice that the process of fosteringself-consciousness as a woman is also engaged to realize theself-identity as an artist. Their attempts to deepen the layers of female literarystudies as a female stylist contribute to further aestheticize the worldaround them.