김일엽 초기 소설의 서술 방식 연구-『신여자』에 수록된 네 편의 소설을 중심으로-

Abstract

This article discusses Kim Il-yeop’s early four novels included in 『New Woman』 : 「Revelation」, 「One Girl’s Death」, 「I Go」 and 「The Life of a Young Widow」 which, it argues has been created in the tension of the author’s desire of creating literary narrative and her desire of ideological enlightenment. In order to strike a balance between two extremes, the author experimented with a number of narrative techniques. At the beginning of the writing, she seemed to have established her identity as a social reformer rather than a literary writer. This is why her first novel 「Revelation」 focused on the plot or theme and neglected aesthetic elements. In 「One Girl’s Death」 she experimented with the technique of “showing” with a literary consideration, but she still failed to control ideological motivation and confused narrative and viewpoint operation. Subsequently, she then adopted a first-person narrative format to adjust the will of her social transformation to the extent that it would not undermine the aesthetic hierarchy. First-person novels are classified into ‘peripheral first-person novels’ and ‘similar autobiographical first-person novels’. The difference comes from the arrangement and composition between narrative-subject ‘I’ and other persons as experience-subject. 「I Go」 and 「The Life of a Young Widow」 while they are both written in the first person narrative, but they produced different narrative effects with different arrangements of narrator and character. The reason that 」「I Go」 adopted the former type was directly related to the problem of the author’s trust – the author was unable to give the role of narration to the experience-subject. The social discourse in which the value of the new and the old collide and the enlightenment becomes the good, established a hierarchy between the enlightened narrative-subject and the traditional experience-subject and embraced the initiative of the narrative-subject. As a result, the narrator exceeded her narrative range limit, and the experience-subject was silenced and ostracized. It is an example in which the excessive emphasis on the narrative-subject weakened the personality of persons. Complementing the above weakness, 「the Life of a Young Widow」 was written in ‘similar autobiographical first person’ point-of-view, and the person suitable for this type was selected to lead the story. In order for a experience-subject to be a narrative-subject, or to narrate the experience of the first person ‘I’, ‘I’ need to have not only the experienced oppression of the old regime, but also the cognitive ability to understand and describe the oppression and contradiction at the same time. The narrator who was experienced as the ‘young widow’ of this novel becomes a narrator who was awakened by the a glance experience with a man, and was able to narrate her life. This means that she was a person of judgment and cognitive ability who was able to view her experience from objective distance and also in social context with its implications. As a subject who learns, and who narrates, this woman symbolizes the ideal that the artist intended to portray through 『New Woman』. After repeated experiments, Kim Il - yeop found an appropriate balance between enlightenment will and novel aesthetic will. By decreasing the intervention of the narrator in particular, it became possible to get closer to the figure that she was trying to portray in the 『New Woman』.