What feminists bring into question in mind-body dualism is that
women have been associated with the body as a depreciated item. In the
western philosophical tradition that view males as transcendental conscious
subjects and relate females to the inherent body, women have been in the
lower status with the deprivation of their right to be equal. This mind-body
dualism, which have been associated with male-female dualism, leads to
the depreciation of women. Consequently, it is important to disconstruct
mind-body dualism in order to recover women's rights.
This study aims to compare writing by Isabel Allende, who stands for
the Latin American Feminism, with writing by Yun Jeongmo, who as a
Korean writer is estimated to have incarnated social and ethnical questions
in her novels. For a while women's writing has been criticized for being
focused only on exploration of women's self-consciousness with subsidence
in their families and private areas. However, these two writers free
themselves from the criticism of women writers' writing. Since 1982 when
the House of the Spirits was published, Allende have depicted Latin
American society in the space of the novel. Through the Reins and Mom's
Name was Josenppi, Yun Jeongmo have devoted herself to revealing the
lives of women treated as an existence of deprivation and castration in the
contradictive structures of the history and society beyond private areas.
Yun Jeongmo and Allende pay attention to the body of women.
Especially, they show that the body is the first tool of the lower-class
women for facing the reality, which leads to the impairment of the body.
As it were, in the paternalistic system following the modern powers of
imperialism, capitalistic power and paternal society, the body of women
becomes the target of the male powers' oppressions on women;
62 세계문학비교연구 제22집 (2008년 봄호)
furthermore, women in the third world suffer from extreme body
impairment.
However, the virtue of the writers is not to reveal women's impaired
feminity, but to endow women with their positive identity by attempting to
recover from impaired feminity. These two writers in common think of the
recovery of the feminity as the recovery of the nature. When women's
womb and body is a metonym of the earth and nature, the impairment of
women's body is identical to the devastating process of exploiting the
nature in an discriminate way by imperialism, scientism, and
industrialization.
The body is a field in which multiple codes including gender, race,
class, generation, etc. are carved. When the body is the place where desire
is manifested and emotion is housed by choosing the roles of feminity as
well as the place where subjectivity is molded and the experience of
oppression is carved, it represents the fundamental materiality of the
subject. Women's body as multiple codes is an important key word in Yun
Jeongmo's and Allende's works.
What feminists bring into question in mind-body dualism is that
women have been associated with the body as a depreciated item. In the
western philosophical tradition that view males as transcendental conscious
subjects and relate females to the inherent body, women have been in the
lower status with the deprivation of their right to be equal. This mind-body
dualism, which have been associated with male-female dualism, leads to
the depreciation of women. Consequently, it is important to disconstruct
mind-body dualism in order to recover women's rights.
This study aims to compare writing by Isabel Allende, who stands for
the Latin American Feminism, with writing by Yun Jeongmo, who as a
Korean writer is estimated to have incarnated social and ethnical questions
in her novels. For a while women's writing has been criticized for being
focused only on exploration of women's self-consciousness with subsidence
in their families and private areas. However, these two writers free
themselves from the criticism of women writers' writing. Since 1982 when
the House of the Spirits was published, Allende have depicted Latin
American society in the space of the novel. Through the Reins and Mom's
Name was Josenppi, Yun Jeongmo have devoted herself to revealing the
lives of women treated as an existence of deprivation and castration in the
contradictive structures of the history and society beyond private areas.
Yun Jeongmo and Allende pay attention to the body of women.
Especially, they show that the body is the first tool of the lower-class
women for facing the reality, which leads to the impairment of the body.
As it were, in the paternalistic system following the modern powers of
imperialism, capitalistic power and paternal society, the body of women
becomes the target of the male powers' oppressions on women;
62 세계문학비교연구 제22집 (2008년 봄호)
furthermore, women in the third world suffer from extreme body
impairment.
However, the virtue of the writers is not to reveal women's impaired
feminity, but to endow women with their positive identity by attempting to
recover from impaired feminity. These two writers in common think of the
recovery of the feminity as the recovery of the nature. When women's
womb and body is a metonym of the earth and nature, the impairment of
women's body is identical to the devastating process of exploiting the
nature in an discriminate way by imperialism, scientism, and
industrialization.
The body is a field in which multiple codes including gender, race,
class, generation, etc. are carved. When the body is the place where desire
is manifested and emotion is housed by choosing the roles of feminity as
well as the place where subjectivity is molded and the experience of
oppression is carved, it represents the fundamental materiality of the
subject. Women's body as multiple codes is an important key word in Yun
Jeongmo's and Allende's works.