젠더지리학의 관점에서 본 김인숙 소설 연구

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the gender geographical meanings of the places appeared in Kim, In-sook’s novels, based on the various aspects and actions of female characters in Kim’s works. In (1996), (2001), and (2002) appears the authority which bounds women to her bodies and her houses, and in these locations they act strategically to dissolve the spacial · locational authority, which can be analysed in gender geological view based on feminism. The female characters, who are brought up and educated under the patriarchal standards, experience confusion in personal identity due to unstable woman-space and changes as the bodies turn into embodied spaces of female identity which used to be under gender standards. For this, the novels focuses on the bodies as locations where the characters seek the genuine space of life. Next location is ‘home’, which is representative of gender standards as it composed meanings from patriarchism and capitalism in the course of modern industrialization. It represents the maternity as an opposite clause of risky capitalism economy. The characters in those three works experience dramatic dissolve, change in location, and confusion of gender-location as the reality around them changes dramatically. This shows that the meaning of home turned into a space of self-recognition, confusion, and identity acquisition. However, they do not stop there and strive to get new identities as women in the course of confusion, and they finally achieve to get new home with autonomy and embrace their husbands who lost their male-space. This study pays attention to the feminism flow of 1990s when Kim’s works focus on the self-awareness of inner side and identity of women which leads to the idea that the locations in those works keep changing as the ‘female characters’ perform various gender practices. I hope this approach would give light to the direction of feminism literature in the future.