疎外의 觀點에서 본 女性다움에 關한 硏究

Abstract

우리 사회에서 여성다움은 하나의 사회적 가치로서 여성에게 당위적으로 부과되어 왔으며, 여성자신도 사회화에 의해 이를 수용한다. 그러나 여성다움 자체가 여성의 삶을 제한하며 의존적, 복종적, 헌신적 삶을 위한 것이므로 자신이 자기 삶의 주체가 되지 못함을 의미한다. 이 연구의 목적은 여성다움이 여성 소외의 원인임을 밝힘으로써 여성의 장점으로 생각되어 오던 여성다움의 재인식과 현대 여성들의 확고한 자기 삶의 구현에 기여하고자 하는 것이다. 그러한 목적을 위해 여성다움의 핵심인 여성성이 여성의 본래적 특성이 아님을 이론적으로 논의하였다. 여성의 본래적 특성이 아닌 여성성을 생물학적 특성이라고 강조해 온 것은 남성 중심 문화에서 여성을 창조적인 외부세계의 일로부터 소외시키기 위한 이데올로기로 보고 이를 현대적 삶의 부정적인 개념인 소외와 연결시켰다. 대중소설을 그 시대를 반영하며 인물묘사가 현실적 상황에 가장 가까운 특성을 가지고 있다는 것과 대중의 의식세계에 상당한 영향을 미친다는 것을 전제로, 작품에 나타난 여성의 삶 속에서 여성다움으로 인한 소외와 작가의 여성관을 보고자 하였다. 이에 선정된 작품은 崔仁浩의 <별들의 故鄕>, 方榮雄의 <糞禮記>, 趙海一의 <겨울 女子>, 朴婉緖의 <살아 있는 날의 始作>이다. 작품분석은 작품에 나타난 여주인공의 삶을 연인, 아내, 어머니(母性)로 유형화하여 멜빈 시이맨(M-elvin Seeman)의 6가지 소외유형과 대비, 분석하였으며, 여주인공의 자아의식을 그 준거틀로 삼았다. 분석결과에 의하면, 작품속의 여주인공들은 그들이 여성다움을 추구하는 동안은 모두 가족, 자신, 타인으로부터 소외를 경험하게 되나 그들 자아의식의 유무, 밀도, 방향에 따라 소외의 결과는 달랐다. 자아의식이 전혀 없는 여성은 소외를 경험하고 그 속에 자신을 유폐시킬 뿐 아니라, 이를 극복하고자 하는 의지를 갖지 못함으로써 파멸하는 것을 볼 수 있었다. 그러나 여성다움을 추구하는 태도에 의한 소외를 경험한 후, 이를 극복하기 위해 여성다움이란 틀에 의문을 제기하고 여성다움으로부터 독립된 자기의 주체적 삶을 시도한 여성은 자아의식이 뚜렷한 사람이었다. 여성에 대한 작가의 태도에서는, 남성작가들은 여성의 소외를 미화하거나 도피해 버림으로써 여성다움과 그로 인한 소외의 심화를 여성의 피할 수 없는 운명으로 보았다. 따라서 사회 통념적으로 바람직한 여성 - 즉 자아의식이 없는 여성, 또는 자아의식을 남성지배문화에 맞게 조화시키는 여성 - 을 묘사하고 있다. 반면에 여성작가는 여성의 소외를 직시하고 그 원인을 사회적 관습의 불합리와 여성다움의 허구에서 찾아내고 있다. 이 여성작가는 비통념적인 여성상을 창조하기 위한 전초 작업을 시작했다고 볼 수 있을 것이다.;"Womanliness" has been considered as a eulogistic term in our society. If we call a woman womanly, we understand that the woman is mild, tolerant, altruistic and not overbearing. These qualities seem to be virtuous. However, if we try to see the other side of womanliness, we know that it means constant repression of one's own will and the willingness to be dependent on others--in most cases on men-- and submissive. In short, a womanly woman must limit her way of life according to the socially-accepted, stereotypical pattern of women's life. The purpose of this study is to show that the traditionally-defined womanliness is not always advantageous to women and is more often a quality that intensifies the alienation of women. This study, it is hoped, will contribute in clarifying the negative aspects of so-called womanliness and in establishing a new concept of womanliness that will help the contemporary women to pursue more self-fulfilling lives without being entrapped in the endemic disease of alienation. This purpose in mind, this study, first of all disputes the thesis that femininity is inherent in women's nature and attempts to prove that the view that femininity is biological female traits, has been bred in the patriarchal culture as a tool to exclude women from productive work outside the domestic boundary. In addition to this theoretical discussion, this paper presents a few case studies to reveal how the faithful pursuit of womanliness aggravates women's alienation from society, the family and themselves. Samples of this case study have been taken from four popular novels of the 60's and 70's . Three of them were best-sellers which have been noted for their intriguing presentation of the social atmosphere of the period as well as the struggles of women in it. The success of the novels indicates that they enjoyed the sympathy of the general readers. One other advantage of analyzing them is that it provides an opportunity to observe diverse reactions of authors toward the famininity myth. We can confirm that the male authors, however sensitive and liberal they might be, still are not so conscious of the problems latent in the femininity myth. On the other hand, a leading woman author of our time shows her acute awareness of the problematic aspects of women's faith in womanliness. The novels selected are Byoldului Kohyang (Homeland of Stars) by In-ho Choi, Poonye-ki (The Life of Poonye) by Young- woong Bang, Kyo-wool Yeo-ja (Winter Woman) by Hae-il Cho and Sal-a-it-nun Nal-ui Shi-jak (The Beginning of Living Days) by Wan-seo Park. This study analyzes the relationship between the depth of the female protagonists' alienation and their devoted- ness to the womanly ideal. The first three novels by male authors represent three typical roles of woman, namely, lover, wife and mother respectively. The last one by a woman author depicts a woman with strong self-control and self-consciousness who is also a wife and a mother. This woman serves as an anti- thesis of the other three women. While the latter three have either no self-consciousness at all or mis-directed conscousness, the woman author's protagonist reaches a point where she renounces the feminine ideal imposed on her by society and her family. The strength of her self-consciousness enables her to disclose the false mechanism of how a woman should live. Her awakening is all the more convincing since she attains to it after her life-long endeavor to be loyal to the feminine ideal. To examine the levels of the characters' alienation, the six alienation types introduced by Melvin Seeman are adopted. The range of self-consciousness is also examined as an important determinant in their struggle with alienation caused by submission to the feminine ideal. One type of Melvin's alienation is called the alienation of normlessness. For him, normlessness is a cause of alienation. AS long as women are concerned, however, normlessness is a stage women have to go through in order to establish a new norm which will ameliorate their unique alienation. Women indeed need a new consciousness to look forward to the possibility to shape a new norm of womanliness. Kyung- a id Choi's novel is too "feminine" to question the validity of the existing norm. The ideal lover in the conventional sense has to kill herself because she is blind to new possibilities and has no self-consciousness at all. We can infer that even the author is blind too as the story is tainted with a fairy air and Kyung-a's submission is beautified. Bang Young-woong's Poonye relinquishes her role of a wife. But at the same time she is driven to madness. Her new beginning leaves her uncertain of the future. She has the life force to rebel but not the self-consciousness to protect herself and move ahead to self-fulfillment. In contrast, Ewha in Winter Woman is a woman with means, education and self-consciousness. She chooses on her own the role of a mother for many young men who want her body and consolation. The author confesses she is the woman he once wanted to become. She ignores all the social mores except her maternal instincts--prompted only by the men who desire her--to maximize her usefulness for men. This identity she finds for her can be maintained as long as she is desired by men. But we cannot help but asking, "What if she loses her beauty and charms?" Her life is solely dependent on men's attraction to her. She might be an extreme example of woman's willing victimization of her body and soul for men's ego-centric desire, made possible through misdirected self-conscious- ness. Ch'onghee in Park Wan-seo's story is the only woman who finally realizes where the problems come from and how badly women need new norms. While the male authors' works, especially the two by Choi and Cho enjoyed almost unprecedented popular success (the movie versions of Choi's and Cho's were record making hits, the woman author had to endure a lot of criticism and unfavorable responses from the public during the time she was writing the novel as a newspaper serial. This fact attests that the majority of the reading public in the 70's were not ready for a change in women's role. They were in favor of the extant norms of womanliness although the norms were in fact threatening and enslaving women. As Park Wan-seo says in her epilogue of the novel, "it is a lonely job" if women try to let people, even women themselves, that women cannot be happier because they are too deeply imbued with the wrong ideal of womanliness. Yet because it is a lonely job, the work to be done is more pressing. Not to see more Kyung- as, Poonyes or Ewhas, it is urgent to reveal the fictitiousness of traditional womanliness and to create unconventional role models for women.