Eunah Kim Communicating Female Voicelessness Communicating Female Voicelessness Female Communicating A Feminist-Narratological Study of Pak Wansô's Short Stories from the 1970s Eunah Kim ISBN 978-91-7911-322-3 Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies Doctoral Thesis in Koreanology at Stockholm University, Sweden 2020 Communicating Female Voicelessness A Feminist-Narratological Study of Pak Wansô's Short Stories from the 1970s Eunah Kim Academic dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Koreanology at Stockholm University to be publicly defended on Saturday 28 November 2020 at 10.00 in aulan, hus 4, Kräftriket, Roslagsvägen 101. Abstract Communicating Female Voicelessness. A Feminist-Narratological Study of Pak Wansô’s Short Stories from the 1970s. This study focuses on seven short stories written by the South Korean author Pak Wansô (1931-2011) in the 1970s. Pak was one of the most established contemporary female authors in South Korea. Not only did she describe her painful experiences of the Korean War, she accurately depicted a country experiencing major socio-economic and cultural transformation and how that affected the lives of middle-class women. When Pak made her literary debut in the 1970s, she was one of the very few female writers in a male-dominated literary scene. Pak had to find ways to legitimise her right as a woman, a social group that had been marginalised and was almost absent in public debate, to be heard and make her depiction of women’s experiences and interests important. For the analysis of Pak’s short stories from the 1970s, a feminist-narratological approach, inspired by the American theorist Susan Sniader Lanser, has been chosen. Feminist-narratology was a part of the reconceptualisation of narratology which occurred in the 1980s, recognising the connection between gender of the author/narrator and narrative form. In order for an author or a text to gain authority it must respond to different types of audiences, readers, social norms and aesthetical values and power relations within the cultural sphere. Thus, when studying the narrative voice or the point of view in a text one has to consider that it not only carries a certain message but the narrative technique itself is an expression of ideology. The study demonstrates that one essential component in Pak’s stories is the use of a homodiegetic narrator, and the stories are focalised through the female protagonist. The narrator/main character is telling her own story, so she has the possibility to analyse and reflect on her experiences. When it comes to women’s roles as authors and narrators, the issue of absence is also important. Authority can be given to a particular point of view by repetition and emphasizing a single character’s stance. To gain authority can be a subversive act by a female author/narrator in a context where women, due to their subordinate position, have been marginalised and silenced. By focusing on strategies addressing the narrator and by highlighting certain narratological devices, the study argues that Pak communicates the narrator’s point of view and the story’s ideology through narrative technique. Keywords: Pak Wansô, South Korean Women’s Literature, South Korean Literature in the 1970s, Feminist Literary Theory, Feminist-Narratology, Susan Sniader Lanser, Narrative Voice. Stockholm 2020 http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-185832 ISBN 978-91-7911-322-3 ISBN 978-91-7911-323-0 Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm COMMUNICATING FEMALE VOICELESSNESS Eunah Kim Communicating Female Voicelessness A Feminist-Narratological Study of Pak Wansô's Short Stories from the 1970s Eunah Kim ©Eunah Kim, Stockholm University 2020 ISBN print 978-91-7911-322-3 ISBN PDF 978-91-7911-323-0 Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice US-AB, Stockholm 2020 To my father who spurred my interest in literature Acknowledgements Writing this thesis has been a long, arduous and at times lonely process, and I could not have managed without the help, support and encouragement from colleagues, friends and family. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Professor Sonja Häussler for guiding me through the challenges of writing this thesis. With her extensive knowledge and great experience, Professor Häussler has been my pillar of strength. Her patience and commitment have gone way beyond what one can expect from a supervisor. I cannot thank her enough. My special thanks also go to my co-supervisor Professor Emeritus Anders Cullhed for always showing up at our supervision sessions with enthusiasm and for giving me insightful feedback. I would also like to thank Professor Emeritus Staffan Rosén who was my professor when I was an undergraduate student. He saw my potential and encouraged me to pursue an academic career. My sincere thanks go to Dr Marina Ludwigs at the Department of English, Stockholm University, for giving me valuable feedback at my final seminar. I am grateful to Professor Monika Gänssbauer and Dr Stina Jelbring at the Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies, Stockholm University, for reading my manuscript and pointing out areas in the thesis that needed further explanation. To my friend Dann Ling Zhang, thank you for taking the time to read my thesis and offering constructive criticism. To my fellow colleagues at the Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies, Stockholm University, thank you for your helpful comments at seminars and for cheering me on. This project has partly been funded by the Korea Foundation and the Anna Ahlström and Ellen Terserus Foundation. Research travel was made possible by grants from the Swedish School of Advanced Asia Pacific Studies (SSAAPS) and Stockholm University scholarship trusts, the John Söderberg Fund, the Lydia and Emil Kinander Fund and the Rhodin Fund. Thank you for your generosity. Last but not least, my heartfelt thanks go to my family for standing by my side through this long and bumpy journey. This thesis would not have been possible without your love and support. Stockholm, October 2020 Eunah Kim Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 2. Biography of Pak Wansô......................................................................... 4 3. Previous Research ................................................................................15 4. Theoretical Outline and Methodology .....................................................32 5. The Development of Modern Korean Women’s Literature.......................45 5.1 Korean Women’s Literature Before 1945 .............................................................. 45 5.2 Women’s Literature After Liberation Until the 1970s ............................................. 53 6. South Korean Literature in the 1970s .....................................................58 7. Women in the Industrial Period of the 1970s ..........................................63 7.1 Close Reading of “House of Bubbles” ................................................................... 66 7.2 Close Reading of “Identical Apartments” .............................................................. 76 7.3 Close Reading of “An Outing” ............................................................................... 86 7.4 Close Reading of “A Walker with a Camera”......................................................... 99 8. Pak Wansô’s War Literature of the 1970s ............................................108 8.1 Close Reading of “In the Realm of the Buddha” .................................................. 112 8.2 Close Reading of “Winter Outing” ....................................................................... 120 8.3 Close Reading of “The Heaviest Dentures in the World” ..................................... 127 9. Summary and Conclusion ....................................................................137 Bibliography.............................................................................................142 Sammanfattning ......................................................................................155 1. Introduction A man once asked me […] how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spo- ken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. ‘Well,’ said the man, ‘I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing.’ I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also. Dorothy L. Sayers - Are Women Human?1 Pak Wansô (1931-2011) is widely considered one of South Korea’s foremost contemporary female authors. She was one of the very few female writers on a male-dominated scene during the 1970s, and after her literary debut in 1970 with the autobiographical novel Namok (The Naked Tree) she produced more than 20 novels, as well as numerous short stories, essays and children’s books. Over the years, Pak received a great deal of praise from readers