Influence of ideological constructs on the female works (on the material of R. Troyanker’s lyric poetry)

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis of the Ukrainian-Jewish poet Raisa Trojanker’s works in the aspect of the author’s attempts to get rid of the pressure of the patriarchal construct of Angel in the house and the Bolshevik construct of the "new woman." It is noted that the poetess reveals the subject of professional involvement of women, in the context of the "the new woman" ideas: her characters study at pedagogical courses and at institutes, work at the plants, liquidate illiteracy and dream to fulfill a Five-Years Plan in four years. The ideas of the new woman also impacted on the Troyanker's representation of love: without idealization and sentiment, not limited to its emotional sphere. Troyanker’s attempt to express the female perception of sex caused a sharp resistance of that time society, but these texts were lost, except for the verse "The Grass Drooped". This verse is interesting not only by its emotional frankness, but also by the fact that the author managed to get out of the influence of "Angel in the house" and "new woman", estimating the described pictures from her own point of view, no looking at the norms of patriarchal or new morality.

Difference in the voices of the "new woman" and the real woman of the second decade of the 19th century are most of all notable in the theme of motherhood embodied in the verses: "Days of Expectation", “Evening”, “My Father Has Banished and Damned Me", "On the tenth anniversary", "The First Victory", "Birth of the Poet". The interesting feature of R. Troyanker’s artistic world is that the boundary between the personal, the real and the ideological structure consolidates also different gender roles: the lyrical character reproduces the feminine behavior in the poems about the daughter and the masculine one in the poems about the son, who embodies the militarized demand of the epoch.

Exit beyond the influence of ideological constructs is also shown in verses "On the Tenth Anniversary" and "Birth of the Poet", in which the lyrical character, respectively, protects motherhood from "new women", as well as her right to creativity from any encroachment.

It is noted that Troyanker felt the pressure of the patriarchal and new ideas that hindered to write and to publish her works, prevented to tell her own word until she had succumbed to them entirely, having created the collection of patriotic lyrics during the Second World War.