90년대 소설의 여성 정체성 구현 考 ― 여성 소설가들의 작품을 중심으로 ―

The Study on the Embodiment of Female Identity in Novels in the 1990's ―Focusing on the women writers' works―

Female novelists proven their capabilities in Korean contemporary novels more than at any other time. Their prominent voices attracted attention and growing interest in them has led to increased argument in the male oriented writing world. With this as momentum, female identity in a male dominant society has been newly established. In this paper, female identity pursued in novels has been traced with an attempt to clarify the meaning and the burden of women's life. Consequently, the pursuit of female identity can be summarized into two important frames: maternal instinct and perception of reality. In relation to realistic perception, traits of female identity are expressed in confrontation and conflict, transcended and overcome relative relations. That is, it has been recognized that confrontation and conflict are inevitable to acquire female identity and the pain caused by confrontation had to be overcome by transcendence. This way of acquiring female identity is naturally opposed to the male or anything in its way. Messages derived from those are strongly embodied in the novels. Also, they transcend and overcome the problems by interpreting the world in a harmonious way seeking harmony in their existence. Meanwhile, the female identity pursued by maternal instinct contains two confronting elements such as seeking maternity and destroying maternity. The maternity here does not mean the kind of maternity that tries to return to the traditional. Rather, it means that women do not take the giving of birth and the fostering of children unconditionally. They connected these with their quality of life. Postmodernist novels mostly express everyday life and something universal. This wipes out the narrow point of view that the Postmodern novels are mostly destructive and deviating. The destructive and negative sides of Postmodern female novels are only tools to acquire identity. In the light of this, the negative sides are directly related to some fundamental problems of Korean society. Inevitably, women are victims of the negativeness and destruction. The sexual breakaway and maternity destruction do not originate from women's irresponsible pleasure seeking. It has to be taken into consideration that these negative sides are the byproducts produced in the mist of acquiring female identity. Therefore, the society must see things from the whole perspective view.