Proceedings of The 6th Global Conference on Women’s Studies
Year: 2024
DOI:
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“Within The Borders of a Monastery” by Ekaterine Gabashvili: Female Desire and the Feminine
Nana Abuladze
ABSTRACT:
Within the Borders of a Monastery is a story by Georgian feminist writer and activist Ekaterine Gabashvili (1851-1938). The goal of the paper is to explore the representation of female desire in the story from the perspective of Feminist Literary Criticism. As Georgia was the part of the USSR, the humanities in Georgia were ideologized – the scholars would analyze literary texts from strictly Marxist point of view. Therefore, the process of reviewing Georgian literature from feminist perspective has started only recently. The paper contributes to the process and suggests an innovative reading of Gabashvili’s story. As Gabashvili thematizes hysteria and psychosis from feminist-psychoanalytical perspective and challenges gender roles, the paper uses the theoretical framework by Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, and Judith Butler. The paper argues that the story depicts female desire as a destructive, incontrollable force which is pre-oedipal and manifests itself either through hysteria/psychosis or through the semiotic metaphors (e.g. dance). It transcends the female body and is connected to the femininity: the female and male protagonists (Salo and Tevdore, respectively) who love each other, experience and express their desire in the same way. The femininity is shown as a performative phenomenon through the androgenous male protagonist Tevdore. The opposition between the Semiotic and the Symbolic is reinforced through the semantics of space. The end of the story (the protagonists committing a suicide) marks the act of eliminating the female desire and femininity from the symbolic order.
keywords: Feminist Literary Criticism, Georgian Literature, Female Author, Symbolic, Semiotic