Change of Value Paradigm in Women’s Prose (On The Example of the Novels of British and American Women Writers of Late 20th /Early 21st Centuries)

Abstract

Our study focuses on gender issues from the perspective of “women’s literature”, gives a brief overview of female writers’ works from ancient times to the beginning of the 21st century, and explores how gender stereotypes have affected the texts created by women and about women. The point of view that literature is not gendered, and that there is simply good or bad literature which cannot be called either "masculine" or "feminine", is the starting point of our research, but with one caveat: women bring to literature their own, unique female experience, bio-philosophy, their own hierarchy of values. The aim of our research is to conduct a mapping of existing literature on how “women’s issue” and value paradigm are represented in women’s prose, and, using gender and axiological approaches of analysis, to confirm the belief that the “issue of woman”, gender dominants, as well as thematic and symbolic structures, character and value systems in women’s writings have undergone abrupt changes in historical and cultural context. On the example of the works of British and American women writers of late 20th and early 21st centuries, we can conclude that
contemporary female writers build their literary activity on the paradigm of individual's psychological problems, thanks to which their works are identified by emotional and valuespecific measurements presented in a new aesthetic and artistic fashion.