The theme of violence in Marina Stepanova’s novel “The Women of Lazarus”

Abstract

A defining characteristic of the Russian feminist prose problem field is the issue of female traumatization, both collective and individual. A specific form of its artistic embodiment is the plot of violence, vividly represented in M. Stepnova’s novel “The Women of Lazarus”. In this case, the author’s attention is focused on the process of the female body degradation under the influence of the authoritative history discourse, which becomes an agent of patriarchal discourse. The plot-compositional organization of the novel thus becomes a structural principle, reflecting the dynamics of the traumatic event’s development. The image of the repressed female body is formed in the novel as a result of the sequential shift of discursive planes, each presenting the story of one of the female main characters. If the plot logic in depicting Maria Chaldonova’s fate is determined by the use of a traditional system of motifs exposing the negative nature of the story, the development of Galina Petrovna’s fate is governed by the logic of an adventurous narrative, while in Lidochka’s case, it is melodramatic storytelling. Such an organization, with its characteristic gradual reduction of the characters’ psychological motivation, demonstrates an increasing expansion of the motif of the oppressed, repressed corporeality, forming into a single dynamic image of a broken, defective body. Thus, in the novel, the plot of violence is presented primarily at the author’s level through increasing the manifestation of oppressed corporeality, embodying the objective inadequacy of patriarchal power discourse, which becomes “a place of power, oppression, and regulation”, responsible for the traumatization of the body, thereby undermining the foundation for the female subjectivity formation.