This thesis investigated why Marko Vovchok, a Russian noblewoman, chose to narrate her stories through the voices of Ukrainian serf and peasant women. Likewise, this research sought to determine...Show moreThis thesis investigated why Marko Vovchok, a Russian noblewoman, chose to narrate her stories through the voices of Ukrainian serf and peasant women. Likewise, this research sought to determine what significance her use of the Ukrainian language in her early prose fiction had apart from its folkloric / national values, and whether it had any significance for the topic of gender. She was the first female Ukrainian writer. Using the Ukrainian language uttered by peasant and serf women, Vovchok found a way to talk about otherwise difficult issues through a kind of ‘wilderness’, defined by Elaine Showalter as being outside of male experience. Female bodily, cultural, and social issues were problematic in the contemporary literature of the Russian Empire. Therefore, her deployment of a neutral form of Ukrainian, but based on female peasant and serf forms of speech with folk elements, opened up a ‘wilderness’ of expression not yet available to anyone in Ukrainian – whether they were male or female authors. Another important feature of her stories and their language is their universalism: firstly, in their applicability to oppressed people everywhere, and secondly in their applicability to oppressed women everywhere.Show less
