Women’s Biography in Modern Ukrainian Women’s War Fiction: the Case of the Novel Because It Hurts by Yevhenia Senik

Snizhana Zhygun

doi:10.18778/2299-7458.13.08

Authors

Snizhana Zhygun Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University; T. Shevchenko Institute of Literature of Ukrainian National Academy of Science https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1193-2949

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2299-7458.13.08

Keywords:

women’s war experience, female biographical narrative, modern Ukrainian fiction, Yevhenia Senik

Abstract

The article deals with the interaction of authentic women’s war experience and ideological requirements while shaping the female biographical narrative in modern Ukrainian fiction as exemplified by the novel Because It Hurts by Yevhenia Senik. The idea of strengthening the national identity with the topics forbidden in Soviet times is presented in the introductory part. The main part of the article shows how the author seeks to respond to both public expectations connected with strengthening the national identity and the need to understand the psychological crises caused by the war. The novel unveils women’s war experience, shaping the social frames of memories about it and influencing the public perception of current women soldiers. However, rather than follow the ideological tradition, Senik focuses on women’s agency and self-awareness.

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Author Biography

Snizhana Zhygun, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University; T. Shevchenko Institute of Literature of Ukrainian National Academy of Science

Snizhana Zhygun is a Doctor of Science in Philology, Professor at Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University and a researcher at T. Shevchenko Institute of Literature of Ukrainian National Academy of Science. She is interested in Ukrainian women literature and ideological influence on literature and by literature. This article is a part of her study titled “Four Wars and Emigration in the Works of Ukrainian Women Writers: Experience, Emotions, Memory that Were (Not) Mastered,” supported by the “IU-Ukraine Nonresidential Scholars Program” of Indiana University, to which the author expresses her gratitude.

Her main publications are: “Stories of our Grandmothers: How Modern Ukrainian Women’s Literature Deconstructs the Soviet Myth about the Great Patriotic War” (2024), “To tell in order to forget: Nadiya Surovtsovaʼs memoirs of the repressions of 1927–1953” (2023), “Political vs. Personal: Gender- Role Formation in the Works of Ukrainian Female Children’s Writers in the 1930s” (2023), “Why Is the History of Ukrainian Literature Silent About the Women Writers of the Second and Third Decades of the 20th Century?” (2021).

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