Exploring Embodied Identities in Contemporary Estonian Fiction and Drama by Women
Exploring Embodied Identities in Contemporary Estonian Fiction and Drama by Women

Author(s): Leena Kurvet-Käosaar
Subject(s): Gender Studies, Estonian Literature
Published by: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti
Summary/Abstract: My article offers an insight into the representation of women’s bodily experience and the textual articulation of cultural meanings inscribed on the female body in Estonian fiction and drama by women in the 1990’s. Rather than attempting to provide a general overview of the representation of the female body in the literature of the period, I will take a closer look at three authors whose work has placed the contained, vulnerable and frustrated female body at the heart of sociocultural practices in Estonian society and history in various contexts and frameworks. The three texts I wish to discuss differ greatly in terms of genre, cultural context and the generation the authors belong to as well as in terms of what aspects of the body are highlighted and how these are formally executed. However, I believe that the three texts illuminate relevant and diverse issues relating not only to the literary representation of the female body in the post-Soviet era but, more importantly, to the much larger issues relating to body politics in post-Soviet society in general.

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