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| Covers from the three-part 'Modern Girl' anthology series (2021) / Courtesy of txt.kcal |
By Park Han-sol
How were women represented in the works of modern Korean literature a century ago? Do these stories have anything in common with their contemporary counterparts, which revolve around women and their struggle for equality?
It's no surprise that in the early 1900s, when the Korean literary circle was heavily male-dominated, as were most other sectors of Korean society, the voices of female writers and their trailblazing roles in their campaign for the liberation of women from patriarchal social norms were not properly heard.
But their cause-driven literary works remain worth revisiting. The selected works of a total of 21 writers and poets ― including feminists Rha Hye-seok, Baek Shin-ae and Kang Kyeong-ae ― have been published recently in the three-part "Modern Girl" anthology series. The series consists of an essay collection titled, "Blue Deer in My Head"; poem anthology, "Capital Way"; and short story collection, "Girl of Suspicion."
By "translating" the pieces, which were originally written in a mixture of modern Korean and classical Chinese characters, into the contemporary Korean language, the series brings forth the philosophy and activism of those modern girls that remain relevant to this day, for readers who have had difficulty reading the books in their original forms.
Rha (1896-1948) was an idiosyncratic artist of her time, as Korea's first female Western-style painter, writer and a pioneering advocate for women's rights. Her debut short story, "Kyung-hee" (1918), mirrors her critical thoughts about patriarchy and marriage, as well as the need for women's education and independence.
Kyung-hee, like Rha herself, studied abroad in Japan, despite her family's disparaging comments such as: "Women are happiest when they don't know anything about the world, not even the cardinal directions;" "If girls are educated, they become cocky good-for-nothings."
Kyung-hee believes she was born to do great things, but when her father urges her to get married to a son of a reputable, rich family, she is faced with a tough choice between the two roads ahead of her. She muses that a woman who can break away successfully from a centuries-old tradition must not be an average woman ― like Joan of Arc. Was she herself that heroic and courageous?
But after taking a look at herself in the mirror, Kyung-hee soon realizes that she is a human, "not a beast," who achieves things through her own effort.
"Before (Kyung-hee) is a woman, she is a human. And before she is a woman of Joseon, she is a woman of all humanity in the universe," Rha writes. She then comes to a decision about which route she will take.
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| Modern writers Rha Hye-seok, left, and Baek Shin-ae / Korea Times file |
Writer Baek Shin-ae (1908-1939)'s 1929 debut novel, "My Mother," depicts a young woman who participates in an all-male cast play during the Japanese colonial era in a conservative rural town.
With her older brother imprisoned after participating in the resistance movement and herself getting fired from her teaching job after working to organize a women's movement, she is the object of affection, concern and the anger of her mother.
Although they both care about each other, the woman refuses to give up on leading her life in her own way. "But mother, I will never marry Mr. Kim, whom you like. And I won't miss the rehearsal for the play tomorrow night."
But not every piece in the series is like Rha's and Bae's stories, containing messages that speak directly to women's liberation. In fact, many more works are simple emotional records of happiness, sorrow and the meaning of life found in everyday life: memories of one's first love, a sweet honeymoon story, end-of-the-year holidays in Europe and America or yearning for one's mother.
Nevertheless, these seemingly trivial stories are still meaningful, as they are a rare, surviving testament borne from an era when it wasn't fully established that women could partake in the act of writing. The ideas and portraits within these stories have universal qualities that continue to resonate with readers today, more than a century later.
"These writings that come from the distant past still seem to reflect our present, and as we read these works, we all come to hope that a better tomorrow will eventually come," novelist Park Seo-ryeon writes in her endorsement for the anthology series. "By reading the Modern Girl series, we ourselves become modern girls."
