Figurations of femininity. Strategies for liberation. A comparative study of novels by Bator, Plebanek, and Gretkowska (in three steps)

Abstract

Manuela Gretkowska, Joanna Bator and Grażyna Plebanek: three female authors, each of them involved in the ‘pro-woman’ discourse. Are the literary testimonies of this discourse and the figurations of femininity in their prose subject to synthesis in terms of the heroines’ freedom aspirations? What is the freedom of women in the light of these texts? The comparative procedure consists of three steps. Firstly, a comparison of the worlds presented in the dimension of the protagonists’ fates and the final storyline solutions. Secondly — of the functionality of the chosen state of aggregation within the plot, i.e. eroticism as a set of specific images (or anti-images) of the protagonists’ experiences. Thirdly — comparing the narrative structures (e.g. the role of metafiction), as well as attempting to determine what the selected modus operandi of each narrative results in.