Женскость и материнство в романе Казус Кукоцкого Людмилы Улицкой

Abstract

Womanhood and motherhood in the novel of Lyudmila Ulitskaya Kukotsky Case

In Russian literature of the last few decades women writers have been very active and productive. The prominent feature of such women writers is, as we think, their body-consciousness, i.e. we find in their works plenty of depictions of the body, especially women’s body. Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s novel Kukotsky Case 2000 may be regarded as the most symptomatic case, where the author tells the lives of heroines of three different generations — the wife, daughter and granddaughter of the hero, Pavel Kukotsky. Kukotsky is an academician-obstetrician, who participates in the political process for the improvement of women’s health and legalization of abortion. This motivates the abundance of descriptions of women’s body and physical processes, such as pregnancy and childbearing. The aim of this article is to analyze such physical aspects of Ulitskaya’s prose from the viewpoint of womanhood and motherhood.