박완서 소설 연구

Abstract

ABSTRACT

A Study of Park Wan Seo’s Novels - Based on issues of the seniorsㆍwomenㆍfamilies in the 2000s -

by Kim Mee-Hae Advisor: Prof. Kim Su-Nam. Ph. D Dept. of Korean Language and Literature Graduate School of Chosun University

Park Wan Seo has written many autobiographical novels in which literature is reconstructed while he connects social issues to his life. In a way, Park can be said to be the novelist who is most close to reality. Park lives a life as a senior, a woman, or a member of a family. This thesis aimed at observing how Park expressed in her short novels published in the 2000s the issues of the seniors, women, and families that she felt and experienced and examining her own understanding of these issues. While there may be more than the three issues revealed in her short novels in the 2000s, this thesis limited the topics to these three social issues, approaching them with three broader points of view. First, the thesis examined Park’s recognition related to the senior issues in terms of the seniors’ remarriage and divorce, sense of alienation, and illn ess and death. For Yearning or Forty Nine Years Old, for example, depicts the issue of the seniors’ remarriage and divorce, which can be understood as the seniors’ expression of an independent life. Happy End, Nevertheless or That Man’s House lets us peek through the sense of alienation that the seniors who cannot adapt themselves to the society. Hu Nam, Have Something To Eat, Kind Bok Hee, or Audacious Dining Table shows the senior’s issues on illness and death. The senior’s illness may burden the family, and Park portrays a senior who tries the best to benefit his family from his illness. This also shows that Park considers the senior’s death not resistance or struggle, but adaptation. Second, Park’s recognition of women’s issues is expressed in terms of objection to Confucian ideology, women’s awareness of the society, and women’s motherhood and their awareness of life. In For Yearning, Audacious Dining Table, Hu Nam, Have Something To Eat, or Kind Bok Hee, Park objects to Confucian ideology, such as the patriarchal system, preference for boys, virtue and chastity of women, and serving only one husband, while That Man’s House or Almost Free shows the women’s awareness to the contradicting society. Such women’s awareness is connected to women’s motherhood and recognition of life, which can be observed in Almost Freeor Hu Nam, Have Something To Eat. Third, Park’s awareness related to the family issues is shown either in the conflicts among family members, issues of serving old parents, and disconnected relationship among family members. Park’s many novels show conflicts between mother and daughter-in-law, mother and daughter, mother and son, couple, or brothers, and one characteristic of these conflicts is that they are expressed not by direct confrontation between two parties but avoidance of relationships or inner conflicts. Candle-Lighted Dining Tabledirectly dealt with the discontinued relationship among family members and the issue of serving old parents. A satire of today’s nuclear family society where the responsibility of serving old parents has become a rarity, this novel exposes the seriousness of the disconnectedness among family members that makes us sad. Park’s elaborate observation and description of the senior issues have made a huge contribution to the establishment of the foundation of the seniornovel in Korea, and her awareness of women’s issues has also helped us to grope for new solutions for these problems in that her recognition of these issues pursues the co-existence and co-habitation of both sexes. Most of all, Park considers the family issues most important. Focusing on resolving the conflicts among family members, Park observes in worrisome eyes today’s society where family bond has weakened.