The artistic work of a woman and social, philosophical, cultural issues in the prose of Lyudmila Ulitskaya (The Funeral Party novel)
Joanna Tarkowska
Abstract
In the present article an attempt of defining the essence of Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s characteristic polemics, with a well-established in culture and literature stereotype of both, femininity and a woman, as well as female-male relations, has been carried out. From our point of view, the postmodern author, in her novel The Funeral Party, tries to demonstrate that Cartesian definition of femininity is wrong, as in her novel it is not a woman, but a man who is the epitome of “a suffering body”. In concordance with which Ulitskaya, playing a saturated with irony game, by the use of three archetypical female heroines, not only openly dismantles the myth of an emotional, weak, female “self”, but also of a masculine “self” – which is alleged to be rational, strong and logical.
