Authors

Discussion

As is well known, the theme of androgyny as an ideal form of human being can already be observed in Plato's Symposium. In fin-de-siècle Russia, this idea gained widespread acceptance under the influence of Vladimir Solovyov's The Meaning of Love (1892–1894) and the popularity of Otto Weininger's Sex and Character (1903). The recognition that biological sex can be altered intersected with radical revolutionary ideas of women's emancipation, leading to the depiction of numerous masculinized or androgynous female characters in the literary and artistic works of the 1920s and 1930s. The various tensions and conflicts arising from the emergence of these "New Women" within male-dominated social spheres became recurring motifs and plotlines in many works of the period. This study examines the transformation in the representation of sexuality and the body as embodied by androgynous female protagonists from the 1920s to the beginning of the 1930s.

Firstly, this study will examine several female protagonists depicted in A. Kollontai’s collection of stories entitled Love of the Worker Bees (1923), considering them as prototypes of the androgynous or masculinized women featured in subsequent works. They undergo physical transformations, thereby attaining the status of desiring subjects and becoming capable of entering the male-dominated community. However, it is important to note that, in the prehistory of this transformation, women experienced sexual violence and overcame the trauma associated with it. I would like to analyze the connection between trauma and the formation of female representations with power from a psychoanalytic perspective. Next, I will analyze other works of fiction from the late 1920s, focusing particularly on Olga in Alexei Tolstoy's Viper (1928) in which androgynous or masculinized female figures appear." These women, too, undergo masculinization as a result of experiencing trauma; however, as the narrative progresses, they lose their status as subjects and are eventually excluded from the male-dominated community. In this study, I aim to interpret these narratives as a transition from the imaginary order to the symbolic order, in order to unpack the process of exclusion.