Cutcan, Simona
(2012)
LA DIFFÉRENCE DES SEXES DANS L’OEUVRE
D’AGOTA KRISTOF.
PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
Agota Kristof’s fictional world shows human existence as pointless and her main
characters’ lives are defined by loss of vital relationships, nostalgia and lack of
meaning. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the female characters and
their personal relationships. Until now, the critics have focused on the trilogy,
with its rhizomatic structure and portrayal of the dislocation of exile, and have
neglected her plays, short stories and autobiography. In our study, the texts were
analysed through the framework of materialist feminism, examining issues of
women’s subordination in society and the family, of which the most extreme form
is prostitution. In order to highlight the lack of female voice or perspective in the
texts, narratology was used, with an emphasis on voice and focalisation.
The textual analysis undertaken shows that, from this perspective, her work can
be divided into two different periods. The first one contains her earlier writing in
the form of the short stories and plays, where, in a few stories, women are
unhappy with their position in the family. The second period contains her novels,
which foreground the male characters’ experience of separation and loss. Our
principal conclusion was that women are portrayed in their secondary roles of
wives and mothers, while men are dominant as narrators, writers, and
protagonists; this reflects the traditional patriarchal dichotomy. There is, however,
an interrogation of traditional gender roles: male characters are weak and
marginal, while in some texts, women’s life in the family is represented as a
prison from which they want to escape. When the texts do focus on the individual
woman’s experience and voice, they underline the internal conflict between her
aspirations and prescribed roles, which in some cases leads to violence against the
husband and can be seen as subversive.
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