Chapter OneA feminist reading of Polish women’s writing involves a particular game with patriarchy. Patriarchy is understood here as the system of political, social and cultural (and linguistic) procedures whereby what are in effect traditional male values are evaluated positively...
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Chapter TwoShame, a sense of guilt, of disgust, desolation and physical anguish—these kinds of feelings have featured strongly in women’s writing of the last two decades. Contemporary women writers, concerned with their femininity and its status in Polish society over the past twenty years, have exposed Polish patriarchy, taken it apart in order to contest it, ridiculed and rebelled against it, eventually going on to deconstruct it.
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Chapter ThreeThis book is almost a treatise on contemporary journeys and the travelling woman. From the perspective of travel literature, Tokarczuk’s novel is auto-thematic, containing a detailed vivisection of the process of travel itself. The main narrative arc, onto which she affixes disparate stories, is the theme of the woman traveller in the modern, globalized world. This travelling hyper-awareness, arising out of the incessant self-questioning of the female narrator/traveller, strips her journeying of all signs of innocence, and hence spontaneity or joy of discovery.
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