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영어

This article is a pragmatic application of the theory of parallel literary study of Aldridge in a comparative study of Kang Kyungae and Kate Chopin focusing on their works, Mother and Daughter and The Awakening. These two writers do not have much similarity in their cultural and historical background, but their works provide a basis for comparative study in the sense that they have very important commonalities in dealing with women's reality, agony, anger and the strategy of their survival in male-dominated social structures. In this paper I studied the authors' lives and then explored the process of woman's self-reflection and self-cultivation focusing on the two women characters, Oki of The Mother and The Daughter by Kyungae Kang and Edna of The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Self reflection is a course of searching for a new consciousness and a new self-analysis to answer the question “Who am I?” or “What kind of person do I want to be?”. The novels are similar in patterns of development of protagonists and reflect the desperate and dangerous steps a woman takes as she moves on to gain her self-identity. In searching of new identities, both Oki and Edna experience the steps of dissatisfaction, rebellion, and isolation. And when they arrive at the stage of self-reflection, both decide to start new lives completely different from their old lives. Even though both of them arrive at the same stage of self-reflection, their journeys after this time are not similar. Oki succeeds in her journey of self-cultivation, but Edna doesn't. Oki succeeds in starting a new life because she prepares the inner resources required to construct an independent life. She works hard in the rice fields during the day. At the night school she was cultivating her self-reflection and she uses her painful past and miserable memories of her mothers as a means of healing and renewal. But in case of Edna, even though she has developed a new embryonic identity, this new self is too weak to struggle alone and too helpless to confront the world. Unlike Oki, she was never able to rise through pain and suffering and she does not possess the stamina to endure misfortune in silence. Through their novels, The Mother and The Daughter and The Awakening. both Kyungae Kang and Kate Chopin encourage women who are suffering from anger and scars not to abandon themselves even though reality is tough and cruel, but to gain the inner resources of their own, through self-reflection and self-cultivation. And the course of this self-reflection and self-cultivation is the typical power and trait of ‘Sagim’ of Korean ‘Han’.