2018 №4 (61) Article 13

V.O. Shapovalova

ANALYZING A.I. SOLZHENITSYN’S NOVEL “IN THE FIRST CIRCLE” THROUGH THE PRISM OF GENDER. 

UDC 821.161.1-31.09«19»

The article analyzes A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s novel “In the First Circle” through the prism of gender. The characters of the novel are serving their sentence in a special prison where prisoners develop new top-secret technical projects. Being physically restrained, they have total creative freedom. They live in
a single-gender world, where there are no women. Prisoners’ wives are presented in the novel as ideal female images in their husbands’ minds. A.I. Solzhenitsyn employs the motifs of angelic maidens and femmes fatales. The images of family and family routine are impregnated with negative connotations. Prisoners’ brotherhood is self-sufficient. Men perform traditionally female tasks, such as mending clothing, washing, cooking. Children are totally absent from this sterile world. Intelligent and strong males create mechanisms and tools whose main function is to ruin and destroy. The novel describes a semi-fantastic model of a sterile totalitarian world. The characters’ fears, anxieties and desires are provoked by a total lack of freedom.

A.I. Solzhenitsyn; In the First Circle; gender stereotypes; Experimental Design Bureau (commonly known as sharashka); totalitarian world

 

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