Forms of Gender Freedom in Georgian Literature: Creative and Social Emancipation

Abstract

From the second half of the 19th century, Georgian literature joined the feminist discourse that had emerged in American and European literary spheres. This discourse aimed to reconsider traditional gender roles and cultural stereotypes and to highlight issues connected to women’s economic, social, political, sexual, and creative emancipation. Similar to the West, in Georgia, women’s activism was linked to raising awareness through various educational activities and fight against gender myths that had been constructed over centuries. Artistic representations of feminist narratives can be found in the works of Georgian female writers active at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, including Ekaterine Gabashvili, Sappho Mgeladze, Barbare Jorjadze, Lidia Megrelishvili, Kato Mikeladze, and others.

From the 1920s onward, Soviet ideology declared feminist activism and artistic work to be mechanical copies of Western trends and incompatible with the new socialist reality. This position was based on the claim that the issue of women’s “gender emancipation” had already been “resolved” in the Soviet Union. Unlike the West, women’s education, employment, the legalization of abortion and divorce, sexual libera­lization, and the decriminalization of homosexuality (until 1934) became part of the political and ideological agenda. Propaganda used these themes to demonstrate superiority over the West. Accordingly, in the socialist discourse, a new myth of the “emancipated Soviet woman” emerged, whose primary function was tireless labor for the public good.

The article examines the play “Wingless” by the Georgian feminist woman writer Ekaterine Gabashvili and the play “The Collective Farmer’s Wedding” by Polikarp Kakabadze. Based on a comparative analysis of these two texts, created in different contexts, the study highlights how the feminist discourse that was active in Georgian literature of the 1910s was replaced by the myth of the Soviet woman, how diverse female characters and authors engaged in processes of self-determination disappeared from the Georgian literary field, and how a unified image of the Soviet woman was constructed.