“Female Rebellion” in Anna Barkova’s Play Nastasya Kostyor (1923)

Abstract

The article examines the figure of the woman warrior and the theme of the “female rebellion” in the hitherto understudied play by Anna Barkova Nastasya Kostyor (1923) in the context of gender studies. Characters, motifs, and the play’s plot are placed against the background of the Barkova’s early work that heavily focused on the “woman question” and invented “new” femininity drawing from the archetypal image of the female warrior in literature and art. The author argues that in this play, Barkova for the first time relates the figure of female warrior to eschatological ideas and utopianism of the Silver Age, namely to Sophia myth. The problem of the ambivalent nature of the female character is in the focus of discussion. The essay explores the sources of this character — from the mystical snake woman of Russian Symbolists to Joan of Arc and the “female ataman” Alena Arzamasskaya (the character of the so-called “Stepan Razin legend”). It describes radical gender inversions in Barkova’s play and explores its original response to the topoi of female warrior that are abundant in this work.

Keywords

• anna barkova
• gender
• masculinity and femininity
• female warrior
• drama
• literature of russian modernism.