Gender specificity of the space of war in the novel “Dotsia” by Tamara Horikha Zernia

The relevance of this study is due to the need for a detailed research of women's war novels in modern literature that artistically comprehend the events of the Russia-Ukraine war and represent them from the perspective of women's experience. The emphasis on women's literature is important, as studies on war fiction written by men remain largely represented in terms of numbers. The study of the chronotope in military literature is relevant considering its participation in shaping the image of the military world view. Of particular interest to us is the topic of the correlation between space and gender in women's war fiction, which has been addressed by foreign researchers but is not sufficiently developed in Ukrainian literary studies. The purpose of the article is to research the specifics of the representation of peaceful and military artistic space, its gender semantics in a female war novel. The study is carried out in the theoretical coordinates of feminist studies with the use of chronotopic and hermeneutic analysis. The object of the study is the novel “Dotsia” (“Daughter”) by Tamara Horikha Zernia. The subject of the study is the gender specificity of the chronotope. As a result of the study, the main spatial modes of war in the novel were analysed. Outlined was the chronotope of the occupation, which is characterised by the suspension of time, the devastation of space and the heterogeneity of the war's impact on individual locus. It is revealed that the front in the novel is a “hyperspace” without a centre and clear boundaries. It is proved that the writer refuses to form the opposition of front and home, and the crimes of war take place in traditionally feminine locus, which destroys the myth of women’s space as “safe”. The analysis of the image of Dotsia and other characters in the novel proves that women become involved participants in the war. The scientific novelty lies in the study of space in Tamara Horikha Zernia’s novel from the perspective of feminist studies, which made it possible to trace the writer's vision of peaceful and wartime space, its feminine and masculine semantic, and to outline the specifics of the occupation chronotope.