Woman’s Breast, Self-Objectification, and Embodied Experience in Russian Female Literary Texts

This essay explores women’s embodied experiences related to the breast presented in the literary works of two Russian modern women writers, Marina Temkina (‘Category of Bra’, 1995) and Vera Pavlova (‘Milk Ways’, 2018). Both authors selected the breast as a point of reflection on how the body affects the lives of women, shaping their perceptions and relationships with themselves and with the external world. However, their understanding and approaches to the topic, along with their stylistic techniques, have significant distinctions. Temkina addresses the topic from a feminist standpoint, employing humour and irony in order to reach a wider audience. Her creative strategy is in many respects defined and corresponds to the cultural and social context of Russia in the early 90s when feminist ideas first began to be voiced and discussed. In contrast, Pavlova’s character visibly succumbs to the existing patriarchal order, at the same time retreating into the symbolic world of images and metaphors that in their totality reproduce features of Écriture feminine within an autofictional strategy. In their works, both writers demonstrate in their works different ways in which women are forced to engage in self-objectification, being oppressed by predefined societal stereotypes.