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The Way to (Please Look After)Mom - The Mother Figure in the Modern Korean Novel and Her Potential -

  • DONAM OHMUNHAK
  • Abbr : 돈암
  • 2016, 30(), pp.7~41
  • DOI : 10.17056/donam.2016.30..7
  • Publisher : The Donam Language & Literature
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature > Korean Literature > History of Korean Literature
  • Published : December 31, 2016

Yoo Bo Sun 1

1군산대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

The interest readers all over the world have shown for works such as Please Look after Mom and The Vegetariansuggests that the study of Korean literature needs to transform too. Our study should now focus on positioning Korean literature within the context of the history of world literature. To this end, the most urgent task is to find traditions unique to Korean literature that can be recorded as a new voice in the literary history of the world. What we need to pay attention to at this point is the mother figure in Korean literature because it is a decidedly strange phenomenon in Korean novels written in and after the 1970s. The first notable mother figure in Korean literature is the mother who appears in the division literature of the 1970s. These mothers are generally characterized as a “two-faced mother.” Their husbands cannot return home because of the Korean War and so they have to raise their children by themselves. Naturally, they have to perform the functions of both mother and father at the same time and as a result are “two-faced.” They faithfully play the part of the mother who nurses her children and at the same time carry out the function of the father who disciplines them in strict principles of reality. She displays an ambivalent attitude by vehemently criticizing the children’s father as she has to earn a living in the cold barter economy while elevating him into a subject of reverence to instill self-esteem in the children. The mother in the novels of the 1970s is portrayed as an enigmatic figure who simultaneously plays the role of her son’s lover while also being a source of castration anxiety. The next mother figure that appears in Korean novels is the “mother beaten and abandoned by the father.” As women writers appeared on the literary scene in the mid-1990s, the feminist gaze took center stage and these women writers created a new mother figure. Through this mother figure, on one hand the women writers of this period criticize the strong phallocentric order of Korean society that has long been in existence while on the other they refuse to dream of “sterile love,” or even if they love, refuse to “become a mother.” The third mother figure to appear in Korean novels is the “mother as ghost.” Kyung-sook Shin who has long been interested in mothers who sacrificed themselves in the path of rapid industrialization draws the mother of that age as a ghost. The mother of Please Look After Momis a noble figure who has readily done her duty as wife and mother for the happiness of her husband and children and also has done her best for her own happiness. However, the family does not fully realize the true meaning of that mother when she is alive and only discover her value when she goes missing. In the end, the mother escapes everyone’s notice while alive, with her true meaning being recognized only after she passes away. Through this mother figure that is a ghost both when dead or alive, Please Look After Momrealistically portrays how global capitalization has corrupted modern people and turned them into fetishistic beings while at the same time offering the morality of “motherhood” as the power that can overcome this.

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