Elena Koltonovskaya’s сriticism: In search of the foundations of female creative subjectivity

This article discusses the features of the writer’s strategy of the wellknown critic Elena Koltonovskaya. The main material of the analysis is her collection of articles Female Silhouettes, published in 1912 and, according to a number of observations, still relevant. Koltonovskaya’s critical legacy is of interest from the point of view of evaluating the methods, techniques and approaches that she used in order to professionally succeed as a writer. It was not easy to act as a female critic in the early twentieth century because ideological and aesthetic trends were formed by men, and the attitude towards a writing woman was biased. Koltonovskaya somehow had to take into account the prevailing discourse, and this affected her interpretation of the works of the female writers to whom she referred. Koltonovskaya’s articles are analyzed in the context of the masculine narrative about women’s creativity, which was formed in Russia back in the 19th century and was transferred in a slightly softened form to the modern era. According to the ideas of male writers, a writing woman will certainly find herself in a tragic contradiction between femininity and personal happiness, on the one hand, and her creativity, on the other. Koltonovskaya shares this belief, although many of the fates of her heroines refute it. The article reveals the contradictory attitude of the critic to the type of a “new woman”, which declared itself both in literature and life, but scared Koltonovskaya with the loss of femininity. Next, the productivity of the main division of female writers into traditional, typical (emotional, verbose) and atypical, unconventional in style (logical, analytical), which Koltonovskaya proposed, is evaluated. Such a division seems controversial and largely caused by masculine views on women’s creativity, which influenced the critic. However, Koltonovskaya was able to notice two interesting approaches to the expression of the author’s personality, which can manifest themselves in the works of female writers: excessive concealment of their author’s “Self” or its excessive disclosure, exposure. In the final part of the article, it is concluded that the critical manner of Koltonovskaya herself reveals a transitional character peculiar to the epoch of the early twentieth century – the time of gender fracture. On the one hand, she uses the principle of mimicry – following men’s assessments of women’s creativity and women themselves, and, on the other hand, she demonstrates increased attention to the fate and creativity of her female contemporaries, who go beyond traditional femininity, attempts to understand their features and innovation. The study of Koltonovskaya’s writing strategy makes it possible to expand the understanding of the functioning of women’s literature in an androcentric society.