Abstract

This paper is a study to show the aesthetic construction and appropriation of gender in relations to 'ways of seeing'. It is done by distinguishing between male streetwalking and female one. In this novel, 'the trip to Muchin' the male hegemony of seeing is achieved by the sexual objectification of the woman separated from the world. In contrast, the man has the panoramatic viewing and mobilized gaze. In its perspective, the woman is only the object for the man to fulfil sexual need. However, the woman is a good case not to be degraded, in spite of sexual appropriation by the man. She could disclose the male hypocrisy and be liberated from sexual colony, by being born again as an active subject. In this novel, streetwalking is a way to sentient perception. In the way, the subject and the object are reconstructed by the male sentient perception, in which the woman is seen as fragmented fetishist. This way of seeing is a kind of sexual governance and the woman is degraded as the object for the man to protect. This results in the strengthening of patriarchy. In 'the trip to Muchin' the sentient perception of the man is very different from that in novels of a female novelist, Kang Shin-jae in the same age. In her novels, the sentient perception is related to the sexual liberation. In contrasts, the sentient perception is in relation with the man's sexual governance of the woman.