Abstract

This study tries to analyze women’s discourse of the oratorical Sinsoseol which was written by speech form, 1890-1910, and to examine how to be called and composed modern women focusing on the oratorical Sinsoseol. The reason to inspect the oratorical Sinsoseol in the aspects of the public sphere which forms public opinion is more of political discourse which communicates with media discourse than completed structure as a genre. Sinsoseol of speech form is a novel genre to make narrative of speech. Particularly this paper focuses on Ahan Kooksun’s 『Yeonseulbeubbang(Method of speech)』, 『Kumsuhoeirok』, and 『Jaujong』 from Lee Haejo, which deal with women subject. Ahan Kooksun’s novel deals with equality between women subject and men subject in modern society. On the other hand, his novel makes women as a target of the enlightenment. And so his novel invented a culture of women as a symbol of disgraceful Joseon and besides dirty and promiscuous sexuality. Lee Haejo’s novel depicts a woman protagonist as a speaker who makes an enlightenment discourse. But the woman protagonist in Lee Haejo’s novel speeches self –denial discourse that Hangeul novels which women readers have been reading for a long time are obscene, miserable and fanciful. Between 1890 and 1910 which called early modern era was the period that women tried to enter the public society and they also began to appear as a subject of speeches. The experience with participation in speeches or debates inspired women to be being a subject of female. As patriotism and ideology of modern national sovereignty were combined, women began to be considered as a nation. Speeches which enabled women to say an official statement and debates were also one of the main causes to stimulate that idea. However the discourse of women and the view of language through the oratorical Sinsoseol showed the typical reversion to a male dominated society, which deleted the sensibility of feminine language and described that women were the promiscuous subject to be enlightened and the ignorant people without the knowledge of the world of life. Particularly 『Jaujong』 showed the process that male intellectuals shifted to a new public sphere which used Hangeul instead of Chinese character, Hanmun. They exclusively possessed the language of women and then they also built a new contextual hierarchy of language. Until that time, Hangeul novels had been often considered to be decadent and dissipated and the women who had used Hangeul were even ignorant of a letter. Though women protagonist appeared as a speaker, after self denial that the world of Hangeul did not mean the world of knowledge, Hangeul was reorganized to male-oriented knowledge.