Abstract

This thesis discusses the post-war law recognition and the process of gender antagonism and confrontation described in Pyoryudo written by Pak Kyongni. The law has the right to be executed as a 'justice' that protects the order of the state and the rights of individuals. However, the problem of gender inequality was amplified by the conservative discourses that tried to reestablish the traditional hierarchy in the situation of colonial law and US military rule after the Korean War. In the context of law and norms, gender is constructed a priori and reflected as a result of recognition. This novel makes discussions of literary jurisprudence possible by presenting gender inequality in postwar law in Korea. The 'legal' struggle and the 'jail' narrative recreated in Pyoryudo show humans alienated from the law. The story describes a state of vacuum, a 'closed door', in front of the law through the contents of judgment of the female prisoners and the situation of imprisonment. This novel recreates the process of restraint and oppression of gender by law through the victimized mother from the concubinage, the sexual collapse of Gwang-hee, a waitress of a coffee shop, and the trial of Kang Hyeon-hoe, the manageress of the coffee shop. And the reaction of fear and anxiety caused by the patriarchal law becomes the cause of seizure and murder intention. The law, which was under the postwar colonial restriction, was enforced by promotion of the advocacy of patriarchy and the maternal myth of a good wife and wise mother, and it was violent in the justification of reconstruction. If the postwar social chaos was controlled by the name of reconstruction and the ‘law’ realized the firm belief in the sex difference of patriarchal ideology, this novel was a narrative that resisted and cracked such customary law and order which was centered around the paternal authority.