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Abstract:

The article focuses on the sociocultural phenomenon of the socalled “Manka’s literature”, i. e. naïve and aesthetically lacking texts. The novellas of two Russian-speaking Latvian women writers — “My Sin. The Tragedy of a Marriage” (1934) by Anna Arays and “A Modern Marriage” (1935) by Alexandra Katkova — can undoubtedly be attributed to this phenomenon. Both works record authentic autobiographical events of the authors’ lives and represent their immediate response to the profound transformations of the institution of marriage in Europe in the 1930s. The analysis of the narrative strategies and techniques employed in these novellas (the tactic of “today once more” in the organization of time and the strategy of the “unspeakable” or “concealed” as a principle of selection) makes it possible to draw conclusions about the authors’ intentions. Alongside its journalistic and autopsychotherapeutic functions, “reretelling” is used by both women writers to correct their self-identification, i. e. contrary to their real life situation they assert their conformity to the traditional female role model of the “ideal mother and wife”.

Keywords: women’s autobiographical literature, trauma, identity, narrative strategies, autopsychotherapeutic function of women’s writing.