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Abstract:

The article considers the problem of representation of gender identity in the novel by H. Hesse Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair’s Youth (1919). The characteristics of the main female figures are consistently analyzed, and on this basis the conclusions about the evolution of the narrator’s perception of the feminine ideal are drawn. There is a connection between the change of understanding of “femininity” and formation of the narrator’s own moral and ethical views. The protagonist’s rejection of conventional representations and perception of the world through binary oppositions, as well as his assertion of necessity to appeal to individual nature as the basic elements of his worldview, are applied in the novel not in the least for the reflection of gender. The issue of gender identity is placed in the novel on the same level as the ethical issues, thus overcoming both the idea of biological or other deterministic identity and the strict differentiation between the masculine and the feminine. The perception of the category of Jungian archetypes in the novel is also considered. The dynamics of construction and representation by the narrator of his own “I” is analyzed through psychoanalytic concepts. The problem of gender in the novels by H. Hesse has been underresearched by Russian scholars. This article offers a new approach to the writer’s legacy, allowing to read his texts from the relevant methodological perspectives.