An Estrange(d) Woman in the Modern Polish Novel

Abstract

Maria Kuncewiczowa has gained an important place among modern Polish literature novelists with her psychological novel entitled Cudzoziemka (The Stranger Woman). The novel, which based on the theme of "alienation", one of the popular concepts of the twentieth century, reects the psychological changes, caused by the experience of the focus gure, Róża Żabczyńska. Róża Żabczyńska is an unhappy woman who feels strange even beside her family, can not reconile with today and therefore always runs away to past. Her big love whom she left behind, incompleted music career and unfullled dreams capture her in a great sense of strangeness which starts from Russia and extends to Poland. In her work which is an example of psychological novel, the author frequently uses the technique of stream of consciousness and internal monologues. While creating a bi-directional time stream to go away from the chronological time sequence, at the same time she gets the reader follow the events through the mind of the focus gure. She expands her psychological work with the perspectives of Róża's lineage, social position, traditions and customs. By this way, she discusses the focus gure at many levels and in a three-dimensional reality. In this study, the focus gure of the novel entitled The Stranger Woman will be analyzed on the axis of estrangement concept

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