THE DIARY GENRE AS A FORM OF DEPICTING FEMALE SELF-AWARENESS IN THE NOVELS «EXCERPTS FROM THE DIARY OF A YOUNG WOMAN» BY YU. V. ZHADOVSKAYA AND «MISS SOPHIA'S DIARY» BY DING LING

Lin Y., Isakova I. N.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the artistic structure of the diary genre as a form of depicting female self-consciousness. The article uses the methods of structuralism, psychoanalysis, comparativism and the cultural-historical method, analyzes in detail the stylistic and compositional structure of the diary novels «Excerpts from the Diary of a Young Woman» by the Russian writer Yu. V. Zhadovskaya and «Miss Sophia's Diary» by the Chinese writer Ding Ling. It was found that both novels exhibit strong emotionality and lyricism, the composition is determined by the heroines’ imagination about themselves, about others and about the ideal world, and the main feature of a women's diary is the dominance of the emotional principle and the chaotic nature of self-determination. However, in Ding Ling's novel, a more violent conflict is traced, because the heroine Sophia is more difficult to understand herself. In this case it is indicated that the differences between Ding Ling and Yu. V. Zhadovskaya are due to the difference in socio-cultural conditions in the two countries, but the structure of the novels is not fundamentally different, because the diary genre “can go beyond cultural differences and reproduce the general structure of human self-awareness”.

Keywords:diary genre, women's narrative, female psychology, self-consciousness, structure, Yu. V. Zhadovskaya, Ding Ling