„Being a woman is a bloody drudgery” – pseudo-feminist creations of the heroines of contemporary retellings based on the example of Midnight in Everwood by M.A. Kuzniar

Abstract

The article analyzes the pseudo-feminist ways of creating the heroines of contemporary retellings. The subject of reflection was the novel Midnight in Everwood by M.A. Kuzniar, which is a reinterpretation of the story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King E.T.A. Hoffmann. It was pointed out that the authoresses, by reinterpreting classic stories, want to participate in contemporary discourses that postulate acceptance of various differences, multiplicity and equality of worldviews. For this purpose, they introduce various refractions into their novels, e.g. they try to regain female characters, emphasizing their active role in the plot. At the same time, they try to emphasize their features commonly understood as feminist, falling into the opposite phenomenon – pseudofeminism. This is particularly visible in measures such as demonizing men (e.g. lack of positive male characters, showing everyone as bad or weak) and caricatured emphasis on female strength and independence.