<劍女>와 <黑白衛>에 나타난 俠女의 양상과 여성 주체성

초록

This study analyzes the formation of female subjectivity in narratives of “becoming a chivalrous woman (俠女-becoming)” through a comparative reading of the late-Joseon classical Chinese novel, Sword Woman(劍女), and the Qing-dynasty zaju drama, Black and White Guards(黑白衛). Although produced in different cultural contexts, both works depict the internal transformation of female protagonists from “compliance” to “departure” through the mediating perspective of male or master figures who function as agents of power. The analytical framework combines Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theory of “becoming” with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. The study examines how female subjects form their subjectivity through the stages of “compliance–questioning–departure” within patriarchal power structures that coexist with Confucian and religious orders. The heroine of Sword Woman reveals the disciplinary nature of Confucian ethics through her movement between compliance and departure. At the same time, Nie Yinniang in Black and White Guardsdemonstrates the internalized order of a patriarchal structure shaped by both religion and Confucianism through practices of cultivation and ascension. Although both figures ultimately reach a form of “departure, ” their subjectivity is once again redefined within the evaluative frameworks of social order and power discourse. This study argues that narratives of women’s “becoming chivalrous” in East Asian classical literature do not represent simple external resistance to power. Rather, these represent a process wherein female subjects repeatedly negotiate compliance and doubt within power itself, thereby constituting their own existence. The value of female subjectivity lies not in a completed state, but in the ongoing process of “becoming.”

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