Домашние дела литературных персонажей

Abstract

The article examines the representation of domestic work of female and male characters in children’s literature of the 20th –21st centuries. The research is based on the Corpus of Russian Prose for Children and Youth (DetCorpus). In Soviet and post-Soviet children’s literature, male characters are overrepresented by male authors, the same tendency is present in literature for adults. In contrast, female authors are characterized by a more egalitarian distribution of characters. The analysis of the verbs denoting household work and used in the past tense shows that female characters are more often depicted by certain types of household work by authors of both sexes. Thus, women writers are more likely to portray women doing household work since they portray more women in general. Children’s literature can trace a
rich tradition of the symbolic inclusion of male characters in domestic work. The article describes a circle of romantic and adventure topoi, which depict men and boys engaged in the arrangement of everyday life.

Keywords: gender, domestic work, byt, realism, adventure literature, corpus research, quantitative analysis