Translating New Woman: The Circulation and Appropriation of A Doll's House in Colonial Korea

Choi Haeweol ANU-Korea Foundation Professor of Korean and Gender Studies, Australian National University 

Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House caused a global sensation in the late nineteenth century. The play received a great deal of attention in East Asia, where it was translated, performed and hotly debated. Nora, the play's protagonist, became an icon for the “New Woman” (sin yŏsŏng in Korean), an emblematic figure representing the pursuit of selfhood. In this presentation, I historicize the figure of Nora within the context of Korean gender politics as a representation of both the quintessence of modernity and the antithesis of traditional "womanly virtue". In doing so, I take translation as a key platform for investigating the complex dynamics of the “contact zone” against the background of Korea’s colonization by Japan, which established a major gateway for the transnational flow of ideas, images and people.  I specifically examine the tensions that characterize the Korean representation of Nora.  The representations include the adaptation of Nora in a Korean novel that was supposed to be a sequel to Ibsen’s play, the use of the figure of Nora in a feminist poem, and lives of “Korea’s Nora,” the label used in the popular press for several actual New Women. Through a close examination of the creative process that took place in the introduction, circulation and appropriation of A Doll's House in colonial Korea, I demonstrate how the play served not only as a vehicle for experiencing the modern self, but as a proxy for critiquing the notion of Western modernity and feminism that had yet to be localised. It also reveals the significant chasm between the hyperbolic image of the modern Western woman and the locally-rooted gender politics within the colonial condition. That chasm reflects the tension between local/national demands and the global trends that both women and men experienced in envisioning modern womanhood.