“Maria” as a character from narrative, which can represents Ukrainian mentality from a psychoanalytic critisism (first attempts)

Ukrainian literature has an important characteristic – we always need to have an emotional victim, and it must be young kind and hardworking person. It is like a symbol of  the Ukrainian nation: we are good and Destiny tests us to give us a better life awards. It is still one of the main characteristics of Ukrainians, and of course, there is at least one character like this in all our stories from the folk narratives to modern novels.

 

photo by Melissa Zhabotynska

model: Yanina

Usually this character is represented as young girl, who is an orphan and now she must work hard for a survival for her stepmother or distant relatives. This girl has these characteristics.

1.   Her name is usually Maria. Sometimes it can be Oksana. There are very common and popular names in our country. So almost every girl can try character’s destiny on herself.

2.   She is young, usually 15-18 years old,  so she is in a very emotional period of first love and marriage-time for girls in our country at that time(now it almost the same, but people don’t want to show it).

3.   She is an orphan. Or her parents die in the middle of the story. So she has a difficult life situation and must work hard even for basic food and a place for sleeping.

4.   She is beautiful. She is “first girl in the village”. She always has unreal beauty, but she doesn’t realize it.

5.   She embodies kindness, humanity and the spiritual and bodily purity. It is definitely a positive character without any dark past or bad thoughts. Even when Destiny tests her (and usually it is really bad test), our “Maria” understands everything and just takes a lesson for a future(sometimes she dies because of life-drama or kills herself or turns into some flower, but still she represents only “Good”).

6.   She always falls in love. (And it is almost every time drama and there is difference only in conditions.) There are 3 types of love:

-         “Maria” & young good guy

They fall in love and everything seems to be okay, but:

a.     He dies

b.     She dies

c.      He goes to the army(at that time it is for 25 years)

d.     They can’t be together because of money (usually absence of money)

 As a result

-         She has a depression and dies

-         She get married with old but rich man

-         “Maria” & Russian soldier (bad guy)

She falls in love with him. He uses her purity and credulity and just has fun with her.

As a result

She became pregnant and:

-         Her parents can’t stand this shame and drive her away from home

-         She can’t this stand shame and drive away from home

-         She can’t stand this shame and dies/ kills herself

-         She is strong and she starts to raise a child alone, but dies because of hard work

And we have new orphan – an emotional victim.

-         “Maria” & old rich man

She is young and beautiful. He is old and rich. He wants to have some fun. She needs to be somebody’s wife and have a social life. She usually can’t stand him, but she is obedient and does what society wants from her.

As a result

-         She became depressed and dies

So we have usual portrait of Ukrainian girl from narrative – kind, hardworking and emotional and she must fight for her happiness. Even now this type of character is actual. Ukrainians always spare “Maria” and wish her only the best.

And we also can try this portrait on our country. We, like “Maria”, deserve better life, but we need to suffer and fight for it. It is one side of our mentality – to be a victim.