Comfort and Support for 27 Women Who Pioneered Their Lives, Publication of 'Women Reunited'

From Joan of Arc to Kim Ji-young, Voices That Inspire New Dreams and Open Different Lives for Women

The essay "Women Reunited," containing comfort and encouragement from 27 women who have pioneered their own lives, has been published. It vividly presents the diverse voices of women who have autonomously led their lives without breaking under the constraints of their times.

The author, Seong Ji-yeon, revisited books, biographies, and literary works featuring women protagonists from various fields, ranging from artists to social and natural scientists, and from politicians to novel characters. She calmly reflects on their intense lives in this book. It captures the empathy and inspiration their lives and thoughts evoke, meeting women who made us dream of new lives and opened the door to different lives.

The book is broadly divided into three parts: "Women Who Faced Their Era" (Part 1), from Joan of Arc to Lee Tae-young; "Women Who Illuminated the Mind" (Part 2), from Marie Curie to Park Rae-hyun; and "Women Who Loved Life" (Part 3), from Jane Eyre to Kim Ji-young.

In Part 1, "Women Who Faced Their Era," the author revisits American feminists such as Betty Friedan, Susan Faludi, and Rebecca Solnit to reconsider the meaning of feminism in our society. Recently, in our society, backlash and division have become prominent following the Me Too movement. Various statistics show that the reality of gender equality in our country ranks among the lowest globally, even below Turkey, an Arab region country. The author emphasizes, as Rebecca Solnit stresses, that feminism is not a zero-sum game that takes away men's rights.

Although not explicitly feminist, the author also pays close attention to women who overcame the limitations of their times and actively navigated their lives. These include French national hero Joan of Arc, American singer Joan Baez, and German politician Angela Merkel. Among them are Korean women as well. The author reevaluates Empress Myeongseong, who was burdened with the responsibility of national ruin due to colonial historiography, and Na Hye-seok, a painter during the Japanese colonial period when patriarchy was strong, and looks into the life of Lee Tae-young, the only female lawyer in South Korea until the 1970s after liberation.

Part 2 continues with encounters with "Women Who Illuminated the Mind." First, the author highlights the lives of women who achieved remarkable accomplishments in fields traditionally considered male domains. Marie Curie, who faced considerable discrimination for being a woman, stood tall as the greatest natural scientist of the 20th century by winning two Nobel Prizes. Jane Goodall, who overcame the difficulties of field research in Africa and achieved world-class results in biology, is also included.

Especially notable is the dedication shown by Austrian nurses Marianne and Margaret on Sorokdo Island. These two, who stayed for a long time on Sorokdo, located on Korea’s southern coast, devotedly cared for Hansen’s disease patients and proved the goodwill that exists in the human heart. The author says that the religious love they practiced throughout their lives helps steady the center of a life that can easily become unsettled.

Women Reunited
Photo by Book in the Gap

Part 3, "Women Who Loved Life," deals with encounters with the real person Anne Frank and eight women from novels. The protagonists the author meets again after turning fifty come with meanings quite different from those at the first meeting in youth. The author interprets Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina, and Anne of Green Gables as women who actively pioneer their own lives. Through the real figure Anne Frank, the author delivers the message that anyone can overcome adversity and pursue their own meaning.

The two protagonists from Korean novels chosen by the author are Gi-suk from Park Wan-seo’s novel "Mother’s Stake" and Kim Ji-young from Cho Nam-joo’s novel "Kim Ji-young, Born 1982." Through reflection on Gi-suk’s life, the author dreams of a society where gender equality is realized beyond the burden imposed on motherhood. To overcome the "life of Kim Ji-young," which is increasingly distant in our society due to childbirth and childcare, the author insists that in addition to social conditions allowing women to freely choose and continue what they want to do, support from both women and men is necessary.

Author Seong Ji-yeon was born in 1970 in Daejeon. She moved to Busan during childhood and attended high school there. She studied humans and society at Yonsei University’s Department of Sociology and earned a master’s degree with research on Kim Su-young’s poetry and a doctoral degree with research on Choi In-hoon’s novels from the same university’s graduate school of Korean Language and Literature. She briefly worked as a part-time lecturer at Yonsei University. Her published book includes "Adult Life Lessons (2022)."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.