In the Dark of the Night: Selected Short Fiction (Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature, Vol. 2)

This is the second volume of a six-volume series entitled Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature. The purpose of the series is to make the short fiction of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Ukrainian women writers - early feminists and social activists - accessible to readers of English. The works selected range from vignettes and sketches to novelettes, and together they constitute a compelling social history of an era during which the mortar of social mores, religious beliefs, and gender distinctions began to crumble, wreaking havoc with personal and societal relations.

What these authors had in common was an appreciation of the power of literature as a vehicle of social and political activism, and a commitment to the amelioration of the position of women. Their exploration of gender issues cuts across ethnic and social divisions, describes the often devastating consequences of social conditioning, and documents both the promise and the human cost of change. The translation of these works permits the message of these women to transcend temporal, geographical, and linguistic boundaries.

The first author, Dniprova Chayka (1861-1927), wrote her short stories under the influence of populism, and they belong to the ethnographic-realistic school of literature. Her publications aroused the ire of the authorities, m any of her manuscripts were confiscated, and some came to light only recently.

The writing of the second author, Lyubov Yanovska (1861-1933), reflects her deep understanding of and compassion for both the peasantry and the intellegentsia of her time, each caught in the debilitating mores and social structures of their separate worlds. Her works bridge the ethnographic-realistic and the newer modernistic-psychological movement.