FEMININE WORLD OF ANN OAKLEY’S NOVELS

Abstract

allows to derive some vistas for the further development of events after the narrative is over and the reader closes the book: is the new family’s life going to be cloudless and smooth if the wife proclaims selfesteem and self-assurance and her husband is much older than her? will the relations within the family change in case Matilda’s career promotion does not progress? Ann Oakley leaves many questions for a curious reader to ponder on yet the only point remains evident: any development or continuation of the plot are feminine-focused, female coloured. CONCLUSIONS Ann Oakley constructs culturally relevant identities. A diverse range of female characters accumulates the postmodern worldview. On the one hand, these are individuals with distinctive traits and established values; on the other – they exemplify lack of autonomy, consumption dependence and reference to the synchronic paradigm in its broad sense. The “feminine” features of the analysed novels are identified in such aspects: the events that trigger the plot development are brought about by a female character; these events arise from the female character’s connectedness (family, job, romance) and are specified by a traditionally accepted feminine approach towards their qualification and evaluation; as far as the three novels bear the signals of postmodern philosophy there are obvious transformations noticeable in female characters representation, in particular, their acquirement of agency features translated through the female activity, resoluteness, determinism implemented in both the narrative flow and lingual units. SUMMARY The paper concerns the significance of identity explication in a plot development. Verbal means of feminine identity representation are considered to be text constructs determining the contents and succession of plot events. The concepts of agency and connectedness serve the matrix within which feminine and masculine characters are treated as bearing stereotyped traits. The study of Ann Oakley’s novels “Matilda’s Mistake”, “The Men’s Room”, and “A Proper Holiday” proves that the scope of events and the way of their narration are derived from the