Bohemica Olomucensia

Author in Between Two Discourses: Abortion in a Literary Work and Media Interviews by Kateřina Tučková

The aim of the transdisciplinary case study is to analyse how the topic of abortion is captured in the novel Bílá Voda by Kateřina Tučková and how it is interpreted in the discourse of the author's media interviews. The novel characters Agnieszka, Maciek, Lena, sister Evarista, a Polish priest, and priest Stauber took a position on abortion in internal monologues or verbal statements; they use explicitly naturalistic arguments against abortion. The ideological message of the novel is unequivocally and repeatedly pro-life. In her media interviews though, the author declares that she rejects the Catholic church's stance on a woman's right to make decisions about her body; more importantly, she repeatedly emphasizes that the idea of the right to an abortion was included in the novel from its initial version as its main pillar. The comparison of the novel's narrative with the author's media interviews shows their mutual inconsistency. Analytical psychology of C. G. Jung explains this situation; a work of art is rooted in the collective unconscious and transcends the personality of individual creator. During the writing process, unconscious archetypes inherited from generations of ancestors manifest themselves as compulsive automatisms that cannot be influenced by the author's will and reason. The modern feminist pro-choice attitudes are present in the rational component of the psyche of K. Tučková, but as a writer she has become a tool verbalizing the basic archetype of motherhood.

Keywords: Bílá Voda; Kateřina Tučková; Carl Gustav Jung; abortion