Woman's Fate or Woman's Burden in the Artistic Thought of Mikheil Javakhishvili

Abstract

Female characters occupy a prominent place in the works of Mikheil Javakhishvili. Accordingly, this issue has been given due attention in Georgian scholarly circles.

The question of what role Mikheil Javakhishvili's female characters are assigned in society has become a subject of keen interest. How they are created piques the interest of every generation.

For Mikheil Javakhishvili, those female characters who have secured a significant place in the Georgian consciousness are of great importance. The writer attempts to portray each female character in such a way that she becomes a role model, with her actions serving as an example for future generations. He aims to show the reader where mistakes were made on the path of weakness.

The author condemns a woman's frivolity, greed, flightiness, and unworthiness. Mikheil Javakhishvili despises hollow characters, such as Margarita Kaplaniashvili and Ketevan Akhatneli; the reader finds it logical that these main characters become further corrupted and sink into a quagmire.

By creating such artistic figures, Mikheil Javakhishvili showed us that a person, regardless of the class to which they belong or the historical period in which they live, should not be stripped of their human conscience and honor. This is all the more true for a woman, who should not be swayed toward what she expects to benefit from, as this is an unguaranteed and temporary pleasure.

The writer's publicistic thought, where we read the following, also speaks to this point:

"Finding one's way and achieving victory is possible only through labor and honesty. Laziness is mischief; lies and falsehood will sooner or later inevitably ruin a person";

"To humiliate oneself is worse than arrogance";

"It is amazing how quickly the fallen nobles, the disgraced generals, and the debased men find one another!".

By creating original and unique female characters, Mikheil Javakhishvili exposed the reality of the era. The fate of his female characters turned out to be the heavy yoke of the epoch itself; the degradation of a woman's personality is a phenomenon just as dangerous for the nation as "Jaqoism" (the brutish opportunism of the character Jaqo), "Kvachism" (the roguish adventurism of Kvachi), or "Kvarkvareism" (the demagoguery of Kvarkvare).

As for their burden, when a person becomes a slave to their instincts and their actions are guided by egoism, the burden they may have shouldered to achieve a set goal becomes far greater and harder to bear, and it is possible they may even be crushed beneath it. People wavering "between two masters" are conflicted and have lost their way, and this issue became one of the most painful problems in Mikheil Javakhishvili's work.