Images of Children in the Artistic Prose of Olena Pchilka

Abstract

The article deals with a certain corpus of prose works by Olena Pchilka, created more
for an adult reader, in the aspect of figuring children there. Their roles are usually
accidental, episodic but sometimes even main. In particular, the peculiarities of
finding these small heroes in a particular artistic plane, their occupations, interests,
social statuses, psychology of actions, character development, dependence of
children’s stories on the stories of their relatives, closed persons, their surroundings,
as well as tendencies in children upbringing as author cognized and undestood them
are revealed. Almost without focusing on the details of clothing, the appearance of
children, limited to details (but rather detailing their way of life), Olena Pchilka
aspired to show the inner being of her characters, and even more, perhaps, to show
their actions. Depicted, whether comprehensively or fragmentary, children in that
writer works never were accidental and represented their environment, the different
layers of Ukrainian society in the last decades of the 19th – beginning of the 20th
centuries, and furthermore their contemporary family upbringing, interpersonal
relationships in general.