INTERPRETATION OF FEMALE IMAGES OF THE NOVEL ‘HENRIETTA TEMPLE: LOVE STORY’ BY BENJAMIN DISRAELI IN RUSSIAN TRANSLATIONS OF THE XIXTH CENTURY

Introduction. The coverage of the women’s issue was one of the predominant themes in the works of famous English writers of the XIXth century and gave the key to understanding the place of a woman in the society and her role in the development of the social progress. In this context, an appeal to the fiction of B. Disraeli (1804–1881) is relevant. The objectification of female images in his novel ‘Henrietta Temple: a Love Story’ (1837) is illustrative in terms of evolution of the woman role and her life attitudes.Aim and objectives. The aim of the research is the study of the translation peculiarities of the novel’s key female characters taking into account the current trends in the literary and social processes of Russia in the 1850s – 1860s.Material and methods. The research material included the original text of ‘Henrietta Temple: a love story’, as well as its anonymous translations published by ‘Library for Reading’ [Biblioteka dlya Chteniya] in 1859 and ‘Translations of individual novels’ [Perevody Otdel’nyh Romanov] in 1867. Historical literary, comparative, typological, and structural methods were used in the research. To identify the peculiarities of the main female images interpretation, an analysis of the original text and its translations was carried out using a methodology including five main image parameters, such as character introduction, verbal portrait, speech characteristics, description of actions and author’s attitude.Results and discussion. First acquaintance of the Russian reader with the fiction by B. Disraeli began with the translation of the novel ‘Henrietta Temple: a Love Story’ 1859. The novel of the English writer was consonant with the general trends in Russian literature of the mid-19th century and was twice anonymously translated. Each of the translations reflected not only the basic principles of literary translation, but also the position taken by the translator in relation to the issue of the role of women and their rights in Russian society. In this aspect, the interpretation of the key female characters of B. Disraeli’s novel is of interest. At the center of the narrative there are female characters involved in a love triangle: Henrietta Temple and Catherine Grandison, as well as the image of the main character mother, Constance Armine.Conclusion. The analysis demonstrates that not all the parameters of the Disraeli’s female images are reflected in Russian translations. The peculiarity of the version published in the ‘Library for Reading’ [Biblioteka dlya Chteniya] in 1859 was that the translator significantly reduced and simplified the original text of the novel due to the journal policy and translation norms, which led to simplification of new woman images, in particular Henrietta. The author of the translation published in 1867 managed to better reproduce five main parameters of the female images and recreate a new ideal of a woman capable of defending her interests and realizing herself.

translation, artistic image, emancipation, women’s issue, character introduction, speech characteristics, description of actions, author’s attitude