The Evil Witch of Slavic Mythology. Reading Myth, Gender and Narrative Identity: Dubravka Ugrešić’s Novel Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (2008)

When a myth's cultural and narrative structure and scope are radically ruptured in a contemporary novel, especially when the myth in question is as culturally entrenched as the Slavic myth of Baba Yaga, readers must analyse the implications of this break in narratological and gender identity formation. Dubravka Ugrešić's novel drastically subverts and questions overall mythological assumptions about the constitution of (female) gender and locates these issues in contemporary society's obsession with old age and ageing itself, thus giving the stereotype of the old, ugly and evil woman (who in most cultures is represented as a witch) a feminist strength. Not only does the novel play with Slavic culture's perception of ageing women, but it also highlights the triptychal structure of the characters and narrative and, in doing so, gives the myth its narratological justification. This chapter will show that the novel questions the validity of gender formation in modern culture and society by placing these issues in a timeless or, one might say, a time saturated context – that of myths. By transgressing or even breaking the boundaries of time, the novel must do the same on the level of the text itself; the middle section portraying the three ageing heroines (connecting the story to numerous examples of vengeful women in mythology who take the fates of others into their own hands and often come in threes) constitutes the timeless and central section of the triptych, while the other two serve to explain it (the last section of the novel is a short glossary on Baba Yaga related terms). The question of gender (and) identity constitution thus cannot and should not be read outside of the text and the structure of the narrative.