"What are girls made of?": Gender and Corporeality in Yuri Nagibin's Story "Echo"

Abstract

Nagibin's short story was one of the first pioneering efforts to address sexuality as a serious issue in young adult literature of the Soviet era. While children's literature carefully avoided depicting children as sexual beings, Nagibin took a risk by demonstrating to his young readers the complexity of portraying the human body as a sexual object. His main character, a little girl named Vit'ka, is seen through the eyes of a young boy who initially denies Vit'ka any sexuality despite seeing her swimming naked but later acknowledges her femininity and beauty only when seeing her dressed as a girl. The story depicts three stages of the girl's transformation: first, her nakedness that both characters accept as gender-neutral; second, her being dressed as a boy and walking around in shorts with a naked torso; and finally, the transition to a "fashioned" body when she is dressed as a proper girl. These three stages of bodily representation provide a confusing duality for the young reader: on the one hand, the story challenges the established sense of Soviet propriety (that nakedness should be shameful); on the other hand, the depiction of Vit'ka being dressed according to appropriate gender codes stresses conformity to rules of "proper" behavior. Thus, instead of challenging dress codes as symbols of proper behavior, the author ultimately surrenders his characters' freedom to the prudent norms and regulations of Soviet society.