Summary
Marine D. Ghazaryan
Key words – “The Humbles”, qoqur, love, sex, gender, psychological identification, woman, waiting, dream, reality, inner drama.
The Armenian diaspora writer Hagop Oshagan had a number of significant principles, to perceive and illustrate reality, one of which was based on the absolutization of sex. The best examples of viewing literature in this regard, is the collection “The Humbles” (1920). In “The Humbles” Oshagan mostly created characters of a certain human type – that of the poor, the wretched, and the mad, ones who he called with the generalized name of qoqur. Qoqurs are individuals, who due to mental, physical impairments, or by the whim of fate have become qoqurs from within. Qoqurs, created by Oshagan, are mainly men deprived of assumed male traits. The society was not willing to give these men a wife, and this is where their drama unfolds. As every society has certain cultural norms that shape the gender relations in the society, we have interpreted Oshakan’s characters, behavior from socialcultural aspects. At the beginning of the 20th century when in the scientific vocabulary there was no distinction between “sex” and “gender” terms, on the example of his heroes the writer shows the gender is related to society expectations and is not just a biological issue. Although gender was mentioned back in different works written in the 1300s, however the terms “gender” and “sex” were coined in the scientific terminology in 1950s. Whether Oshakan was aware of them or not is difficulat to say since there is no word “gender” in any of the stories. But the fact that the author realized the difference between biological and psychological sexes is obvious. This fact allows us to claim that the ability to depict the unconscious aesthetically is typical of Oshakan as a writer.