Women in Bulgarian Folklore
A substantial part of the Bulgarian folklore system lies on the binary opposition of male-female. Each concept in the folklore universe is gendered. From a structuralist point of view, it is important to talk about the presence of this binary because they exist to shape the readers’ worldview into accepting one and rejecting the other (Levi-Strauss, 1955). For example, we can’t perceive what good is if we don’t know what evil looks like. With that in mind, when it comes to the female half of the binary symbolism, there are two broad categories of “female” concepts - the cluster of the home and the cluster of the mystical, the unfathomable. So, this half of the binary has its own binary engrained in it too. In my animation, the two characters, the Golden Girl and the Samodiva, respectively, occupy exactly these two categories, the housewife, and the forest spirit. And in the Bulgarian folklore universe, the binary is not strictly male and female. It’s not entirely that the “female = evil” and “male = good”. There is a place for the female in the male binary, and there is a place for his supporter, but the independent woman represents a lot of what is “evil” in the world. From a male-centric point of view, the two clusters are the “conquered” and the “unconquerable”. This patriarchal attitude seems to transcend the boundaries of political regimes and remain solid over the past 500 years or more. For example, the Socialist Regime in Bulgaria did plenty of work to tune folklore with socialist values, making sure to highlight how hardworking the female folklore characters were (Silverman, 1983). But they did not have any interest in shifting the patronizing attitude that floods both clusters of the feminine.