Analyzing George Bernard Shaw’s Portrayal of Women in the Light of Postfeminist Theory (original) (raw)
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an_article_on_feminism_in_the_fiction_of_nawal_el_saadawi
Women's rights and women are always been taken for granted, nicely and safely tucked away under the bed of patriarchy. Silence was the virtue of women and passivity their garner, but it was not always so. With women education came exposure and awareness and the inevitable reaction; feminism is a reaction, it is an assertion of being, rights and status. Literature has proved a worthy tool in interrogating the female condition. The silence was broken by women writers in the mid-sixties in the continent which correspondingly was the era of political independence of quite a number of Arabian societies. The decade, that followed, witnessed shades of feministic writing by Arabian women and has advanced the women's cause of recognition and relevance. This paper theorizes women's writing in Arabic and shows how a pattern of women assertion has emerged and has impacted the canon of Arabian Literature. Traditional societies in pre-colonial times had spheres of power and influence for women in closelyknit organizations that helped them maintain a voice. Colonialism has its merits but its new culture of ascendancy through education, white-collar jobs and money-driven economy relegated women down the ladder. Having a voice in society is often something that women in the Western world take for granted. However, in many countries, the majority of women remain silent. Not surprisingly, these are often women with the most interesting and jarring stories to tell. The works of Nawal El Saadawi delve into the lives of these oppressed women and attempt to bring attention to the silenced others of countries such as Egypt.
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In the saga of feminist history, the dawn of third decade of the present millennium is at such a juncture that it is questioning a surrogate representation of feminism. Some critics problematize the phenomenon of feminist representation and are of the opinion that truth is being displaced by certainty as displayed in ideas, pictures, and representations. Studying the progression of such representations and portrayal of feminism resulting mostly in a noise and obscenity traversing the phenomenon of an unwomanly woman this paper foregrounds the importance of actual women’s rights. Making use some oracular ideas of Suleri suggesting the need for alternative answers, this paper argues that sloganeering of iconoclastic and idiosyncratic typecasting of feminism need not be imposed on such a colossal scale across academic, polemic, and cultural platforms. Presenting this pervasive issue of feminism, womanism, and women’s rights in the light of alternate modes of understanding, this paper investigates the importance and relevance of revisiting the injunctions of our religious text and Iqbal’s feminist philosophy.
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Within the ‘New Woman’ debates within the Victorian era in Britain and the modern Muslim world (the areas of the former Ottoman Empire), one can witness a powerful feminist consciousness and astounding consistencies in the quest for gender equality, despite the difference in religious traditions, contexts, and contingencies. The debates attest to a consistency in feminist goals and challenges across time and space. The challenges include: intimate and long-standing linkages between scriptural traditions and the social order; interpretative legacies on women and their ‘nature’ that solidified cultural understandings of gender; and the relationship of these legacies to structures of power, namely patriarchy, resulting in limitations placed on women and their access to modernity. In response, women sought the undoing of regressive, patriarchal notions of gender and gender roles that suppress women in culture and law and sought more favorable religious and political expressions in support of women’s progress in their respective societies. More specifically, in the Muslim world, women of all classes began articulating a feminist consciousness in explicit ways from the nineteenth century onward. In the mid-nineteenth century, the writings of Zainab al-Fawwaz (1860-1914), Hind Nawfal (1860-1920), and ‘Afifa Karam (1883-1924) re-articulated understandings of women’s nature, deconstructing linkages between nature and moralities. By the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, women like Malak Hifni Nasif (1886-1918), Nabawiyyah Musa (1886-1951), and Huda Sha’rawi (1879-1947) tackled fixed socio-cultural notions, hierarchies, and gender-specific practice and participation, opening up avenues for women’s education, public participation, and social and political activism. In an attempt to undo patriarchal notions that suppress women in culture and law, they argued for equal religious participation and legal rights, and an expansion of roles of women beyond the bounds of domesticity. Towards the mid-to-late twentieth century, women such as Nezihe Muhiddin (1898-1958) and ‘Aisha Abd Al-Rahman (1913-1998) voiced political and religious ideas in support of women’s progress. Women in the Muslim world, in similarity to their European counterparts, broadened frontiers and constructed new sensibilities and inclusive modernities with their writing.
International Journal of Linguistics and Culture, 2020
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Modernism and Postmodernism Studies Network
Contending with the re-reading and re-writing of history that has always excluded women from its grand narratives, postmodern feminist writers have always sought to revise canonical texts from a gynocentric perspective. Through their revisionary fiction, they aimed at challenging the subordinate, marginal and invisible position of the women characters in these texts. In place of the alleged objectivity of these accounts, postmodern feminist revisionist writers transform these ancient tales while employing female insight to re-narrate the story of humanity, yet through women’s perspective. Thus, they create new texts to challenge the fundamental gender stereotypes, namely the binary images generated by the ‘collective male fantasy’ of women as divine/demonic. This reclamation additionally shatters the imposed silence upon women, while granting these female characters the voice and agency they were denied. This paper demonstrates Mohja Kahf’s re-writing of the female characters, Hajar...