THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN NON-WESTERN FEMALE WRITERS' NOVELS (original) (raw)
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The present paper discusses Ayisha Malik's Sofia Khan is not obliged. This is a debut novel by the author published in 2015. The story revolves around a Muslim girl named Sofia, living in London city with her family; hence it gives fine narrative of how a Muslim experiences in London. The study discusses how the novel responds to the western concept of Muslim women. As in the popular narrative a Muslim woman is viewed as docile, meek and submissive. The study explores how far that popular notion is accurate or the opposite. Hence to conduct this kind of reading of Sofia Khan is not obliged, theoretical framework of Orientalism is chosen. As discussed in Orientalism by Edward said East has maintained certain assumptions of West which view East particularly Islamic world as barbaric, uncivilized, and dangerous. "Orientalism carries within it the stamp of a problematic European attitude towards Islam. As data in the study is text hence the method of research is textual analysis. The study finds that Sofia defies the western notion of Muslim women being confident, independent authoritative, and assertive.
Söylem Filoloji Dergisi, 2024
We examine women’s rights and freedoms using a comprehensive framework that includes all races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic categories and is based on a systematic, conceptual, and theoretical approach. However, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was difficult to speak of a well-established and comprehensive feminist movement. In addition to the fact that there are many limits on movement and the need for reliable and fair sharing of information across different countries, social classes, racial groups, and genders, the orientalist view of the Western world has also affected the quality of feminist literature. Some major Western studies on women have portrayed Turkish women in a negative light, suggesting that they are oblivious to feminist principles. However, upon retrospective examination of British, American, and Turkish literary works created in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it becomes evident that each society has exhibited analogous quests for women’s rights and freedoms. This article aims to reveal the collective experiences of women, irrespective of their race, socioeconomic class, or ethnicity. It also aims to show how male-dominated discourse and orientalist perspectives obscure these experiences, revealing similarities in areas like education, work rights, representation, and violence, from the past to the present. Accordingly, this article provides a comparative examination of following literary works from feminist orientalist perspective: “When the Door Opened” (1908) by Sarah Grand, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “For May 1” (1923) by Yaşar Nezihe Bükülmez.
The Image of Foreigner in Emirati's Women Novel
in European Journal of Language and Literature studies, 2019
This kind of research, especially in the field of comparative studies, is crucial, because it provides a better understanding of people, culture, thought, and their way of thinking, seeing and dealing with the other. Therefore, choosing to study the image of the foreigner in Emirati women's writing can help to examine the deep dimensions of relationship with the other who does not belong to family, class, and homeland, in this society. The study, hence, aims to shed a light on women awareness and their ways to articulate their own issues, and experiences after long history of isolation and suppression that women in this country and region in general had witnessed. Moreover, the study focuses on Maysūn al Qāsimī and her first narrative controversial work Rayḥānah, aspires to reveal how the strict upbringing and education had its impacts on women's personality and thinking, and thus their ways of looking at the stranger in their home or homeland. The expected results of this study are to demonstrate women awareness and capability to disclose, to certain extents, the depth of female agony in very complicated network of political, social, economic and cultural factors that would shape the history of the whole region in postcolonial time. In addition, the study is expected to help to reach better understanding of the different roles that the foreigners have played in this society, from the female locals' point of views, and therefore, their narration.
Western Fiction and Islamic Feminism
Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 8(12) December, 2020, 2020
Colonial narratives about Islam and Muslims are filled with prejudices. The depiction of Islamic religion and Muslim societies in a generally negative and self-serving ways is likewise the consequence of experiences between Western development and Islam. The Western English fiction venture Muslims as suggestive, crude, oblivious, monsters and slave dealers. It was a colonial mindset, but this is also a fact that this trend has been intensified since 9/11, obviously due to the satanic acts of a group falsely projecting itself as the true representative of Islam. That is the reason that most of the fiction writers who somehow or the other make Islam and Muslims their main theme, utilize the terms, for example, fear mongers, maniacs, fundamentalists, and savage for Muslims. Colonial theories and histories wedded with actions of some Islamist groups have been wrongly used to portray Islam and Muslims, especially the condition of women in Islam or Muslim societies, in a negative manner by the fiction writers. A group of scholars has challenged these narratives along with the misdeeds of its own people. The Islamic Feminists have not only challenged these prejudiced notions rich in racial supremacy, they have attacked those traditions of scholarship too which helped in portraying Islam and women in a negative manner. Their discourse is helping a new form fiction written by Muslim authors wherein Islam is the central theme. This paper tries to locate different aspects of prejudiced Western fiction, Islamic Feminist discourses and the rise of a fiction which is against the traditional Islamic interpretations and the Western approach regarding Muslims.
Analyses of the Identity of Muslim Women in Modern Non-native English Fiction
2014
This article is aimed at studying the cultural and social representation of Muslims in general and Muslim women in particular by the writers of the West and then a contrastive study is presented here of the works of the non-native English writers. The image of Muslims throughout the history of English literature is distorted and there have been many unrealistic myths created about the Muslim culture by the Western literary orientalists. The writers of the west had relied mostly on their imagination hence they depicted the Muslims with a prejudice, creating images of falsehood. The non-native writers in contrast gave first hand, realistic feel of the Muslim culture and depicted social evils and mal practices that led to the distortion of the images of the Muslims in general and Muslim women in particular.
Islam, Prejudiced Western Fiction and Islamic Feminism
Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 2020
Colonial narratives about Islam and Muslims are filled with prejudices. The depiction of Islamic religion and Muslim societies in a generally negative and self-serving ways is likewise the consequence of experiences between Western development and Islam. The Western English fiction venture Muslims as suggestive, crude, oblivious, monsters and slave dealers. It was a colonial mindset, but this is also a fact that this trend has been intensified since 9/11, obviously due to the satanic acts of a group falsely projecting itself as the true representative of Islam. That is the reason that most of the fiction writers who somehow or the other make Islam and Muslims their main theme, utilize the terms, for example, fear mongers, maniacs, fundamentalists, and savage for Muslims. Colonial theories and histories wedded with actions of some Islamist groups have been wrongly used to portray Islam and Muslims, especially the condition of women in Islam or Muslim societies, in a negative manner by the fiction writers. A group of scholars has challenged these narratives along with the misdeeds of its own people. The Islamic Feminists have not only challenged these prejudiced notions rich in racial supremacy, they have attacked those traditions of scholarship too which helped in portraying Islam and women in a negative manner. Their discourse is helping a new form fiction written by Muslim authors wherein Islam is the central theme. This paper tries to locate different aspects of prejudiced Western fiction, Islamic Feminist discourses and the rise of a fiction which is against the traditional Islamic interpretations and the Western approach regarding Muslims.
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.
White Woman's Burden: A Critique of White Women's Portrayal in Selected Postcolonial Fiction
Image of white women occur frequently in postcolonial writings. This paper attempts to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the white women's portrayals in the selected Pakistani postcolonial fiction to determine the comparative discrepancy between the assumptions and reality about the role of white women in the colonies. The white women being the part of civilizing mission of the white man, are seen with a particular light by the indigenous people because in comparison to the white man, white women's role has been that of a benevolent mother. This problematizes the situation and hence calls for the investigation into the portrayals and the roles of the white women as projected by the indigenous writers. The study delimits to Forster, Sidhwa, and Hamid and analyses the selected chunks of the text under the lens of theoretical frame work proposed by Jayawardena within the postcolonial context.
" It is important to stress that a variety of positions with respect to feminism, nation, religion and identity are to be found in Anglophone Arab women's writings. This being the case, it is doubtful whether, in discussing this literary production, much mileage is to be extracted from over emphasis of the notion of its being a conduit of 'Third World subaltern women.' " (Nash 35) Building on Geoffrey Nash's statement and reflecting on Deleuze and Guattari's conceptualization of minor literature and Gloria Anzaldua's Borderland(s), we will discuss in this paper how the writings of Arab Anglophone women are specific minor and borderland narratives within minor literature(s) through a tentative (re)localization of Arab women's English literature into distinct and various categories. By referring to various bestselling English works produced by Arab British and Arab American women authors, our aim is to establish a new taxonomy that may fit the specificity of these works.