THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN NON-WESTERN FEMALE WRITERS' NOVELS (original) (raw)

This study has aimed to investigate the representation of non-Western women in works of Zadie Smith's White Teeth and Elif Shafak's Honour, who are also Eastern rooted, too. Most of the time representation of Eastern women in western discourse have been prejudicial and in postcolonial term representation of non-western women has been obliged to be a part of the dichotomy through which the West defines itself. Various feminisms that developed during this process, let alone advocating the rights of women belonging to different cultures and religions, they have left the oriental woman as the other because of white female selectivism of Western feminism. At the end of this study, it will be underlined that the promised equality and freedom does not embrace the third world women most of the time. In this three-part work, representations of Western and Oriental female characters in Smith and Shafak's works will be examined by using Foucault's power and power discourses, Bhabha's hybridity and third space discourse. Both novels will be analysed and quoted in their original English version. In addition, Said's orientalism discourse will be used to demonstrate the otherization process the characters are exposed to in the multicultural London environment. During this analysis, the factors of male hegemony, language, religion, society which affect the development of characters will be emphasized.