Public invasion of private female space: In women’s literature

Posted by: adonis49 on: March 31, 2017

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War in white sheets: The public invasion of the private female space in women’s literature

Reine Azzi posted her thesis in Journal of Arts and Humanities

Abstract

The dichotomy between the “angel in the house’ and the “devil in the flesh” used to symbolize the restrictions facing women in 19^th century literature.

With the advance of the different stages of feminism, this (dichotomy) began to slowly dissipate as more female heroines began to be depicted as a major part of both the private and public spheres.

Does a more prolific female presence eliminate this opposition?

This research paper will focus on whether such a distinction continues to preside over the works of female novelists, and the works under study are Hanan Al-Shaykh’s The Story of Zahra and Women of Sand and Myrrh in addition to Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook.

Full Text:

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References

ACCAD, EVELYNE, Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East, New York: New York UP, 1990.

AL-SHAYKH, HANAN, The Story of Zahra: A Novel, 1986, Trans. Peter Ford, New York: Anchor Books, 1995.

Women of Sand and Myrrh, 1989, trans. Catherine Cobham, London: Quartet Books, 1993.

COOKE, MIRIAM, War’s Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.

DARRAJ, SUSAN, “We All Want the Same Things Basically’: Feminism in Arab Women’s Literature”, Women and Language 26.1, (Spring 2003), pp. 79 – 82.

GELBLUM, AMIRA, “Ideological Crossroads: Feminism, Pacifism, and Socialism”, Borderlines: Genders and Identities in War and Peace 1870 – 1930, Ed. Billie Melman, New York: Routledge, 1998, pp. 307 – 327.

GRIFFITHS, MORWENNA, Feminisms and the Self: The Web of Identity, London: Routledge, 1995.

LESSING, DORIS, The Golden Notebook, 2nd ed. London: Flamingo, 1972.

MOKHTAR, KHAOULA, “Becoming Liberated in Beirut”, Women of the Mediterranean, ed. Monique Gadant, trans. A. M. Berret, New Jersey: Zed Books, 1986, pp 5 – 11.

SALIBA, THERESE, “Arab Feminism at the Millennium”, Signs, Vol. 25, No. 4, Feminisms at a Millennium, (Summer, 2000), pp. 1087-1092.

SEGAL, LYNNE, Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism, London: Virago, 1987

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