Third World Women and Patriarchal Society in The Story of Zahra
Abstract views: 148 / PDF downloads: 113
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.53032/tcl.2020.4.6.01Keywords:
Patriarchy, Patriarchal society, Zahra, Third World, OppressionAbstract
This article focuses on the relationship of Zahra; the heroine of the novel, The story of Zahra by Hanan al-Shaykh with "male" community. Zahra is not only the victim of her family but of an entire society also. Her father who is always cynical of her face which is full of pimples and expected spinsterhood, to her mother and her betrayal of her husband with her lover, to her spoiled and failed brother, her family friend who raped her and forced her to abort twice. Her failed marriage to a friend of her uncle and her return to her homeland, which seemed to be suffering from the scourge of war, and her belief in her ability to distract the mind of the sniper by establishing a relationship with him. Zahra couldn't be an independent individual in her society, but a tool that everyone can see from his perspective. Zahra suffered from the oppression of the patriarchal society, which gave the man the oppression and abuse of women without any deterrent or a pretext for their oppression. Hanan al-Shaykh The Story of Zahra is a real example of what most women in the Third World suffer from the dominance of male society and their control over women, spiritually and physically.
Downloads
References
Accad, Evelyne. "Gender and Violence in Lebanese War Novels." From Patriarchy to Empowerment: Women's Participation, Movements, and Rights in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007. pp.293-310.
. . . . Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East, New York: New York University Press, 1990.
Adams, Anne Marie. "Writing Self, Writing Nation: Imagined Geographies in the Fiction of Hanan al-Shaykh." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature,20.2 (2001): pp. 201-216. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/464483
al-Shaykh, Hanan. Barid Beirut, Cairo: Mu'assasat Dar al-Hilal, 1992.
. . . . Hikayat Zahra, Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 1980.
. . . . The Story of Zahra, Trans. Peter Ford. New York: Anchor Books, 1995.
Booth, Alison. "Introduction: The Sense of a Few Endings". Famous Last Words, Ed. Alison Booth. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. pp. 1-32.
Foucault, Michel. History of Madness, Trans. Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Ghandour, Sabah. "Hanan al-Shaykh's Hikayat Zahra: A Counter-Narrative and a Counter-History." Intersections: Gender, Nation and Community in Arab Women's Novels, Eds. Lisa Suhair Majaj, Paula W. Sunderman and Therese Saliba. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002. pp. 231-249.
Hosken, Fran. "Female Genital Mutilation and Human Rights." Feminist Issues 1, no. 3: 3–24, 1981. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02685563
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space, Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
LeMoncheck, Linda. Dehumanizing Women: Treating Persons as Sex Objects, Rowan and Allanheld, 1985.
Lindsay, Beverley, ed. 1983. Comparative Perspectives of Third World Women: The Impact of Race, Sex, and Class, New York: Praeger, 1983.
Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society, New York, London, Sydney, Schenkman, 1975, pp. 99-102.
Minces, Juliette. The House of Obedience: Women in Arab Society. London: Zed Press, 1980.
Monique , Deveaux,. "Feminism and Empowerment: A Critical Reading of Foucault." Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology: An Interdisciplinary Reader, Eds. Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Robin Lydenberg and Christina Gilmartin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 236 -258.
Potts, Annie. The Science/Fiction of Sex: Feminist Deconstruction and the Vocabularies of Heterosex, New York: Routledge, 2002.
Sharabi, Hisham. Al-Nizam al-AbawiwaIshkaliyyatTakhalluf al Mujtama‘ al-‘Arabi,Beirut, Nelson, 4thed., 2000, p. 13.
. . . . Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society, New York & Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988.
Tapade Chandra, Mohanty. "Introduction" and "Under Western Eyes." Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, Eds. Mohanty, Russo, Torres. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1991.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
ARK
License
Copyright (c) 2020 The Creative Launcher
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.