scholarly journals Convergence of Biology and Gender Identity: A Study of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eyes

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 182-198
Author(s):  
Dr. Vanamala S.M.
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Biological Markers ◽  
Real Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Psychological Consequences ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Anatomical Difference ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Cultural Pressures ◽  
Exact Point

The concept of gender and the related practices are born at the intersection of biology and politics. Biological markers; physical, physiological and psychological are politicized for hierarchical positioning of man and woman. The nexus between biology and politics has also generated the notion of ‘immutability’ of woman’s ‘gendered self’. Women too, having interiorized the inferiority of the self unquestioningly and have shown little inclination to redefine her-‘self’ after having accepted the nature’s role in her physical and physiological formation. The inability for better ‘self’ definition is also due to the failure to distinguish the exact point of confluence between biology and politics in the socially ascribed gender identities. Caught in the imbroglio woman has suffered crippled social and psychological consequences and the same is well substantiated in the novel The Bluest Eye by African American writer Toni Morrison. The women characters in the novel are paradigms of real life situations. While some do acutely suffer from social and psychological deprivation having interiorized the inferiority of their biological markers, others handle affirmatively the socially ascribed deprivations of their physical self by understanding the nexus between biology and cultural politics. The novel successfully explores the fact that distinct anatomical difference between man and woman or the biological identities of humans should not be the cause or source of discriminatory practices. Or in other words the novel denies the inferiority of woman as something  hermetically sealed and that social factors; advantages of birth (like race and social class), socio-cultural pressures, cultivation of mental culture and many more are of great consequence for both the formation of ‘positive self- identity’ by woman  and for challenging of gender significations.

scholarly journals The Image of New Woman as Portrayed in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Novel The Lowland

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 92-98
Author(s):  
D. Kavitha ◽  
Prof. M. Neeraja ◽  
Prof. M. Neeraja
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
New Woman ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Jhumpa Lahiri ◽  
The New Woman ◽  
Major Shift

The last decade of the Victorian era witnessed a major shift in the social attitude of the woman. It was a break away from the patriarchal system, and women emerging as independent being and moving towards achieving gender equality. The ‘New Woman’ is considered as a precursor to the feminist movement and thus the legacy of New Woman lives on to this day. Jhumpa Lahiri, the significant writer of the Indian diaspora has emerged on the global literary scene with her remarkable writings. The novel has a compelling plot of family relations. It delineates the tender fraternal bond between Subhash and Udayan and how it gets affected by the various paths they chose in their lives. This intensely emotional tale unfolds diverse dimensions of the woman caught in the predicament of conservative cultural practices at home, political unrest in society and the life of an exile in the immigrant land. It also explores Gauri’s expression of identity, her struggle with love, Bela’s choice for individuality and pragmatism in life has turned the novel into a unique narrative. In her second novel, ‘The Lowland’ Jhumpa portrays her women characters devaluing the patriarchal setup. They break the myths of womanhood and motherhood. Prominence is given to assert their position in society by restoring self-identity than nurturing deeper family relations. They fight with courage and confront various challenges in their marital relationship.

scholarly journals Gender Subtexts in Collusive Linkages between Bhadralok Ethos and Colonial Law in Select Daroga Daptor Narratives

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tapti Roy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Criminal Investigation ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
The 19Th Century

Crime writings can be said to have originated in Bengal in the last decades of the 19th century with the emergence of narratives of seemingly true criminal investigations compiled by real-life darogas like Girish Chandra Bose, Priyanath Mukhopadhyay, and Bakaullah. These non-canonical accounts though rendered in simplistic narrative techniques to report cases that may appear inconsequential to present-day readership not only set the field for more complex fictional works of criminal investigation but also laid the foundations of a new genre of vernacular popular fiction favoured till date. It can be mentioned here that the criminal investigation accounts of Priyanath Mukhopadhyay were serialised as Daroga Daptor for a significant span of a decade which owing to its elements of thrill, mystery, and instruction were immensely coveted by the readers. The significance of the Daroga Daptor narratives for the purpose of the paper however lies in its reflections of the contemporary socio-legal setup comprised of responses towards sexual mores, socio-ethical strictures, and gender positions. In this context, the objective of the paper is to analyse select narratives of Daroga Daptor with females as victims or accused, namely the novel Adarini and the short story “Promoda”. Initiating the process with an overview of the office of the daroga emphasising on the popular associations of daroga with sloth and corruption, the paper will note the manner in which Daroga Daptor marked a paradigm shift in the popular imagination with regards to the intellectual abilities and sensibilities of daroga. Proceeding with the analysis of the aforesaid narratives, the paper by emphasising the 19th-century gender roles with respect to hypermasculine bhadralok norms and tenets of colonial law will situate the women characters as existing in an ambiguous position within the colluding grounds of the two apparently opposite masculine factions. The paper thus will establish the 19th-century native female body as a passive pliable vessel for various ideological experimentations reading them as perpetually incarcerated within the dynamic limits of an efficient, promptly adaptive, and multifariously hegemonic masculine order.

scholarly journals The Portrayal of Women: Feminist Analysis of A Hologram for The King

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-27
Author(s):  
Samal Marf Mohammed
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Feminist Analysis ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Self Objectification

This research paper attempts to investigate the representation of women, their character and their rights in Dave Eggers’ novel A Hologram for the King (2012), according to the feministic approach to literary works. Gender bias has been reflected in many literary works from classical canonical works to contemporary literary ones and has been dealt with in many critical pieces. The theme of self-objectification, which is closely tied to gender bias to some extent, has not been analyzed, independently and fully, especially in the literature of the post-colonial era. The current study scrutinizes the writer’s portrayal of women characters in order to uncover the replication of the same stereotypes and gender bias categories against women, dominant in the literary works before the post-colonial era. Based on the feminist approach, A Hologram for the King is identified as a misogynist work although it is written in postmodern era. The author of the novel, is inspired by men’s superiority, creates a completely distorted image of women by introducing them as people who turn themselves into objects of pleasure for men. The novelist further deprives women of their rights and misrepresents them as unprincipled humans, disparaging them as naïve and sexually licentious creatures. After all, this study becomes a means of writing back against marginalization of women, in their picturization and their subordination to men.

Precolonial Igbo Voices in Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater (2018): A Palimpsestic Search for “Home”

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 81-92
Author(s):  
Eugenia Ossana
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Spiritual Belief ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Fictional Narrative ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Narrative Mode ◽  
Self Formation

The present article examines how Freshwater (2018), the debut novel of the Nigerian writer  Akwaeke Emezi, offers a layered portrayal of precolonial Igbo and western narratives. By recourse to the auto-fictional narrative mode, the fiction deploys a constant tug of war which suggests the culturally hybrid nature of discourses connected to spiritual belief, self-identity dynamics and gender. My analysis pivots around three main discussions. Firstly, I trace and exemplify the aesthetic and thematic imbrication between Igbo cosmology (and Animism) and Christianity. Secondly, I seek to evince the unconventional depiction of plural consciousnesses coexisting in an individual in an effort to contest long-established truisms of self formation. I also focus on the ensuing amalgam between western conceptions of mental illness, trauma and Igbo mystic interpretations of reality. Considering the peripheral Igbo stance the novel depicts, the fiction will be contextualised within the current literary meta- and trans-modernist axis. Thirdly, I refer to transgender issues mapped up and brought to the fore through the main character’s predicament; a search for existential answers commingling divergent paradigms. Thus, Freshwater offers a peculiar polyphony of numinous narratorial voices which strive to question extant (neo)postcolonial truths.

scholarly journals Identity Constructions and Gender in Daisy Hasan’s The To-Let House

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-17
Author(s):  
Afrida Aainun Murshida ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Politics Of Identity ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Identity Constructions ◽  
The North ◽  
Gradual Evolution ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
And Gender

This paper is a detailed Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the novel The To-Let House that represents the indigenous struggles, the politics of identity and the construction of a ‘woman’s identity’ amidst the unsettling environment of violence in the historical context of the North Eastern part of India. The paper would analyse and explore the underlying discourse operating in the novel and investigate the core theories and its impact through the conscious choices of the ‘language in use’ by the author. Daisy Hasan’s The To-Let House is primarily marked with the identity constructions and its gradual evolution. The author not only just unravels the struggles that the characters undergo but also counterfeits a sense of identity instituting it towards one’s self identity. The characters in the novel are unable to affiliate themselves into any one particular cultural identity; rather they constantly are struggling within themselves inwardly, in the midst of the violence surrounding them outwardly. This weakness and inability to assign an identity turns out to be a strong narrative that constructs a powerful discourse highlighting the nuances of ‘belongingness.’

Diaghilev and British Writing

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-92
Author(s):  
Susan Jones
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Opening Up

This article explores the diversity of British literary responses to Diaghilev's project, emphasising the way in which the subject matter and methodologies of Diaghilev's modernism were sometimes unexpectedly echoed in expressions of contemporary British writing. These discussions emerge both in writing about Diaghilev's work, and, more discretely, when references to the Russian Ballet find their way into the creative writing of the period, serving to anchor the texts in a particular cultural milieu or to suggest contemporary aesthetic problems in the domain of literary aesthetics developing in the period. Figures from disparate fields, including literature, music and the visual arts, brought to their criticism of the Ballets Russes their individual perspectives on its aesthetics, helping to consolidate the sense of its importance in contributing to the inter-disciplinary flavour of modernism across the arts. In the field of literature, not only did British writers evaluate the Ballets Russes in terms of their own poetics, their relationship to experimentation in the novel and in drama, they developed an increasing sense of the company's place in dance history, its choreographic innovations offering material for wider discussions, opening up the potential for literary modernism's interest in impersonality and in the ‘unsayable’, discussions of the body, primitivism and gender.

Minorities in the Contemporary Egyptian Novel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Youssef
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Robust Analysis ◽  
Specific Approach ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Historical Moment

This book examines questions of identity, nationalism, and marginalization in the contemporary Egyptian novel from a postcolonial lens. Under colonial rule, the Egyptian novel invoked a sovereign nation-state by basking in its perceived unity. After independence, the novel professed disenchantment with state practices and unequal class and gender relations, without disrupting the nation’s imagined racial and ethno-religious homogeneity. This book identifies a trend in the twenty-first-century Egyptian novel that shatters this singular view, with the rise of a new consciousness that presents Egypt as fundamentally heterogeneous. Through a robust analysis of “new-consciousness” novels by authors like Idris ᶜAli, Bahaᵓ Tahir, Miral al-Tahawi, and Yusuf Zaydan, the author argues that this new consciousness does not only respond to predominant discourses of difference and practices of differentiation along the axes of race, ethno-religion, class, and gender by bringing the experiences of Nubian, Amazigh, Bedouin, Coptic, Jewish, and women minorities to the fore of Egypt’s literary imaginary, but also heralds the cacophony of voices that collectively cried for social justice from Tahrir Square in Egypt’s 2011-uprising. This study responds to the changing iconographic, semiotic, and formal features of the Egyptian novel. It fulfills the critical task of identifying an emergent novelistic genre and develops historically reflexive methodologies that interpret new-consciousness novels and their mediatory role in formalizing and articulating their historical moment. By adopting this context-specific approach to studying novelistic evolution, this book locates some of the strands that have been missing from the complex whole of Egypt’s culture and literary history.

Who’s holding up the sky? On Rymba, a novel by A. Bushkovsky

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-158
Author(s):  
A. V. Zhuchkova
Keyword(s):  
Gender Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Flood Zone ◽  
The Social ◽  
Russian North ◽  
And Gender

The article deals with A. Bushkovsky’s novel Rymba that goes beyond the topics typical of Russian North prose. Rather than limiting himself to admiring nature and Russian character, the author portrays the northern Russian village of Rymba in the larger context of the country’s mentality, history, mythology, and gender politics. In the novel, myth clashes with reality, history with the present day, and an individual with the state. The critic draws a comparison between the novel and the traditions of village prose and Russian North prose. In particular, Bushkovsky’s Rymba is discussed alongside V. Rasputin’s Farewell to Matyora [ Proshchanie s Matyoroy ] and R. Senchin’s The Flood Zone [ Zona zatopleniya ]. The novel’s central question is: what keeps the Russian world afloat? Depicting the Christian faith as such a bulwark, Bushkovsky links atheism with the social and spiritual roles played by contemporary men and women. The critic argues, however, that the reliance on Christianity in the novel verges on an affectation. The book’s main symbol is a drowning hawk: it perishes despite people’s efforts to save it.

Highlighting the Correlation Between Telomere Shortening and the Susceptibility to the Novel SARS-CoV-2 Virus (COVID-19)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aml Ghanem
Keyword(s):  
Telomere Length ◽  
Stress Responses ◽  
Viral Infections ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Telomere Shortening ◽  
Infection Pathways ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Demographic Distribution

COVID-19 is a global crisis that requires a deep understanding of infection pathways to facilitate the development of effective treatments and vaccines. Telomere, which is regarded as a biomarker for other respiratory viral infections, might influence the demographic distribution of COVID-19 infection and fatality rates. Viral infection can induce many cellular remodeling events and stress responses, including telomere specific alterations, just as telomere shortening. In brief, this letter aims to highlight the connection between telomere shortening and susceptibility to COVID-19 infection, in addition to changes in telomeric length according to the variation of age and gender of confirmed cases with COVID-19 infection. To sum up, the correlation is revealed from the available data that connect telomere length and COVID-19 infection, demonstrated in the fact that the elderly patients and males are more susceptible to COVID-19 due to shortening in their telomere length.

North and South

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Sally Shuttleworth
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Difficult Problem ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Authority ◽  
Industrial Town ◽  
Middle Class Woman ◽  
Class Woman ◽  
And Gender ◽  
North And South ◽  
Obedience To Authority

`She tried to settle that most difficult problem for women, how much was to be utterly merged in obedience to authority, and how much might be set apart for freedom in working.’ North and South is a novel about rebellion. Moving from the industrial riots of discontented millworkers through to the unsought passions of a middle-class woman, and from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of naval mutiny, it poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Through the story of Margaret Hale, the middle-class southerner who moves to the northern industrial town of Milton, Gaskell skilfully explores issues of class and gender in the conflict between Margaret’s ready sympathy with the workers and her growing attraction to the charismatic mill ownder, John Thornton. This new revised and expanded edition sets the novel in the context of Victorian social and medical debate.

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