scholarly journals Patriarchal Oppression and Women Empowerment in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Tifanny Astrick
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
African Women ◽  
Women Empowerment ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The World ◽  
Made In

This study examines how Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus interrogates the oppressions of women in the Nigerian patriarchal society and how women empower each other lead them to women empowerment. The study shows how the oppressions of women is represented through female characters which perpetually put women in disadvantaged positions as portrayed in Purple Hibiscus. One of the most despicable oppression among the so well-known cultural practices in Nigeria is the patriarchal oppression. However, as the events unfold, efforts will be made in order to reveal of how African women are rated based on the good and real women as represented by Beatrice and Ifeoma. I argue that Adichie's approach to subvert patriarchal oppression describes that despite the struggle and pain, women assert themselves in the world of patriarchy through education and sisterhood. Adichie’s novel suggests women empowerment through social transformation confronted by women. The title of the novel, "Purple Hibiscus" may refer to a particular type of flower, but it also emphasizes the triumph of the innovative suggesting that the unusual is not necessarily bad as it looks which aims to women empowerment.

scholarly journals CELIE: A PORTRAYAL OF AN AFRO-AMERICAN WOMAN'S REJECTION OF TRADITIONAL VALUES

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Ekawati Marhaenny Dukut ◽  
Nuki Dhamayanti
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
American Women ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
The World ◽  
Color Purple

The world of literature can be a medium of expressing the writer's expressions and ideas. Universal topics such as, love, death, and war often become subject mailers in the world of literature. In the novel, of The Color Purple. Alice Walker describes the oppression experienced by Afro American women in the female characters of Celie, Nellie, Shug Avery, Sofia, and Mary Agnes who faced sexual discrimina!ions in a patriarchal society. Womanhood, education, and lesbianism are factors that help the Afro American women to free themselves from traditional values. The Color Purple puts into words the process of its main character, Celie, who tries to reject and escape from the male domination of her world. The other Afro American women characters that help Celie to find her selfidentity represent the manifestation of the rejection of the traditional values. This article. which uses the socio-historical alld feminism approach. is intended to analyse the Afro-American women's rejection of traditional values by focusing on the major character of' Walker's The Color Purple. Celie. as she develops from being a victim of traditional values to the rejoiceful discovery of her selfidentity.

scholarly journals Maïssa Bey : romancière de l’agentivité de femmes Entre réécriture de l’Histoire et invention de soi

Il Tolomeo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lila Lamrous
Keyword(s):  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The Right

The study of Maïssa Bey’s novel Surtout ne te retourne pas allows to examine how the Francophone novel represents an earthquake as a poetic, metaphorical and political shockwave. The novel is part of a literary tradition but also shows the singularity of the writing and the engagement of the Algerian novelist Maïssa Bey. It allows to examine the feminine agentivity in the context of the disaster camps in Algeria: from the ravaged space/country emerge the voices of women who enter into resistance to improvise, invent their lives and their identities. The earthquake allows them to free themselves, to take a subversive point of view at society and their status as women in an oppressive patriarchal society. The staged female characters arrogate to themselves the right to reread history and take their destiny back.

scholarly journals Buddhist Precepts and the Diagnosis of Women’s suffering in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Shaereh Shaereh Shaerpooraslilankrodi ◽  
Ruzy Suliza Hashim
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Female Self ◽  
The Core ◽  
Self Development ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Transcendence ◽  
Dependent Arising ◽  
Mahāyāna Buddhism ◽  
Universal Nature

<p>In Doris Lessing’s fictions, the effects of the world outside on the female self-transcendence are invariably lost, and instead the journey in the world within is notably emphasized. Similarly in <em>The Golden Notebook</em> the didactic bend of the female enlightenment is firmly entrenched to the world within where personal harmonies parallel the mystical patterns of self-development. Moreover, the detailed exploration of the novel foregrounds the female characters’ hard effort to end their suffering which is the core of Buddhist teachings. Hence, while Lessing is not specifically attempting to portray Buddhist principles in her novel, her vision captures the universal nature of humankind’s attempts to overcome suffering which is the most emphasized concept in Buddhism. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to use Buddhist philosophical thoughts, particularly the founding of the pioneer of Mahayana Buddhism, Nagarjuna, in his book <em>Mulamadhyamakakarika </em>to look more closely at the root of women’s suffering and their prescription to overcome it. The methodology appropriated entails depiction of clinging as the root of female suffering which is overtly discussed in Nagarjuna’s philosophy. After diagnosis of clinging disease as the root of suffering, this paper presents Nagarjuna’s prescription to end suffering through viewing the “empty” nature of beings and “dependent arising”. By examining the root of female suffering and offering the method for its eradication, we depart from other critics who examine Lessing’s works under Sufi mystic thoughts. This departure is significant since we reveal, unlike Sufi patterns within which the suffering is only diagnosed, Lessing’s mystic aim in shaping her female characters is not only to detect their suffering, but like Buddhism, to suggest a prescription for it. </p>

scholarly journals Power Analysis in The Handmaid’s Tale

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 248
Author(s):  
Meijiao Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Power Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Power Theory ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Relationship

<em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> is one of Margaret Atwood’s most popular novels. As a dystopian novel, it describes an absurd society in the future and explores themes of subjugated women in a patriarchal society and the various means by which these women resist and attempt to gain independence. By applying Michael Foucault’s power theory, this paper analyzes the power situations in Gilead, revealing the relationship between power and body, also aims to analyze the relation between female characters’ status and power in the novel to reveal the cruelty of the totalitarian government and patriarchal society.

scholarly journals Recent Contributions to the Irish Novel by Sara Baume, Anna Burns and Eleanor O’Reilly: On Language, Words and Wordlessness

Oceánide ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Margarita Estévez-Saá
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Unstable Condition ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Irish Women ◽  
Identity Crises

The purpose of this contribution is to study three young writers who have offered, in the past three years, in a distinctively new voice, further instances of the Irish writers’ endless ability to experiment with the form of the novel. Sara Baume’s "A Line Made by Walking" (2017), Anna Burns’s "Milkman" (2018), and Eleanor O’Reilly’s "m for mammy" (2019) are three representative instances of the potential of the form of the novel in the hands of Irish women writers. Each of these novels deserve a study in its own due to their complexity and interest, but analysing them together offers us a unique opportunity to assess the thriving state of novel writing in Ireland, especially in the hands of Irish women writers.The three novels object of our study deal with identity crises, and they similarly represent their protagonists as struggling against society and its structures, be it the family, local communities, the world of art, nature or politics. Furthermore, the three authors have been able to devise alternative narrative styles, techniques and even endings that enabled them to render the complexities of the topics dealt with as well as to represent the unstable condition of their protagonists. In addition, Baume, Burns and O’Reilly have significantly chosen as protagonists female characters with artistic or intellectual aspirations who allow the authors to endow their respective narratives with metaliterary meditations on the possibilities as well as limits of language, words and wordlessness.

scholarly journals Obraz kobiety w twórczości Anandy Devi

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Szkonter-Bochniak
Keyword(s):  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Postcolonial Feminism ◽  
Modern Writer ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Western European ◽  
Place And Identity ◽  
Status Of Women

Ananda Devi, an accomplished modern writer from Mauritius, creates texts that are difficult to classify according to their style and genre. The author is reluctant to accept the treatment of her writings as feminist, particularly Western European feminist, they are surely closer to postcolonial feminism and eco-feminism. Nevertheless, the status of women, their rights and tolerance for otherness are the key elements of Devi’s artistic expression. Her characters rebel against the patriarchal society, they endeavour to discover their own place and identity, which frequently means regaining control over their bodies in the first stage of the transformation. Devi’s female characters live close to nature, where they find comfort, some of them go through a regress to the world of animals and plants.

scholarly journals Ambiguous agency in the vulnerable trafficked body: reading Sanusi’s Eyo and Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-88
Author(s):  
Dina Ligaga
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
African Women ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Face ◽  
African Migrant ◽  
Sex Slave

The narrativization of the trafficked body in the novels of Abidemi Sanusi and Chika Unigwe allows for a contemplation of Europe in African migrant imaginaries as both promise and failure. Sanusi’s Eyo is a narrative of a ten-year-old girl who is trafficked to the United Kingdom as a human sex slave. The novel draws attention to the tensions that define her being/unbeing in Europe and beyond, even after a brave escape from her traffickers. This precarious existence is enhanced in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street, whose main characters exist in Europe selling their bodies while existing in states of continuous vulnerability. In reading these two novels side by side, this article explores the discursive meanings of trafficked bodies and how traumatic existence allows for an engagement with Europe as illusory in the imaginaries of African women who cross borders into Europe. The article argues that while the female characters are vulnerable, they retain an ambiguous agency contained within their ability to survive and remain resilient in the face of atrocities for borders crossers. The narrative form of the novel allows for an exploration of what this agency looks like in the face of extreme vulnerability.

scholarly journals The Kreutzer Sonata

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Mustofa ◽  
Fithriyah Inda Nur Abida ◽  
Fahri Fahri
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Physical Abuse ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Leo Tolstoy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Patriarchal Society

Women's inferiority persists, particularly in patriarchal societies. In Russia, women have always been treated as second-class citize (Placeholder1)ns to men. As a result, because it is a system that already exists in society, women's inferiority is the fundamental problem of inequality for women in Russia. The novel The Kreutzer Sonata explores the inferiority of female characters in nineteenth-century Russia, where the church's influence is still strong. The aims of the research were to examine about women inferiority and struggle in patriarchal society as portrayed in the novel The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy. The data was collected using the following methods: 1) attentively reading the novel to determine which sections featured inferiority and struggle, and 2) collecting notes and marking the facts of inferiority in the marriage and society. 3) categorizing; and 4) analyzing. Based on the research, it was discovered that there were two major forms of women's inferiority: 1) the feeling of powerlessness in decision of marriages. This powerlessness happens to both the mother and the daughters. 2) being subjected to discriminatory treatment, such as a lack of freedom and mobility based only on sexuality, as well as physical abuse and loss of inheritance.

“Indeed, the King has a Cunt! What a Wonder!”: Sex, Eroticism and Language in One Thousand and One Nights

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Abu Shahid Abdullah ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The World ◽  
Female Bodies ◽  
Sexual Promiscuity

One Thousand and One Nights, which can be traced back to as early as the 9th century, is probably the greatest introduction to Arabic culture through literature. This colossal and diverse book has drawn the attention of scholars, researchers and students to classic Arabic literature as well as influenced many prominent authors and filmmakers. It is not just a book of careless and unconnected stories but rather a piece of esteemed literature which has been read and analysed in many countries all over the world. However, it is also true that this book has been criticised for its sexual promiscuity and degraded portrayal of women. The aim of the presentation is to prove that underneath the clumsy and seemingly funny structures of One Thousand and One Nights, there is a description of overflowing sexuality. Through the sexualised or erotic description of female bodies, the book gives agency to women but at the same time depicts them derogatively, and thus fulfils the naked desire of the then patriarchal society. The presentation will highlight how sexual promiscuity or fathomless female sexual craving is portrayed through figurative and grammatical language, which objectifies the female characters but at the same time enables them to be playful with the male characters, and thus motivates them to become more powerful than the males. Finally. the presentation will focus on language or narrative as an act of survival from the perspectives of the female characters, which is most evident in the case of Scheherazade who saved not only her life but also lives of countless maidens by her mesmerizing storytelling talent.

La Traduction Anglaise de Gouverneurs de la rosée de Jacques Roumain par Langston Hughes et Mercer Cook

Babel ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 225-232
Author(s):  
Cyril Mokwenye
Keyword(s):  
Langston Hughes ◽  
The Novel ◽  
French Version ◽  
The World ◽  
Jacques Roumain ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Made In

Jacques Roumain's novel, whose title, in its original French version, is Gouverneurs de la rosée, is a masterpiece that has enjoyed considerable popularity among French-speaking black peoples the world over. Its translation into English in 1971 as Masters of the Dew by Langston Hughes and Mercer Cook was most welcome as it has helped to launch and popularise the novel in the English-speaking world. A critical reading of the translated version, however, reveals a number of flaws that tend to detract from the otherwise tremendous effort of the translators. It is in this context that the essay takes a close look at the translation and points out areas in which the translation seems to have fallen short of expectations. Such identified flaws include wrong translations, inconsistencies, omissions and the erroneous use of italics as a translation device. An attempt is made in the essay to proffer suggestions to improve the quality of the wrongly translated parts of the work.

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