Women’s Virtue: Engendering Shame

2021 ◽  
pp. 117-155
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Mariama Ba ◽  
Buchi Emecheta ◽  
Tsitsi Dangarembga ◽  
Ama Ata Aidoo ◽  
Societal Issues ◽  
The Feminine

A focus on shame and the feminine, considering how female characters and shame are linked in order to address both explicitly female concerns as well as how those concerns can stand in for larger societal issues. The chapter revisits elements from Le vieux nègre et la médaille and Les Bouts de bois de Dieu but concentrates much more on Une si longue lettre by Mariama Bâ, A River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, short stories by Ama Ata Aidoo, and Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie.

Aidoo, Ama Ata

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Hugon
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Buchi Emecheta ◽  
Ama Ata Aidoo ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The World ◽  
African Writers

Ama Ata Aidoo is one of the most prominent African writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her works comprise plays, novels, short stories, poetry, and essays. She is recognized worldwide and has received many prizes and honorary distinctions. In Ghana, her country of origin, her books are part of the syllabus for secondary schools, and they are studied in many universities around the world. A number of late 20th and early 21st century women writers from the African continent acknowledge their debts toward her work and speak of her as their literary big sister, as did Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta, or mother, as does Ghanaian author Amma Darko. Like many other African authors, she is both a major writer and more than “just” a writer: she is also an activist, notably an acknowledged feminist, a dramatist, a teacher, and a craftswoman—this list is not exhaustive.

scholarly journals Die dialoog tussen die voorblad, die manneplot en die verhale in Dulle Griet van Riana Scheepers

Literator ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
G.H. Taljaard
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Female Character ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Survival Mechanism ◽  
Male Attitudes ◽  
The Way

The dialogue between image and text in Riana Scheepers's Dulle Griet This article examines the way in which the content and theme of Riana Scheepers’s Dulle Griet (1991) interact with the “manneplot” (traditional and/or stereotypical portrayal of female characters within novels) and with the cover illustration of the book – a detail of “Mad Meg” (as she is often referred to) from Pieter Brueghel’s Dulle Griet (1562). It explores how the women in Scheepers’s short stories are portrayed – not only as vulnerable, but also as evil and corrupt. They are abused victims; but they are also tyrannical abusers. They are innocent maidens and mothers, but also lovers, prostitutes, lesbians and murderers. The way in which the gradual degeneration of the anonymous central female character relates to Brueghel’s image of “Mad Meg” on her way to the jaws of hell is discussed in this article. But the article also demontrates Scheepers’s concern with feminist issues by using the cover as an ironic “frame”, and shows that the moral decline of the women portrayed in the text seems to be as a result of the actions of chauvinistic men, who appear in different forms throughout the text. Female degeneracy can thus be seen as a survival mechanism, in a world – and a text – dominated by the masculine paradigm, the “manneplot” of traditional male attitudes to women.

scholarly journals António Feliciano de Castilho, cronista de um século tão destruidor como criador

Navegações ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Eduardo Da Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
The Self ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Women's Issues ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Lygia Fagundes Telles

António Feliciano de Castilho (1800-1875), reconhecido como poeta, também teve importante atuação no meio jornalístico. Como redator da Revista Universal Lisbonense entre janeiro de 1842 e junho de 1845, ele transformou o projeto editorial familiar num periódico de sucesso, vendido e assinado em todo Portugal e também no Brasil. Além de divulgação de “conhecimentos úteis” e de novas composições literárias, sua revista possuía uma seção de notícias. Nesse espaço, Castilho transformava os relatos dos casos que recebia em crônicas que deixam transparecer seu olhar sobre a sociedade que se transformava em meados do século XIX. Aqui apresentamos alguns dos principais temas e o estilo de construção de suas crônicas.********************************************************************Hora de tirar o espartilho – Women’s issues in the short storiesof Lygia Fagundes TellesAbstract: This paper considers how womens’ issues are presented in Lygia Fagundes Telles’ short stories, evaluating narrative procedures and thematic choices, such as wickedness, dependence, conservatism, emancipation, loneliness, vanity or decrepitude. This study analyses the originality and modernity of Telles’ prose, noting the cautious distance of her vision of the feminine condition from any contemporary trends or labeling. Finally, the paper also aims to study the portrayal of women by Lygia Fagundes Telles. This simplies careful examination of how women occupy the role of the self, or subject, and to what degree Telles’  omens’ characters are individualized figures, facing different conflicts, in a variety of social, familial and affective situations.Keywords: short stories; Lygia Fagundes Telles; feminine condition.

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 Across community barriers: female characters in Vimala Devi’s short stories

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. e45888
Author(s):  
Cielo Griselda Festino
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Women Characters ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Short Story Cycle ◽  
Short Story Collection ◽  
Story Cycle ◽  
Story Collection

This article brings a reading of the short-story collection Monção [Monsoon] ( 2003) by the Goan writer Vimala Devi (1932-). The collection can be read as a short-story cycle, a group of stories related by locality, Goa, character, Goans, from all walks of life, and theme, in particular women´s milieu, among other literary categories. In her book, written from her self-imposed exile in Portugal, Devi recreates Goa, former Portuguese colony, in the 1950s, before its annexation to India. A member of the Catholic gentry, Devi portrays the four hundred years of conflictive intimacy between Catholics and Hindus. Our main argument is that Devi´s empathy for her culture becomes even more explicit in Monção when her voice becomes one with that of all her women characters. Though they might be at odds, due to differences of caste, class and religion, Devi makes a point of showing that they are all part of the same cultural identity constantly remade through their own acts of refusal and recognition. This discussion will be framed in terms of Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s theory of autobiography (2001) as well as the studies on Goan women by the Goan critics Propércia Correia Afonso (1928-1931), Maria Aurora Couto (2005) and Fátima da Silva Gracias (2007).

scholarly journals Reading the Silence of Women in Saadat Hassan Manto's Selected Short Stories

2021 ◽  
Vol VI (I) ◽  
pp. 216-221
Author(s):  
Fizra Sattar ◽  
Umama Mehmood Ansari ◽  
Sohail Ahmad Saeed
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Political Upheaval ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Marginalized Women ◽  
Objectification Of Women ◽  
Experiences Of Women ◽  
Selection Of

This research paper offers an analysis of a selection of Saadat Hasan Manto's works through a feminist perspective. It explores the feminine content with reference to the suffering and violation of women as a major preoccupation of the selected short stories. As his works indicate, Manto portrayed experiences of women during the time of political upheaval in the subcontinent. He presents the silence of the marginalized women as a source for a deep insight into the patriarchal structures of society. The exposure to violence holds a fundamentally important place in Manto's "Colder than Ice", "Mozail", and "The Return", as they are the means to question gender and sexuality along with the dogmas of race culture and ethnicity. The paper aims to put forth the violence and victimization that women had to endure during the partition of the subcontinent. In light of the feminist theory, the present study analyses the gendered boundaries and objectification of women in the pursuit of male sexual pleasure, unravelling that once the silence speaks, women can make their own place in the world.

scholarly journals The Hysteric Belongs to Me: Helen Oyeyemi’s The Opposite House

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Noémi Albert
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Long Time

The term hysteria has undergone several substantial changes throughout its history. A charged concept, deemed for a long time as pejorative and offensive to womanhood, it has lately been re-appropriated for literature under the concept of the “hysterical narrative.” This new trend purports to redeem hysteria and, together with it, redeem the feminine and show all its complexity. Helen Oyeyemi’s 2007 novel, The Opposite House, conflates the private and the public in two female characters, one human, the other divine. Through this double perspective the work self-reflexively re-evaluates hysteria both in the self and in the community.

scholarly journals SUBJEKTIVITAS PEREMPUAN DALAM HAIR JEWELLERY KARYA MARGARET ATWOOD DAN THE BLUSH KARYA ELIZABETH TAYLOR/FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY IN TWO SHORT STORIES BY MARGARET ATWOOD AND ELIZABETH TAYLOR

Aksara ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-208
Author(s):  
Aquarini Priyatna ◽  
Rasus Budhyono
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Margaret Atwood ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Public Spheres ◽  
Personal Relations ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Woman's Body

Abstrak Artikel ini membahas dua cerita pendek, yakni Hair Jewellery karya Margaret Atwood dan The Blush karya Elizabeth Taylor. Kedua cerpen menunjukkan bagaimana tokoh perempuan menegosiasi dan mengupayakan subjektivitasnya dalam suatu konteks kultural dan sosial tertentu. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menunjukkan bagaimana subjektivitas perempuan ditampilkan melalui deskripsi fisik tokoh utama, perilaku serta pandangan tokoh tersebut terhadap dirinya, serta bagaimana tokoh mempersepsi tubuh dalam membentuk subjektivitasnya di dalam konteks budaya yang berkelindan. Dengan berfokus pada isu tubuh dan penubuhan para tokoh perempuan, isu kelas, relasi personal para tokoh perempuan, serta bagaimana mereka melakukan perlintasan yang terus-menerus antara ranah domestik dan publik, artikel ini berargumentasi bahwa kedua cerpen menampilkan tokoh perempuan yang berusaha merangkul dan membangun subjektivitas perempuan yang feminin dan feminis. Kedua cerpen menampilkan berbagai bentuk subjektivitas yang tidak ajek dan senantiasa berproses. Subjektivitas juga digambarkan berimplikasi kepatuhan, penolakan, dan transgresi terhadap norma gender. Kata kunci: cerpen, perempuan, subjektivitas, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret Atwood Abstract This article examines two short stories, namely Hair Jewellery by Margaret Atwood and The Blush by Elizabeth Taylor. The two stories show how the female characters negotiate and develop their subjectivities within a certain cultural and social context. The article aims to elaborate on how woman’s subjectivity is presented through the physical descriptions of the main characters, their attitude and behavior toward themselves, and how their perception of how their body contributes to the formation of their subjectivity within a cultural and social context. By focusing on the issues of woman’s body and embodiment, the female characters’ personal relations, and the continuous traversion between domestic and public spheres, the article argues that both stories present women who strive to embrace and develop feminine and feminist woman’s subjectivity. Both stories present a varied forms of subjectivity, all of which is not fixed and is always in-process. Subjectivity is also portrayed to imply different degrees of acceptance, rejection, and transgression of gender norms. Keywords: short stories, women, subjectivity, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret Atwood 

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