Kathryn Lasky, “Women’s Voice Counts” (Published)
The American women did not await the 21st century to express their disapproval of matters of general interest. At every stage of human history, they always assert their presence as agents of social development and promoters of liberties; they prove their ability to serve humanity. In all parts of the world, despite the deliberate ideological restrictions inflicted upon them, they show integrity, decency, and honesty; their pragmatism, literacy, actions, and ideas serve as bow. Those qualities enable them to free themselves from all forms of ostracism and subjugation. Along the march of history, when defending their common cause, some of them sometimes lose their lives, others are incarcerated, but the survivors remain committed and hopeful. They continually fight to climb the social ladder. In socio-professional and political sectors where men are hostile, they demonstrate absolute resilience. A retrospective glance at the US history helps to revivify the American women’s involvement. Labeled as vulnerable and passive beings, they embark on a timeless struggle whose purpose is to restore their tarnished image and dignity. Better still, their awareness enables them to eradicate the prejudices, social inequalities, and barriers, which disadvantage and devalue them. Like other Western countries, the United States has a long tradition of marginalizing women. Its excluding policy is narrowly connected with patriarchal tradition; a practice, which emerges not only in the family sphere, but also on the political stage, where women are deprived of their suffrage. In such circumstances, they suffer from male domination with impunity. That burning social injustice is pictured by writers, such as Kathryn Lasky whose literary works pay tribute to the American suffragists for their boldness and great sense of duty in the construction of democracy in America. As a field par excellence for the symbolization of social facts, literature appears as a location where the American women’s bravery and ingenuity are realistically expressed. Therefore, the study of Laskian female characters’ trajectories through the textual prism is advantageous. For that purpose, the use of Derridean deconstruction as a methodological tool will be helpful. This will scrutinize the political scope of Laskian female characters’ struggle for suffrage through two axes: “A masculinized political system” and “women’s awareness and US democracy.”
Keywords: Freedom, Resilience, ostracism, suffrage, woman
Yearning for Freedom in a Prison without Bars in Two Novels: Ṣamt al-Farāshāt/ Silence of the Butterflies by Laylā al-ʿUthmān and Lam ʾAʿud ʾAbkī / I Do not Cry Anymore by Zaynab Ḥifnī (Published)
The crisis of freedom that the Gulf woman lives in under a patriarchal male culture that is biased against her and against the Arab woman in general, turns her into a prisoner who lives behind moral bars. Under these circumstances, the Gulf woman’s writing becomes a conflict with the man’s concepts and the patriarchal male mentality of her society. However, by writing, she reveals the issues of her scandalous oppression, and emancipates herself from her shackles. Writing is one of the forms of freedom, through which she regains her voice that has been stolen from her as a woman and a creative artist. This study seeks to reveal the manifestations of oppression that the woman is exposed to in the feminist Gulf literature in two novels: Ṣamt al-Farāshāt by Laylā al-ʿUthmān, and Lam ʾAʿud ʾAbkī by Zaynab Ḥifnī as samples. The study will reveal the woman’s figurative ‘prison’ and ‘jailor’: the prison of society with its norms and traditions, and the prison of the Man and his domination as images of her oppression by marriage, and by the siege of social norms, the culture of silence, her prevention from choosing her job and her creative freedom. In return, the study will observe the features of her revolution and rebellion against all these figurative “prisons” such as her refusal of the traditional marriage, her resistance by writing, her search for love, and breakage of the sex taboo. The woman manifests herself between the character of the ‘prisoner’ and the ‘rebellious’ woman, between her ‘yearning for freedom’ and her ‘revolt’ against the ‘bars’ in order to realize herself and break the taboos.
Keywords: Females, Freedom, Prison, Society, Traditions, bars, males