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Visions of Transition Visions of Transition A Comparative Study of theAVorkrofSahar Kha1ifetr~~ andffadme (.ordimci - ■ Basrnah A. Al-Mutlaq Submitted for the degree of Ph.D at the University of London, 2003, ProQuest Number: 10672874 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10672874 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Abstract This comparative study is between two female novelists, the Palestinian, Sahar KhalTfah and the South African, Nadine Gordimer. Both writers share a feeling of marginality for reasons of sex, race and politics. They also envision through their fiction the future in both Palestine and South Africa. The thesis starts by highlighting the political, social and literary backgrounds of both novelists. Then it sets out the theoretical framework of this study which focuses on the literary tradition of women, and the way women have been defined, represented, and repressed in the symbolic system of language. The thesis examines Sahar KhalTfah’s sequel novel al-Sahbar (Wild Thorns, 1976) and ‘Abbad al-Shams {The Sunflower, 1980), as well as Bab al-Sdhah (The Courtyard Gate, 1990). The analysis focuses on the social and political issues, from the ‘us’ perspective, shedding light on the female protagonist’s psychology and her struggle to counter the marginalising and homosocial rules. It examines various issues such as marginality and women texts, ambiguity in the novel, the female imagination, subjectivity and the new images of women, mother-daughter relationship and sisterhood. Similarly, in Nadine Gordimer’s novelsBurger’s Daughter (1979) andJuly’s People (1981) the analysis focuses on the social, political and psychological issues from a colonial perspective, highlighting at the same time the white female protagonist’s feeling of alienation in South Africa, The thesis ends with a concluding chapter giving a comparative analysis of the two writers and their works elaborating the common literary themes, aspects, similarities and differences. Moreover, it analyses the visions of transition they both foresaw in their relative countries in these novels. II Acknowledgment I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor Professor Sabry Hafez, for his encouraging remarks, patience and suggestions. Without his guidance this work could never have been accomplished. I would like also to thank all the staff of the SO AS library for their constant help and advice. Finally, I would like to extend my greatest thanks and appreciation to my editor James Howarth, for his constant support and guidance. Finally, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my family who supported me all the way. Ill Dedication To my parents andfamily for their considerable concern and patience. IV Table of Contents Abstract II Acknowledgement III Dedication IV Table of Contents V Introduction The Structure of Women9s Novels/Changing Political Consciousness Marginality and Women’s texts 2 Ambiguity in the Novel 8 Female Imagination 11 The Chronotope 14 The Intersection of Gender and Language in the Novel 16 Subjectivity and the New Images of Women 21 Mother-Daughter Relationship and Sisterhood in Modern Fiction 25 Women’s Novels & National Consciousness 30 The Writers & their Background 32 Sahar Khallfah: Background Nadine Gordimer: Background Literary Themes and Political Context in Sahar Khallfah and Nadine Gordimer’s Work 37 Chapter One Al-Sabhar 40 The Characters’ Ideological Shifts 42 Ambiguities in the Novel 46 Living in the Interregnum 51 The Idyllic Chronotope 53 The Carnivalesque & Sacrificial Dismemberment 56 Decay & Dislocation 61 Racism, Occupation and the Palestinians Crisis 67 The Silent Emergence of Female New Identities 70 The Mother; a Preserver of Patriarchy 75 y Chapter Two Burger \s Daughter 81 The Conflict of Place and Identity in Rosa 83 Ambiguities in the Novel: the Sudden Return of Rosa 87 The Novel of Interrogation 92 Anxieties of ‘Space’ inBurger’s Daughter 95 Racism vs. Guilt 102 Self and Other in Rosa 109 Recommitment and Rosa’s New Identity 111 The Missing Mother: the Plight of Rosa 118 The Complexity of Sisterhood 122 Chapter Three *Abbad al-Shams 127 The Emerging Female Voices 128 Ambiguity and the Implications of a New Reality: theintijadah 133 The Chronotope: a Mirror of Life 141 Occupation and Racism 146 The Novel of Suffering & Irony 149 New Identities and Challenge in the Context of Occupation 153 The Mother Figure and the Unity of the Oppressed 161 Chapter Four July fs People 167 The Displacement of Maureen 168 Ambiguities in July’s People 172 The Contradictions of the Interregnum 174 The Carnival, Grotesque and Real Life Motifs 179 The Significance of the Chronotope in July’s People 184 Authority of Possessions 187 Master and Slave 191 Reversal of Roles and New Identity 192 The Distant Mother and the Hurdle of Sisterhood in South Africa 202 Chapter Five Bab al-Sahah 209 The Writer’s Mad Double 210 Ambiguity and the Open-Ending of Bab al-Sahah 216 Spatial Confinement: a Metaphor of a Nation in Crisis 222 Racism and Oppression 228 VI Irony and Folkloric Images 229 Women & War 231 The Dark Mother and the Notion of Sisterhood 238 Conclusion 245 Bibliography 265 VII Introduction The Structure o f Women Novels/Changing Political Consciousness “I shall speak about women’s writing: about what it will do. Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies - for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text - as into the world and into history - by her own movement.” Helene Cixous1 Much of this work has been influenced by the divergent Anglo-American and French feminist criticism exemplified in Rogers, Showalter, Woolf, Cixous, Kristeva, Irigaray and others. It focuses on the definition of the feminine, its representation and repression in the symbolic system of language. The thesis attempts to investigate the literary tradition of both writers through the lines of enquiry suggested by, firstly, Rogers’ Aspects o f the Female Novel, which is its main departure point. Secondly, it attempts to define the writer’s position within the women’s literary tradition through Showalter’s notion of the three phases of development in women’s writing, which is an illuminating one as it assesses the exploration of the writers’ historical and literary terrain. Showalter identifies three phases - of imitation, of protest and of self-discovery, a turning inward to search for an identity freed to some extent from the dependency of opposition.2 This approach will examine the works of both writers in the light of the following determinants to establish a ground for their visions of their historical, political and social realities. It will not be limited to an analysis of the literary subordination of women, but will focus instead on the Titerary tradition of women’ and on the symbolic 1 H616ne Cixous, “The Laugh o f the Medusa”, in Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (eds), New French Feminisms: An Anthology (London: Harvester Press, 1981) p. 245. 2 Elaine Showalter, A Literature o f Their Own: British Women Novelists From Bronte to Lessing (London: Virago, 1978) p. 13. 1 structure of gender and sexuality within its discourse. All the novels in this study have a political and nationalistic resonance; their themes embrace the resistance movements, which later develop into the intifadah in Palestine and anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. In the case of the Palestinian novels, this nationalistic voice is intertwined with the feminist call for woman’s emancipation, whereas in Gordimer, it is intertwined with a peipetual engagement with the daughters of colonialism, their alienation and contradictions. Their works recall Terry Eagleton’s remarks on nationalism in literature: “what we might call the ‘subjunctive mood’ of ‘bad’ or premature utopianism grabs instantly for a future, projecting itself by an act of will or imagination beyond the compromised political structures of the present. By failing to attend to those forces of fault lineswithin the present that, developed or prised open in particular ways, might induce that condition to surpass itself into future.”3 Marginality and Women’s Texts Kristeva developed the concept of the literary text in relation toknowledge , observing the outcome of this interrelationship or the desire to write as indicative of the ‘literary’ person and the ‘scientific’ specialist, thus marking the position of the subject in relation to his language through his experience of body and history. She stresses the accumulation of this knowledge as indicative of the different sciences such as linguistics, psychoanalysis, sociology, and history.4 This concept sheds light on the ‘marginality’ of women and her position as regards the patriarchal order, and lumps together the different determinants of a woman’s text in relation to society that define the way the woman writes herself and conveys her ideas about the world around her. Rogers, in her book Aspects o f the Female Novel, examines certain pattern of female novelistic discourse. She observes that the most prominent feature in women’s fiction is the devotion to describing the heroine’s inner, rather than outer, world. Her idea is based on the hypothesis that the female novel focuses on the inner drama of a story, whereas the male novel focuses on the external action of a story.5 She states: 3 Terry Eagleton, Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature.
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