The Representation of Women in Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) and Malika Mokeddem’s The Forbidden Woman(1993)
Loading...
Date
2017
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
In this research paper, we have undertaken the task to lead a comparative study between
two female writers: Toni Morrison and Malika Mokeddem. The purpose of this comparison is
to study their respective works: Beloved (1987) and The Forbidden Woman (1993) in terms of
gender. To our knowledge, they have never been joined before under the same study. Our
intention is mainly is to highlight the common struggles of the female characters in these two
works and the way they face the tyranny of the male dominated society and how they led
themselves to affirm their identities through the disruption of the patriarchal traditional
discourse. This research, then, relies on Simone De Beauvoir’s ideas held in The Second Sex
(1949), which is classified in the second wave of the Feminist movement. In this book, De
Beauvoir discusses the treatment of women throughout history, which matches the different
contexts “the Black decade in Algeria and slavery in the United States of America, which
means that those distinct periods had several repercussions on women’s subjugation. The
work comprises a discussion of three important sections that include: the historical and
literary contexts of the novels that led both authors to react, the representation of women and
their objectification, and women’s liberation. The conclusion that can be drawn from the
study shows Morrison’s and Mokeddem’s feminist ideology. We close our dissertation with
the suggestion that both novels can be read from a feminist perspective.
Description
64p.;30cm.(+cd)
Keywords
Citation
Culture and Media of English Speaking Countries