Breaking out of the House of Silence: female voices and trauma in Arab women’s anglophone fiction

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Shahin, Diana ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-7689-2650 (2024). Breaking out of the House of Silence: female voices and trauma in Arab women’s anglophone fiction. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis explores how female silence in Arab anglophone fiction functions paradoxically as a way of giving voice to women’s experiences, with speech and silence posited as reciprocal and constitutive parts of subjective expression. Five different novels by Arab women writers are examined and I argue that these utilise a similar range of narrative structures, framing strategies and themes that circumvent repression and marginalisation and allow for an alternative articulation of women’s dreams, desires and consciousness. The study finds a nuanced contrast between oppressive and communicative silences influenced by factors such as patriarchal power and gendered body politics, and explores how silence can become a means of introspection, self-preservation, resistance, observation or detachment.
I begin by locating the communicative function of silence within the frameworks of Bakhtinian polyphony, Diane Herndl’s conception of feminist dialogism and Arab women’s writing. The diversity and power of these women’s voices bring to the fore a heterogenous Arab female identity. The following chapters explore the shifting meanings and implications of female silence in the texts. Chapter one, ‘Embodying the Woman-Snake: Introspective Silence in Fatma: A Novel of Arabia’, explores Raja Alem’s portrayal of the transformative nature of women’s language and bodies and how silence is used to enact a spiritual journey that affirms female embodiment, empowerment and identity. The second chapter, ‘Women Behind Bars: Silence and Self-Preservation in The Golden Chariot’, examines how Salma Bakr’s ‘new language’ of feminine linguistic duality expresses women’s traumatic experiences, disrupting typical gender binaries and reclaiming agency through testimonies in the all-female space of a prison. ‘A Voice from Hell: Silence and Resistance in Woman at Point Zero’ investigates the relationship between female bodies, agency and silence in Nawal El Saadawi’s novel, allowing for the amplification and dissemination of female voices to challenge systematic abusive male authority. The contrast between dominant male narratives and female counter-narratives is explored in the fourth chapter, ‘Outsider, Madwoman, Exile: Narratives of Female Silence in Pillars of Salt’, as Fadia Faqir portrays the divergence of the male and female gaze and the creation of female counter-spaces. Chapter five, ‘Iron-Jawed Women: Hiding Behind Silence in Mornings in Jenin’, examines how, in Susan Abulhawa’s novel, silence becomes a protective defence mechanism in the face of individual and collective trauma, offering a new way of mapping the relationship between female voices and Palestinian identity in the face of displacement. Finally, the thesis ends with a conclusion that ties together the different threads of the chapters and considers the link between female voices, death and immortality.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):