Feminist discourse in contemporary Arab Women’s Literature : Ahlam Mosteghanemi and Ahdaf Soueif

Abstract EN

In their respective novels Chaos of the Senses (2015) and In the Eye of the Sun (1992), Ahlam Mosteghanemi and Ahdaf Soueif create female protagonists who might experience themselves as victims of cultural androcentric institutions upheld in the Arab society, but they revolt against them and establish self-fulfilling identities.

Drawing upon the feminist theories of Germaine Greer and Betty Friedan, I would like to argue that both novelists air their interests by unleashing their heroines’ womanhood and intellectual agency within their phallocentric oppressive societies which cast them as subservient silent creatures.