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The Arabian Woman’s Adaption of Western Values in Fadia Faqir’s The Cry of the Dove

Author Affiliations

  • 1School of Education and Modern Languages, CAS, University Utara Malaysia, Malaysia
  • 2School of Education and Modern Languages, CAS, University Utara Malaysia, Malaysia
  • 3School of Education and Modern Languages, CAS, University Utara Malaysia, Malaysia

Res. J.  Language and Literature Humanities, Volume 3, Issue (8), Pages 1-6, September,19 (2016)

Abstract

While the themes of identity and racism have occupied a wide area in the feminist studies in general, this study discusses in detail how Arabian immigrant woman cope with the Western culture. This article aims to examine how the female protagonist in Fadia Faqir’s (2007) novel The Cry of the Dove adapts to the Western environment, and how Mohanty’s (1984) theory illustrates the possible reason as to why the protagonist withholds her real identity. Although the Arabian immigrant female protagonist in Faqir’s novel undergoes trials and tribulations in her host country, she makes an attempt to adjust to her new life in the receiving society. The study uses the thematic approach to analyze the selected novel. This article concludes that the protagonist mobilizes specific strategies to adapt to her new milieu. In addition to that, her hiding for her identity by adopting Western values caused by racial discrimination, which mirrors the Western colonial thinking about Arabian women for being from the under developed Third World countries. Nevertheless, her adaption makes her feel humiliated since she is forced to adopt the Other’s culture.

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