Palestinian Women as Silenced Subaltern in Elizabeth Laird’s A Little Piece of Ground and Cathryn Clinton’s A Stone in My Hand

Nigm, Soad; Elshaikh, Ebtahal; Abdulaal, Lamia; Shalash, Asmaa

doi:10.21608/ijahr.2024.234455.1027

Palestinian Women as Silenced Subaltern in Elizabeth Laird’s A Little Piece of Ground and Cathryn Clinton’s A Stone in My Hand

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Assistant Professor of English Literature, Dept. of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Education, Tanta University

² Professor of English Literature, Department of Foreign Languages Faculty of Education, Tanta University, Egypt

³ Associate Professor of English Literature, Dept. of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Education, Tanta University

⁴ Master Student Dept. of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Education, Tanta University

10.21608/ijahr.2024.234455.1027

Abstract

In colonized societies, women are viewed as the lowest object in the hierar-chical system; therefore, they are constantly excluded and have no voice or represen-tation. Women are frequently considered as the other, particularly in Third World so-cieties. Palestinian women – whether mothers, wives, or girls – suffer from subjuga-tion by the Israeli occupation, which imposes its hegemony over them by disempow-ering them, in contrast to women in other eastern cultures who experience patriarchy. They continue to encounter the severe misdeeds of the occupation that disempowers them by subjecting them to humiliation, economic exploitation, and instilling in them the fear of losing everything.
This paper aims to investigate how Palestinian Women are subject to disem-powerment because of Israeli occupation in Elizabeth Laird’s A Little Piece of Ground and Cathryn Clinton’s A Stone in My Hand. The paper demonstrates how Palestinian women are fundamentally oppressed in both novels by fear, humiliation, and financial hardships. The paper also argues that women receive little attention in the two works and they avoid any conflicts with the Israeli soldiers because they feel completely powerless under the occupation. Therefore, due to the ongoing breaches of the occupation that violate their integrity and security as human beings with established rights, Palestinian women in both novels are traumatised by the thought of losing a loved one. Finally, the paper demonstrates how Palestinian women are marginalised by the economic circumstances that make it impossible for them to live a decent life and reduce them to voiceless subalterns

Keywords

Main Subjects

Humanities Studies

Article History

Receive Date: 2023/10/22

Accept Date: 2023/11/15

Publish Date: 2023/11/28

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