Women’s Writings/Women Re-writing (Social Spaces)

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Mansoureh Modarres

• Sandra Zagarell (1988) introduces “narratives of community” as texts that are constructed around central social structures, and can be thought of as textual manifestation of communities. These communities are represented in the form of social institutions and normative rules that individuals seem obliged to follow in order to either fit in, or else be labelled as outsiders of the community. While formal institutions, in the form of its official social institutions and hegemonic narratives, provide the rules for the extent and ways of individuals' participation in the community, informal institutions, often made up by the community members’ personal interpretation of those institutions, can greatly affect individuals’ gender identity. This study will explore the dynamics of a community’s homogenizing attempts in confining and predetermining the gender roles and identity of a female individual as depicted in Alice Munro’s "Princess Ida", in its labelling the resistant female character as "eccentric". It will further examine the ways in which female character as the eccentric, in turn, is able to affect her male-centered community, challenging and resisting gendered values and narratives by weaving out her personal way of being in the world.

• Date created

  2017

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Women's writing
  • Institutions
  • Language Games
  • Social norms
  • Comparative Literature
  • Eccentricity
  • Narratives
  • Social spaces

• Type of Item

  Conference/Workshop Presentation

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3JM23V64

• License

  Attribution 4.0 International