Masculine Inheritance in Female Saudi Fiction 1990-2013

This thesis examines the literary works of a group of emerging Saudi Arabian women writers from 1990 to 2013. The main writers studied are Zaynab Hifni (Chapter One), Badriya Al-Bisher (Chapter Two), Raja Alem (Chapter Three), and Laila Al-Juhani (Chapter Four). The central aim of the thesis is to shed light on what the study proposes to call a deeply rooted masculine inheritance within Saudi society, which severely limits the creative expression of these and other Saudi writers. While some scholarly attention has been given to gender representation in the writings of Saudi novelists, there is relatively little on how Saudi fiction mirrors the impact of masculine inheritance. The thesis focuses, accordingly, on its target authors’ engagement with patriarchal social constructs, and examines their efforts to critique and transcend them. Employing narratological methods, ideological critique, and aspects of Western and Islamic feminism, the thesis interrogates the ideologies embedded within the texts, revealing the manifold ways in which Saudi Arabian women’s fiction engages with questions of gender, power, and social transformation.