The Brontes' Arab connection.

I found this really interesting article on the Bronteblog just now. It is so interesting it makes me so impatient to get a hold of this book and read it. It basically deals with feminism, the Arab world, and works by Charlotte Bronte. I've heard of Charlotte Bronte's works being compared to post-colonial literature, especially that of the Indian subcontinent, but I didn't think there would be much out there about an Arab connection. This book seems promising in that it is filled with this very topic!

One of the reasons Charlotte Bronte's works resonate so strongly with me is that the time in which she wrote her novels is very much like the society in which I grew up. In this society, women are considered inferior, a burden. A single woman wishing to be independent, is considered dangerous: not only to her self (for she is believed to have such a feeble mind, susceptible to temptation), but to her family (who despair of getting her married), and her husband (who delights in being her superior). And then of course, there are so many RULES (religious, societal, filial) that she ought to follow. There is so much emphasis on restraint, that it is stifling. A woman must always be "kept down".

This is why I find Jane to be such a source of strength and inspiration. She had her low moments, to be sure, but she tried to survive on her own at whatever cost.

"Angry words sofly spoken

Angry Words Softly Spoken
A Comparative Study of English and Arabic Women Writers by Alanoud Alsharekh. Published by Saffron Books

Angry Words Softly Spoken deals with the concept of feminism as a cross-cultural literary device that uncovers the social development of women’s emancipatory progress through the work of both English and Arab female novelists.The main premise of this study relies on many of the theories presented by the 1970’s feminist critical movement, especially that of Elaine Showalter’s tripartite structure.It also suggests a new tripartite structure for the evolution of feminist consciousness in works of fiction involving an inversion of scales in ‘softness’ and ‘anger’ explored through the work of such authors as Charlotte Brontë, Sarah Grand, Virginia Woolf, Layla al-'Uthman, Nawal al Saadawi and Hanan al Shaykh...

....

The works of Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre and Villette, are compared with the literature of the Kuwaiti writer Layla al-'Uthman in Chapter 2: Feminine. Table of Contents here."

More info here.