Development of Awareness: The Power of Society and Men in the Saudi Women's Novel

Abstract

This thesis investigates two of the most important themes concerning women’s problems that have been tackled by Saudi female novelists between 1958-2011 with special attention to the development of their thoughts about the issues from stage to stage. To investigate the two powers over women explored in Saudi women’s novels, the works have been divided into four separate and important stages and each stage has its own thematic and stylistic charactersics.

The thesis consists of seven chapters starting with an Introduction, in which the importance of studying the subject is detailed; the theortical framework and the methodology of this study is also discussed. A section is devoted to reviewing previous studies of the Saudi novel in general, as well as studies published on the women’s novel. The status of women in Saudi society is discussed in Chapter Two which covers the structure of Saudi society, women’s education, women’s employment and the effects on the status of women in Saudi Arabia of the events of September 11th, 2001.

The other four chapters are divided according to the stages of development of Saudi women’s novels. In each chapter, two novels are analysed: the first novel represents the first theme examined in the thesis, which is the authority of society over women. The second novel represents the second theme, which is the Saudi novelists’ vision regarding the relationships between the sexes in Saudi society. In addition, a section in each chapter is devoted to an examination of the characteristic of the themes in each stage by comparing and contrasting sample novels with the case study novels. The conclusion summarises the most important points of this research with reference to the findings of this study. It also suggests some further research in the field of Saudi literature.