Feminism in literature/ Taslima Nasrin

"If I disclose my destination my security will be compromised. My face has now become recognizable and I could be target of religious fundamentalists". That was her last sentence to the press before hiding in Stockholm protected by the Swedish government on March 18th 2008. Born in August 1962 in Mymensingh, Bangladesh, Taslima Nasrin studied Medicine and started her career as a gynecologist where she routinely examined young girls who had been raped. This and other incidents made her switch to writing where she is now considered one of the most controversial female writers, mainly for her strong attack religions in general and Islam in particular. She is also considered as one of the strongest and most famous feminist figures world wide. Taslima's literary works started in 1986 with poetry collection. Her name started to draw attention when she started writing columns in the weekly magazine Khabarer Kagoj , where she started voicing out her anti-Islam thoughts and believes that caused controversy throughout Bangladesh. During this stage her feminist style began to develop. Her literary fame came with her short novel titled Lajja or shame, where through graphic description of the rape of a Hindu girl by a Muslim man, she thoroughly raised the issue of the marginalized Hindu community in Bangladesh. Later on, she rewrote the novella making it into a 200 pages novel. The government banned the book and all her works and Islamic fundamentalists worldwide claimed her blood. In 1993 she was charged with blasphemy and after the trial she went into exile in many countries until she ended in Calcutta, India. And even there, she has received several death threats and the Islamic head priest of Calcutta announced offering money to anyone who would "blacken" Taslima's face, a ritual carried out in India in order to publicly humiliate someone. During her course of life, Taslima has received public criticism and has been regarded as an attention seeker, a person with sinister motives, a Jewish spy and she has been physically attacked several times. Growing public hatred from the Muslim community in India that was manifested into violence and even reached the point of causing a political crisis between the two countries made her life in India practically impossible that she had to escape to Europe a month ago. "Nature says women are human beings, men have made religions to deny it. Nature says women are human beings, men cry out NO!" Taslima's feminist believes are focused around the criticism of Islam and how it views women where her autobiographical novels revolve around the oppression of women in Islam. Her works include 12 poetry collections, 4 essay collections, 7 novels and 7 autobiographical works. Hated and fought against by most of the Muslim world, Taslima has many supporters world wide, her novels are widely spread and translated into many languages, and she received several awards from Europe and USA that was crowned with the Simone de Beauvoir feminist award in 2008.

Feminism in Literature/ Simone de Beauvoir

Back to France in the early 20th Century. A lawyer was living a humble life with his wife and two daughters in Paris. He has always hoped to have a son so he passed his passion for theatre and literature to his first daughter and always told her that she had a brain of a man. At the age of 15, Simone de Beauvoir decided she will be a famous writer; she has already been a brilliant student with a special interest in philosophy which she continued studying in the Sorbonne. It was at that time that she met and fell in love with the great French philosopher and writer, Jean-Paul Sartre. On the final examination, she took the second place after him, and although the jury declared she deserved the first place, yet they had to give it to the man. At that time, she was 21 and she was the youngest student to get that degree. Simone and Sartre spent the rest of their life together in an open relationship, they never got married, they never believed in God or religion and they toured the world advertising for freedom and liberation of the mind. They met the great Revolutionary Guevara and they were greeted in Cairo where they both gave lectures in its great university and had several meetings with intellectuals of that age but were rather fascinated with Taha Hussein. While Sartre was the God father for the existentialism movement and philosophy, de Beauvoir had her own interest for women liberation that she is considered by critics a pioneer of feminism. In 1949, she published her book The Second Sex, a feminist manifesto in which she elucidates on her own conceptual believes regarding women oppression in society. She argues that women are always regarded as the Other in the male dominated social construction, this has limited women's success by maintaining the perception that they are a deviation from the normal. She focused on her belief that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves and move beyond their current status into a higher condition where one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one's freedom. By her death in April 1986, she has left 23 works of literature including novels, short stories and other non fiction works, all focusing on women and their liberation.

Feminism in Literature/ Virginia Woolf

From 19th century France to 20th century England, and exactly on March 28th 1941, a fine spring day when Leonard Woolf went back into his house after some hours of working in the garden to find a letter from his wife written on her favorite blue paper. By the time he had finished reading the letter, his wife’s body was already sinking down the river near their home in East Sussex . Virginia was born in London on January 25th, 1882. Her father was a literary figure himself, a famous critic and biographer and well connected to the known writers of his time like Henry James and George Eliot. As a victim of child abuse and incest, made worse by the loss of her most beloved family members at a young age and being sensitive by nature, Virginia was fertile soil for bipolar illness – a mental condition characterized by periods of extreme and unpredictable mood states, alternating between mania and depression in variable durations. A strong correlation exists between bipolar disorders and creativity. Her own mental illness also gave her expertise to master the technique of internal dialogue, where the writer focuses on the characters rather than the plot. The events are usually displayed through deep personal feelings, experiences and psychoanalyses of the characters. Her characters alternate between thoughts and feelings and linking past memories with present moments, where those memories and moments play pivotal roles in her novels. She is famous for diffusing the boundaries between normal and abnormal, reflecting her disturbed mind that lost clear boundaries between reality and illusion. She explores both the conscious and subconscious states of her characters, focusing on the overlap between internal and external realities. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the destruction of her home in London and the fear of a German invasion to England , she started to get very strong migraine attacks and to suffer from insomnia. Her condition deteriorated until she finally took her own life, leaving a legacy of literary works including 9 novels among which are the most famous To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway, a collection of short stories titled A Haunted House and several non fiction works. In 1929, Virginia published her long Essay, A Room of One's Own, based on a series of lectures she gave in Cambridge University . Considered as a milestone of feminist writings, the book examines whether female writers can be as equally great in writing as William Shakespeare. In this book she created a female character, Judith and called her Shakespeare' s sister who has a gift exactly as that of Shakespeare but was faced by only closed doors that were open only to men. She also examines the life of female writers like George Eliot, Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. The title of the book comes from Woolf's conceptual belief that, a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. Finally, I leave you with the letter she wrote to her husband before she commits suicide, considered by critics as a literary work of its own and some even described it as the most wonderful love letter ever written. Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V. P.S the above post is an adaptation of the article I wrote on Virginia Woolf in The Art Review Magazine, issue 7 titled the mad issue with special focus on Madness vs Creativity. Check the website for further information www.theartreview. com