"Female identity”: rewritings of Greek and Biblical myths by contemporary women writers

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2011

Author

Dörschel, Funda Başak

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This study approaches myths as patriarchal narratives and ideological tools and it argues that representations of women from an androcentric perspective in Greek mythology are also observed in the Bible. This study argues that patriarchy as a universal ideology has produced the same gender stereotypes beginning from Ancient Greece. Consequently, Western literature, which has the Classical and Biblical tradition as its main source, has reinforced the same female images throughout its history. Besides, it is suggested that, the Western canon failed to create alternative female models for the binary opposition of submissive wives versus the female evil figure and the main stereotypical characteristics had not been challenged until the emergence of feminist criticism. This study thus aims to discuss myths as one of the foremost sites of the construction of ideological subjects and it analyses the rewritings of Greek, Old Testament and New Testament myths by contemporary women writers in fiction; namely Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Firebrand, Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent, India Edghill’s Queenmaker, Gail Sidonie Sobat’s The Book of Mary and Michéle Roberts’ The Wild Girl and it explores the textual strategies that are employed by women writers in order to subvert and revise the patriarchal ideology in myths, to come up with alternative definitions of female identity and to weave gynocentric myths.

Subject Keywords

Gender identity., Patriarchy

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12613185/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/21198

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

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Citation Formats

F. B. Dörschel, ““Female identity”: rewritings of Greek and Biblical myths by contemporary women writers ,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2011.