Re-Presenting Marginalized Woman's Role in Ali Ahmed Bakathir's The Secret of Shahrazad

Abstract

#This research deals with an important area of study, Arabic literature; it examines a play from Arabic drama written by the well-known Yemeni playwright and novelist, Ali Ahmed Bakathir. To be sure, most of female characters in Arabic plays are doubly marginalized. They are marginalized as women, a muted, dispossessed and oppressed fringe of patriarchy. Also, they are marginalized because of the social, cultural, political or intellectual position of the group, community, society they belong to. This paper thus aims to investigate whether these female characters are truly marginalized or they have been given leading roles in Arabic drama. It also aims to study these female characters who are oppressed and distressed and yet up to challenge social orders and establish hierarchical ideas of knowledge and truth and analyzing their roles in Bakathir's 'The Secret of Shahrazad.' According to the finding of this study, the status of woman in Bakethir's play has been subjected to perceptible changes. Shahrazad, a heroine of the play, is a much more astute character than her predecessors were. She discusses how she came to be a woman trapped by the domestic role, and she enumerates the personal ramifications of her situation of her life. In fact, she is the only female character to do anything about her situation. She does not outright to leave her husband 'Shahryar', but she grants him a lot of marital rights and privileges under the roof that they share. She effectively shuts off his brutal power. Indeed, Bakathir tried to justify woman from marginalizing and from men's domination by giving her leading roles in his play. He significantly introduced her as a modern, a new, an educated and an open-minded woman who studies music and knows how to dance. He also represented woman's roles by providing her capability of taming the man, freeing him from his complexity and psychological problems, and changing his ideas to become a man who believe in otherness and coexistence with woman.