World Literature

Fourth Year Dr. Alhadi

Handout
www.rersearch-chronicler.com Research Chronicler ISSN-2347-503X
International Multidisciplinary Research journal

Research Chronicler
A Peer-Reviewed Refereed and Indexed International Multidisciplinary Research Journal

Volume III Issue V: May 2015

CONTENTS
Sr. No. Author Title of the Paper Page No.
1 Shailendra P. Singh Imparting Idea Generation Skills for 1
Effective Writing
2 Dr. Dhanesh Mohan Depiction of Pain and Misery of a Dalit in 6
Bartwal Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan: A Dalit’s Life
3 M. Sraddhanandam Women Empowerment through Education in 17
Mahabub Nagar District of Telangaana State:
Some Observations
4 Talluri Mathew Bhaskar Girish Karnad’s Yayati: a Mythical Play 22
5 Dr. Patil Vijaykumar Blanche: A Barren 37
Ambadasrao
6 B. Niraimathi From Self- adjustment to Self- alienation in 43
Anita Desai’s Fire on the Mountain
7 Mrs. Aphale Jayashri Ajay Use of Literature in Language Teaching 47
8 Anisha Rajan The Gendered Other in the Forty Rules of 53
Love
9 Mr. Dnyaneshwar Shrawan Dramatic Techniques in Vijay Tendulkar’s 58
Bhandare Ghashiram Kotwal
10 ¯ÖÏÖ. ›üÖò. •ÖµÖÓŸÖ ¿Öê¾ÖŸÖêú¸ü †Ö¿ÖµÖÖ­Öã¹ý¯Ö ÃÖÓ¾ÖÖ¤ü ¾Ö ÃÖӯ֍úÖԍú׸üŸÖÖ 62
ÓúšüÃÖÖ¬Ö­Öê“Öß †×­Ö¾ÖÖµÖÔŸÖÖ
11 kaMbaLo ema. ema. jaagaitkIkrNaacaa marazI kivatovar Jaalaolaa pirNaama 67
12 izk-fparke.k f/kanGs vkfnoklh dforsr meVysys tkxfrdhdj.kkps 72
fp=.k

Volume III Issue V: May 2015 Editor-In-Chief: Prof. K.N. Shelke

 www.rersearch-chronicler.com Research Chronicler ISSN-2347-503X
International Multidisciplinary Research journal

The Gendered Other in the Forty Rules of Love

Anisha Rajan
Research Scholar, University of Kerala, Trivandrum, (Kerala) India

Abstract
The paper explores the concept of woman as gendered “other”, silenced by the
dominant voices of patriarchy in the novel of Elif Shafak, Turkey’s foremost woman
writer. The Forty Rules of Love portrays a woman who breaks the restricted identity of
her gender and discovers the other aspects of her individuality. The deeper concerns of
being a woman are analysed in detail and the relation between the individual and the
collective is re-defined. Family as an accepted institution carrying the tradition of
subjugation of women and domination of the patriarchal discourses are analysed. The
need for a new identity that can negotiate between the gender roles and individual
actions are voiced.
Key Words: Gender, Identity, Discourse, Culture.

Introduction
Elif Shafak is a promising writer of
Turkey whose works belong to the
postmodern genre of writing. She is an
award winning writer of Turkish
descent and the most popular woman
writer in Turkey. She was born in
Strasbourg, France in 1971 to Turkish
immigrant parents, but later returned to
Istanbul, her favourite city. Shafak
portrays a multicultural Turkish Society
in her novels written in Turkish and
English. She is noted for her innovative
manner of blending the eastern and the
western styles in the creation of her
fiction. Her gamut of writing includes
The Gaze (2006), The Bastard of
Istanbul (2006), The Saint of Incipient
Insanities (2004), The Flea Palace
(2005) The Forty Rules of Love (2009)
and Honour
Ella Rubinstein and Aziz Zahara in The
Forty Rues of Love represent the notions
of the West and the East respectively.
Ella’s portraiture as a dutiful wife and
mother of three teenaged children
brings out a conservative woman of
good, modest values. A woman who is
bound to her husband and family until
her colourless life reaches its zenith on
her fortieth birthday, when she realizes
the meaninglessness of her life. Ella has
everything that should make a woman
happy and fulfilled but she has a
vacuum inside her that was once filled
with love. And the Prologue states thus:
“Building her whole life around her
husband and children, Ella lacked any
survival techniques to help her cope
with life’s hardships on her own. She
was not the type to throw caution to the
wind. Even changing her daily coffee
brand was a major effort” (The Forty
Rules of Love 3).
Shafak explores the inner landscape of
Ella’s persona as a woman. The concept
of a gentle and dutiful wife and mother
who depends on her family for her
fulfilment explores there levance of
family as an institution enhancing social
relationships. Ella, who spent almost

Volume III Issue V: May 2015 (53) Editor-In-Chief: Prof. K.N. Shelke
 www.rersearch-chronicler.com Research Chronicler
International Multidisciplinary Research journal
twenty years of her life as a wife and a
mother, starts working for a publishing
firm on her fortieth birthday so as to
engage herself in a meaningful way; and
literature was a passion for her. Her
world turns upside down once she starts
working on “Sweet Blasphemy” a work
on an inspiring tale about Rumi, the
thirteenth century poet of Turkey and
Shams of Tabriz, a wandering dervish.
The rationality of her twenty years
monotonous life as a “dutiful woman”
surrenders to the power of the intuition
and imagination of a brilliant writer,
Aziz Zahara, who leads her into the
unexplored areas of her own
persona/individuality.
Breaking of the set patterns of life is
hard for an ordinary housewife like
Ella. Ella, the quiet, the rational, the
religious is juxtaposed with the
adventurous, unruly, exuberant Aziz,
who seem quite different in their
perception of life and the world. Ella’s
encounter with Aziz changes her inside
out and she feels the change in all areas
of her life. Being in different continents
and countries do not stop them from
falling in love. The vacuum in Ella
begins to fill with the love for life after
many years of her marriage, which had
virtually died down. Her firm decision
to stick with her marriage, in the
beginning, exposes a faithful and dutiful
wife. But a gradual transition from an
obedient wife into a strong individual
can be witnessed in Ella, as a response
to the changing conditions of her life.
Once Ella and Aziz starts interacting, a
powerful change takes place in Ella,
through the words and lifestyle of Aziz,
her seemingly opposite. Ella’s
conservatism receives a shock (a
Volume III Issue V: May 2015 (54)
ISSN-2347-503X
cultural shock) while encountering the
spontaneous and adventurous Aziz, who
lives his life moment to moment. The
concept of the self and the other as
mirrors can be witnessed through Ella
and Aziz. The concept of the east and
the west as separate, opposites are
broken through the depiction of these
characters. They are just aspects of one
that lie hidden within their culture and
religion, those they could never
experience directly. It gets undermined
by the compulsion of the cultural
narrative prescribed by the society or
community one lives in. Her sudden
exposure to another man of different
cultural background shook her concepts
of reality and identity that she carried
within her so far.
Her concerns regarding love and
marriage are also questioned and take a
new perspective, quite different from
her previous notions of marriage when
she responds to her daughter’s plea to
marry the man she loves. Ella says,
“Just get it in your head, women don’t
marry the man they fall in love
with…Love is only a sweet feeling
bound to come and quickly go away”
(10). Her response to her daughter’s
love again firmly asserts her belief in
the institution of marriage and family as
dictated by her ancestors. “I am a
married woman. I have made a choice
for a lifetime….Marriage is a serious
decision, which needs to be considered
very carefully” (35). The objectives of
marriage are considered very seriously
by Ella, when she repeats what her
ancestors might have taught her.
The notion of gender as given and
natural can be evidenced in the
statements and assumptions of Ella,
Editor-In-Chief: Prof. K.N. Shelke
 www.rersearch-chronicler.com Research Chronicler
International Multidisciplinary Research journal
who blindly accepts the patriarchal
interpretations of her role as a woman.
A woman’s role being defined and
maintained by the phallocentric
discourses, as part of an accepted
tradition of universality and reason is
broken by Ella through a gradual
discovering of the diverse elements of
her individuality. The elements of
intuition and imagination, the “other”
side of her persona comes into play
when encountered with a totally alien
culture or way of life as witnessed in
Aziz, the writer. It becomes stronger
and emphatic as she advances in her
journey of discovering the individual in
her. The individual in Ella overpowers
the woman when she decides to quit her
married life with an unfaithful husband.
Ella’s feigned complacency with her
role as a happy and satisfied woman is a
consequence of the injustice imparted
by patriarchal discourses of which is
unaware to a larger extent.“Patriarchy
works through a double move that, on
one hand, asserts and depend son binary
oppositions of gender differences but,
on the other hand, naturalizes these
necessary differences as biological and
thus the inevitable effect of “nature,”
thereby making them “unnoticeable”
and not in need of change. , as feminist
theorists have repeatedly demonstrated,
has thus been rendered the silent,
invisible other in patriarchy; her
“difference” is both nominally
acknowledged and not deemed worth
noting. In particular, her “different”
condition-- the inequality, injustice, and
oppression of women based on this
difference-- is largely unseen (Ebert 5).
Ella struggles to pass this gender
identity to her own daughter, though,
not consciously, but almost fails in
Volume III Issue V: May 2015 (55)
ISSN-2347-503X
convincing her reasons for getting
married.
Leaving a corrupted institution (her
family) she acts like an individual who
is an agent between the personal and
collective identity (woman). Ella
maintains relation with her children,
thereby, being inside and outside the
system (the family) simultaneously. A
sense of balance is achieved by the re-
organization of her identity as
constituted by different elements.
Shafak emphasizes the re-definition of
“woman” in the changing cultural
context of postmodernism, where
women demand an “identity” that can
negotiate between the gender roles and
lived experiences. Identities are
constructed not by impersonal historical
or social forces but, of course, by
human individuals within particular
social and historical conditions and
constellations. These individuals also
have to deal with the plurality of
differences in which they are suspended
or, in other words, with the plurality of
identities they assume or are ascribed in
particular moments. Social identity is
intended as a concept to mediate
between social context and the action of
human subjects.
The norms of culture are written to suit
the needs and aspirations of a society
that is imagined by the intelligentsia of
that particular time. Ella who was
nurtured by the values of a western
world could never imagine a life outside
her family and country. But she had lost
or rather forgotten the essence or
creative force of her life, which was
dominated and shaped by the outdated
values of her society. She could never
believe in love or in her unfaithful
Editor-In-Chief: Prof. K.N. Shelke
 www.rersearch-chronicler.com Research Chronicler
International Multidisciplinary Research journal
husband, who walked past her tender
feelings for petty affairs with other
women. Her role as a housewife had
exhausted her to the core, though she
appeared to be normal and responsible.
Ella undergoes a great transformation
while encountering Aziz Zahara, who
forces her to see the void within her.
The set codes and values of her family
were making her lead a seemingly
ordinary and satisfactory life. But she
was burning inside to leave the shackles
of a meaningless life with a pre-
determined course. She could predict
the outcome of her life that she was
leading; nothing to hope for and aspire.
Her children had already started living
independent lives. Her new job as a
reviewer of books opens the door to a
new way of living as practiced by Aziz.
She meets the author of the novel Sweet
Blasphemy through the letters of Aziz.
The life experiences of Aziz inspire Ella
to pursue the never-ending journey of
her own life. Her love for Aziz changes
her inside out, and she decides to meet
the man who captures her heart through
his words.
Suppression of one’s thoughts and ideas
to safeguard the collective identity of
any institution (family) leads to
unguarded behaviour of individuals.
Ella’s sudden change towards her life
and family is an instance of response of
a suppressed individuality towards
society. Her twenty years of family life
with her unfaithful husband, who had
been into petty affairs with other
women, had already started to build a
volcano within her ready to erupt
anytime. The predictability of one’s
existence along the lines dictated by a
patriarchal society builds the tension
within her that culminates finally in the
Volume III Issue V: May 2015 (56)
ISSN-2347-503X
end of the old relationships for her.
Ella’s encounter with Aziz, a fully
blossomed individual, brings her under
a powerful transcendence of her pain
and distress. And she decides to open
herself fully to life and take its course
without any pre-conceived rules set by
others. Shafak, though, hints at
instinctual attraction blossoming
between Ella and Aziz, takes the idea of
love to a higher level, from where there
is no return. Two centuries are
beautifully connected through the spirit
of love and individuality, from Rumi to
Ella and Shams to Aziz. The main plot
and the sub plot are interconnected and
the themes are the same—
transformation of individuals. The spirit
of love and faith is put into words
through the forty rules of love of
Shams, which he passes on to Rumi and
it passes to Ella from Aziz. The
transformation is brought about by the
influence of another person or ideology
expounding varied view of life.
The exercise of patriarchal rules
favouring the males in the family as
well as other social units is questioned
by Ella when she confesses her love for
Aziz and decides to quit her unfaithful
husband and unfulfilling life. The law
of marriage and commitment designed
for the good of the society always
foregrounds the units or organizations
as the prime goal, rather than
individuals. Women have to subjugate
their will and self-esteem to male-ego to
support family’s sustenance. Shafak
stands for individual freedom at the
expense of society’s unquestionable set
patterns. Full expression of one’s
individuality is not permitted in a
society or country ruled by any
autocratic ideology. Feminist concerns
Editor-In-Chief: Prof. K.N. Shelke
 www.rersearch-chronicler.com Research Chronicler ISSN-2347-503X
International Multidisciplinary Research journal
of the subjugation of women for the The Forty Rules of Love subverts the
benefit of the society runs through out, notion of the binaries of gender as well
but Ella’s shift from being an “ideal” as of nationalities. The west looking up
woman to a real human being as an to the east for wisdom and spiritual
active agent of her own life is enlightenment is quite refreshing; the
noticeable here. Although religion of Islam is depicted as holding
postmodernism resists characterization, a balanced view of life, unlike the
it is possible to identify certain themes popular notion of fundamentalism. The
or orientations that postmodern man/woman relationship is explored
feminists share. Mary Joe Frug and focus is on spiritual enlightenment
suggested that one principle of than physical gratification. Shafak,
postmodernism is that human definitely, presents a new version of
experience is located “inescapably reality admirable to any heart full of
within language”. Power is exercised compassion and love.
not only through direct coercion, but Love cannot be explained. It can only
also through the way in which language be experienced.
shapes and restricts our reality.
However, because language is always Love cannot be explained, yet it
open to re-interpretation, it can also be explains all. - The Forty Rules of Love
used to resist this shaping and
restriction, and so is a potentially
fruitful site of political struggle.
Works Cited:
1. Eberet, Teresa L. The “Difference” of Postmodern Feminism: Jstor. National
Council of Teachers of English.1991.Web. 13 April 2015.
2. Frug, Mary Joe. “A Postmodern Feminist Legal Manifesto (An Unfinished
Draft)”, Harvard Law Review, Vol. 105, No. 5. Mar., 1992, 1045-1075.
3. Shafak, Elif. The Forty Rules of Love. Penguin. 2010. Print.

Stay Safe!

Volume III Issue V: May 2015 (57) Editor-In-Chief: Prof. K.N. Shelke