The Quest for (Re) writing Her/story: Voicing the Unheard in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and A Mercy and Assia Djebar’s Fantasia, An Algerian Cavalcade and So Vast the Prison

Abstract

Women writers have long sought to reintroduce silenced women and their experiences to history and literature. This thesis, then, intends to link these women to history and literature by examining literary texts written by postcolonial women writers Assia Djebar and Toni Morrison, specifically Fantasia, An Algerian Cavalcade, So Vast the Prison, Beloved and A Mercy. Djebar and Morrison, regardless of their different socio-cultural backgrounds, Algerian and African American, respectively, showcase an undeniable affinity by writing subaltern women who have been subjected to the cruelty of patriarchy, (post)colonialism and slavery. They attempt to present women and their histories with a final aim to challenge literary conventions and exclusionary history. Therefore, this thesis undertakes a thematic comparative analysis guided by a postcolonial feminist theoretical framework that takes intersectional theory and subaltern historiography as its main focus when exploring Algerian and African American women's experiences within their respective histories and literatures. We also address the authors’ roles by examining the feminine quality of their writings. This study argues that although women are written off history, they still manage to preserve it within their bodies, confirming thus a resistance to their manifold oppressions, and providing women writers with the possibility to unearth their buried truths and voices, write and rewrite them into a revised version of history and literature called her/story. This thesis revealed that women's intersectionality has led to their manifold oppression and subalternity within literature and history. Nonetheless, we assert that women writers contend this by crafting a her/story that represents the several positions subaltern women occupy, mainly oppressed and agent positions. Djebar and Morrison, then, emerge as revisionists who write subaltern women’s individual and collective experiences and her/stories in the feminine.