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This dissertation explores the representation of social hierarchy in the discourse of Saudi female novelists between 2004 and 2015. The last generation of Saudi women novelists has concentrated its fictional narrative discourse and themes on the suffering of women under the Saudi masculine culture. Their goal is to point out several aspects of social hierarchy that affect women in Saudi society. The forty-three female Saudi novelists chosen for this study published at least one novel between 2004 and 2015, and each novel portrays at least one aspect of social hierarchy. I argue that the themes that reflect the hierarchies of tribe, descent, region, skin color, class, occupation, sect, gender and language have become dominant in Saudi female novelistic discourse. Throughout these themes, Saudi female novelists depict how the Saudi woman suffers from masculine domination in her family, community, society, and culture. These authors employ fictional narrative discourse to resist social powers that control women’s lives in Saudi Arabia and to achieve certain feminist goals. Their writings bring to light important issues that people are unable to discuss publicly in Saudi society. I analyze all of these novels from the perspective of feminist theory in order to, first, describe how these writers challenge their conservative society and culture and, second, highlight the condition of women under conservatism. The corpus of studies of Saudi women novelists written in English is small, and this study expands that corpus by examining how Saudi women novelists use their novels to critique Saudi culture from within and to project their voices to people who live within and outside of Saudi Arabia. |
