A Feminist Dialogic Reading of the New Woman: Love, Female Desire, and Family in The Virgin and the Gypsy by D. H. Lawrence and in The Tragedy of Demetrio by Hanna Mina

Abstract

This paper explores the depiction of female characters as New Women in a comparative analysis of two selected short stories by two seemingly anti-feminist authors; D. H. Lawrence in England and Hanna Mina in Syria. I argue that these short stories signal the need for a new perspective, analyzing how these two authors challenged the conventional fictional treatment of womanhood and created complex female heroines struggling against restrictive social roles and values. Examining these selected narratives, “The   Virgin and the Gypsy” by D. H. Lawrence and in “The Tragedy of Demetrio” by Hanna   Mina, sets forth an unexpected area of comparison between English and Arabic literature with a specific interest in the construction of New Woman identity at the turn of the century, namely the fragmented and complex presentations of the heroines’ inner struggle between the traditional female roles and their aspirations for a freer, more fluid identity. A close reading will, therefore, bring out certain similarities in terms of themes and style that call for a Bakhtinian insight into dialogism to account for the fragmented character of the New Woman in both texts.