LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 10 : 8 August 2010
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         K. Karunakaran, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.

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Theme of Isolation in the Select Works of
Canadian Women Playwrights

S. Gunasekaran, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Struggle for Identity

Women's sense of isolation and the need for self-recognition relate to both the national struggle for identity in the post-colonial age and female struggle for identity in the tradition of patriarchy. The paper discusses on how women playwrights explore the association of national identity and female identity on many levels. The portrayal of the immigrant is used to further emphasize the female sense of isolation and marginality.

Feminist Movement and Women Playwrights

With the burgeoning of the feminist movement in the past two decades, women playwrights in many countries have begun articulating a new voice in theatre. But in Canada, the pursuit of a female vision is unique in that it examines the notion of gender and female identity through the lens of cultural mythology. Writers such as Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence have probed the relationship between female and national identity in fiction, and have been the topic of research by critics like Marian Fowler and Coral Ann Howells.

Focus of This Study

This study offers a critical attempt to place women playwrights in a Canadian literary context in which "myths and legends of landscape" symbolize self-discovery and the quest for an aesthetic as well as a socio-political feminized space.

This paper explores the creative contribution to dramatic literature of Margaret Hollingsworth, Aviva Ravel, Antonine Maillet, Betty Jane Wylie and Cindy Cowan, and focuses on six plays which dramatize Canadian cultural mythology from the standpoint of the female imagination: Ever Loving and Islands by Margaret Hollingsworth; The Twisted Loaf by Aviva Ravel; La Sagouine by Antonine Maillet; A Place on Earth by Betty Jane Wylie, and A Woman From the Sea by Cindy Cowan.

Why These Plays?

The six plays are selected because they create a synthesized vision which reflects both a feminist aesthetic and a national consciousness. In their search for identity, these playwrights have transformed the literary myth of wilderness, the struggle for survival as immigrant, and the dominance of colonialism into a dramatic female mythology. By identifying 'wilderness' as the metaphorical female psyche, the 'immigrant' as a symbol of women's sense of marginality, and the 'colonial', 'imperial' mentality as suppression through patriarchal tradition, these playwrights add a new dimension to modern Canadian drama in the context of the search for national identity.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Ethnic Relations and the Media - A Study of the Malaysian Situation | Lexical Borrowing: A Study of Punjabi and Urdu Kinship Terms | Novel as Contemporary Indian History - A Glimpse of Works by Manohar Malgonkar,
His Contemporaries, and Precursors | Gender Issues in Teacher Training Materials of ELTIS (English Language Training for Islamic Schools) - A Study from Indonesia | Mind Your Vocabulary! | Semantic Variations of Punjabi Toneme | Contemporary Indian Women Writing in English and the Problematics of the Indian Middle Class | Thought Boundary Detection in English Text through the 'Law of Conservation of thought' for Word Sense Disambiguation | Theme of Isolation in the Select Works of Canadian Women Playwrights | Developing an ESP Course for Students of Applied Sciences in Pakistan | Socio-cultural Context of Communication in Indian Novel - A Pragmatic Approach to Inside the Haveli | Socio-cultural Context of Communication in Indian Novel - A Pragmatic Approach to Inside the Haveli | An Overview of Face and Politeness | Technical Language Lab and CALL - A Descriptive Report | Teaching Composition to Adult Learners of ESL - Strategically Bridging Learner Deficiency and Metacognitive Proficiency through Emotional Intelligence - A Case Study of Indian and Libyan Situations | A Comparison of Students' Achievement in the Subject of English - A Pakistani Context | Code Switching and Code Mixing in Arab Students - Some Implications | A Descriptive Analysis of Diminishing Linguistic Taboos in Pakistan | "Who's that Guy?" - A Discourse Representation of Social Actors in a Death | Contributions of Anna to Tamil Culture and Literature | Ignorance - A Maiden Spoilsport in Thomas Hardy | Classical Language Issues for Teulugu and Kannada | A PRINT VERSION OF ALL THE PAPERS OF AUGUST 2010 ISSUE IN BOOK FORMAT. This document is better viewed if you open it online and then save it in your computer. After saving it in your computer, you can easily read all the pages from the saved document. | HOME PAGE of August 2010 Issue | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR

S. Gunasekaran, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Department of English
Anna University Tiruchirappalli
Dindigul Campus
Dindigul- 624 622
Tamilnadu, India
gunakundhavai@yahoo.com

 
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