Death as a Way of Women’s Resistance: Feminist Reading of Snow and Women at Point Zero

Abstract

Women’s life without oppression, suppression and discrimination is the claim of women’s rights. Women are subjected to discrimination or violence at various phases of life, by rules and cultures. Unfortunately, female discrimination and oppression are rooted in the cultures of male-dominated societies. Gender discrimination is the practice of denying or granting privilege or rights to someone according to her/his gender, and such practice is acceptable to both; in such societies with such practices and traditions, women’s mission for liberating themselves is seen to be impossible because they have to challenge longstanding customs and traditions of people. This study shed light on the practices of oppression, gender discrimination that women encounter from infancy to adulthood, from childhood to womanhood, as portrayed in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow and Nawal El Saadawi’s Women at Point Zero, as well as the various ways of resistance depending on the cultural differences. Their persistence trial to free themselves from oppression and male dominance. In Women at Point Zero, there is a link between the triple effect of patriarchy, religion, and class on women. This study examines how patriarchal culture, violence, oppression, and gender discrimination happen not only in a family; in contrast, the violence does not happen from men, husbands in families only, but again in wives, women’s resistance and reaction against them. In Snow, women many problems related to their religious norms. The women’s discrimination is because of using headscarves; Kadhife, the female character, is sketched as a woman who attempts to have her right to support and defend women’s rights in her place, Kars, and to retain wearing headscarves.