Magical realism as feminist discourse: Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits and Shahrnush Parsipur's Touba and the Meaning of Night

Abstract

Magical realist fiction is considered a subversive mode in its commingling of the binary opposition (Reason/Imagination) with none at the upper hand. Because of its transgressive spirit, from the mid-twentieth century onwards many postcolonial, cross-cultural, and feminist writers have found magical realism an appropriate means of giving voice to their seemingly improbable ideals. Of the above-mentioned groups, women novelists around the world have done their best to create a sort of female empowering discourse through this kind of double voiced narrative. Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits and Shahrnush Parsipur's Touba and the Meaning of Night seem be to labors of this kind. The present paper is an attempt to answer two questions: (1) since their novels seem to emulate Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, do Allende and Parsipur really succeed in appropriating the work of the patriarch? (2) To what extent and in what ways Allende and Parsipur apply magical realist narrative techniques to express their protest against the status quo of women?