Subverting Gender Bias: "The Manly Woman" in Ahdaf Soueif's The Map of Love

Abstract

This paper examines the representations of the white woman in cross-cultural marriage in Ahdaf Soueif's The Map of Love in a contemporary deconstructive theory. The paper applies Judith Butler's revolutionary theory of gender and identity constructivism and performativity to clarify how the protagonist fights the gender norms and performances by having masculinity codes as a revolting means for emancipation. The paper tends to explore how colonial hegemony can create a cultural distance which is forced against the white woman by this marriage. It investigates the sociopolitical spatial divisions through the eye of the white woman who struggles because she chooses an ethnic husband. The paper applies a feminist theoretical framework to describe the prejudice and bias that appear after this marriage. "The manly woman" is the white woman who wears masculine features to subvert and oppose the gender bias which applies to her femininity.