The Hegemony of the Implicit Patriarchal Pattern in the Contemporary World Novel: A Cultural Critique of Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love
Öz
This article examines Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love through the lens of cultural and feminist critique, interrogating the hegemonic patterns of implicit patriarchy operating within the contemporary world novel. The study analyses the novel's dual narrative structure—the story of Ella Rubinstein, a modern American housewife, interwoven with the mystical journey of the thirteenth-century figure Shams of Tabriz—against the backdrop of gender dynamics, the discourse of liberation, and the cultural politics of silence. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony, Simone de Beauvoir's concept of the Other, and the feminist literary criticism of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, this paper argues that beneath the novel's ostensible project of making female subjectivity visible lies an implicit discourse that naturalizes and reproduces patriarchal norms across both modern and historical narrative planes. The article demonstrates that the novel's discourse of love, spirituality, and individual transformation consistently privileges male authority and spiritual guidance, while framing female emancipation as contingent upon male approval or romantic attachment—a tension that ultimately subverts Shafak's professed feminist credentials. In doing so, this study interrogates the limitations of market-driven literary globalisation in genuinely amplifying women's voices in world literature.
Anahtar Kelimeler
Elif Shafak, patriarchy, hegemony, feminist criticism, world novel
Kaynakça
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