السّرد الحداثيّ وتقنيّاته في رواية "خاتم" لرجاء عالم

Abstract

Khātam [Ring] is an Arabic feminist novel published in 2001 by the Saudi novelist Rajāʾ ʿĀlem. The novel serves as a reflective, self-conscious, and objective mirror depicting the reality of women in the Arabian Gulf society. In this novel, ʿĀlem attempts to address the reality of Gulf women, in general, and Saudi women, more particularly, positioning herself as an advocate for women’s rights and gender equality. She exposes various opposing social, political, and legal stances between men and women and among women themselves. She does so by narrating the story of Khātam, who cannot determine her gender due to early physical deformity, leading her to live between the worlds of both femininity and masculinity. The author employs this oscillation between conflicting worlds to present the issue of women’s struggle with and among themselves, on the one hand, and their struggle within their male-dominated society, on the other.

Khātam demonstrates a mature feminist attempt by Rajāʾ ʿĀlem to employ modernist narration as an expression of Saudi women’s struggle within their restrictive environment. Throughout the novel, ʿĀlem employs modernist narrative techniques and narrative forms such as autobiographies, diaries, journalist writings, legal investigations, and other novels. Khātam is rich in symbols and allegories that contribute to addressing complex feminist issues using a condensed language with modernist characteristics that aim to liberate the novel from the constraints of traditional narration. This study aims to analyze ʿĀlem’s novel and her use of modernist narration and its techniques, revealing the key social and gender-related issues that this feminist novel aims to shed light on.