«الأسود یلیق بک» اثر أحلام مستغانمی، روایتی به قلم یک زن

Introduction: In different periods of history, women always believed that they were in second position in terms of gender and were not considered as a main character. Moreover, the believes was true to some extent due to the behavior of men in front of them and caused women to become pessimistic towards the patriarchal society and its ideas. Considerably, in the 20th century, women entered into the economic and political areas to achieve the rights that they thought had been denied to them throughout history. In addition, women’s literature and writing were among the topics raised by some experts of the school of feminism. After that, the goal of experts in defining women’s writing was that women have their own writing style like men and show their inherent differences from men well in their texts. In fact, feminism can be defined as the study of gender in language, determined the phonetic, lexical and syntactic differences, identified what issues are related to women’s language.

In the field of Arabic literature, the entered of the term women’s literature can be related to the Renaissance era, in which intellectuals realized the importance of the role of women in the awakening of the society and participating in social, cultural and literary fields. Moreover, new words such as women’s education and women’s association entered the language and culture of that society. (Momtahan & others, 2011: 137) believed that women’s literature in Algeria can be considered a late phenomenon and belongs to the last century. In addition, compared to the seventies more women published their works in the eighties. Considerably, Yasmin Saleh, Fazileh Farouq, Enam Bayoud, Sara Haider, Abir Shahrazad, and Ahlam Mostaghanami are among Algerian women writers, among whom Fazileh Farouq, Yasmin Saleh, and Ahlam Mostaghnami are more involved in their activities than others. The novel Al-Asud Yaliq Bek, written by Ahlam Mostaghnami, is one of the works in which the female language and its related components can be clearly observed. This research aims to provide a brief explanation of the phenomenon of women’s writing and examines women’s writing in the novel Al-Aswad Yaliq Bek written by Ahlam Mostaghanami.

In addition, it answers the following questions:

1. What were the factors influencing the emergence of women’s literature in Algeria?

2. How are the female writing components of Al-Soud Yaliq Bek’s novel manifested?

3. What are the most obvious characteristics of women’s writing in Al-Soud Yaliq Beyk’s novel and what could be the reason for it?



Methodology: This research, in a descriptive-analytical way, has tried to define the components of this literary style after explaining the relationship between feminism and women’s writing in Arab countries, especially Algeria. And moreover, this research tries to define the author’s purpose of using this writing style by presenting evidence and statistics of each of the female linguistic components.



Results and Discussion: The author of Al-Aswad story, Yaliq Bek, tried to show her intellectual space to the audience by using skepticism, expressing memories and feelings, detailing, using different colors and feminine terms. For example, considered to the component of expressing memories and feelings, the author has made a lot of use of the components related to the expression of feelings. Moreover, there are 63 cases for Hala and 27 cases for Tala, which shows that the main character of the story, Hala, is dominated by emotions. For Hala, she has used the fear and worry component more, which may be considered a reflection of the existence of Algerian women; women who spend their whole lives in fear. On the other hand, for Tala, the characteristics of love and infatuation is more, which is due to the infatuation and love that he felt for Hala in his being. This could go back to the psychological security that men have and could easily love and care for each other, but women must always be in fear and worry.

Conclusion: The following results can be obtained from the conducted research:

1. The presence of educated women writers and the publication of their works, even in a limited form, broke the taboo of silence imposed on them. Moreover, other Algerian women writers started writing stories to claim their rights and created the emergence of women’s literature in Algeria.

2. In the novel Al-Asoud by Yaliq Bek, features such as the expression of memories and feelings, the use of ambiguous shots, detailing, different colors and feminine terms are used for the main character of male and female and the narrator.

3. The most obvious characteristics of female writing in the novel of Al-Asoud Yaliq Bek is the author’s use of uncertainly terms, which has a frequency of about 143 and shows uncertainty of the author and the characters of the story, especially the main female character, Hale. Moreover, this issue can refer to the caution of women in their speech and lack of self-confidence of women in expressing their words. Considerably, speaking for women is always limited to certain conditions, and they want to go beyond that limit, they must observe the aspects of caution. The author uses the element of expressing emotions, especially fear and worry, which is repeated 60 times. This issue can point to the psychological characteristics of women and the lack of psychological security. In such society’s women are considered the second sex, and they should always use anxiety and stress to prove their existence.

Keywords: Women’s Literature, Women’s Writing, Ahlam Mostaghnami, Alsoud Yaliq Bek