Challenging stereotypes about arabs and muslims in post 9/11 female american novels : the case of Lorraine Adams’ Harbor (2004), Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs (2009), and Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs (2013)

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to shed light on the positive representations of Arabs/Muslims in three post 9/11 female American novels: Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs (2013), Lorraine Adams’s Harbor (2004) and Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs (2009).The 9/11 attacks in the United States have completely changed the world by drawing a strong connection between Islam and “terrorism.” The teachings of Islam are emphatically said to encourage bloodshed and violence and Muslims/Arabs are systematically called “terrorists” by Westerners. The post 9/11 has also been heavily marked by Orientalist discourse which extremely reinforces the superiority of the West and the inferiority of the East as Edward Said argues in his Orientalism. This period has witnessed harsh depictions of Arabs/Muslims or anyone who looks like them. More importantly, the stereotypical images about Arabs/Muslims have gone beyond the abusively disparaging speech or writing and have reached concrete violence and extreme discrimination in the United States. Post 9/11 American fiction reproduces and reinforces the stereotypical images about Arabs/Muslims. Post 9/11 novels such as Sherry Jones’s The Jewel Of Medina (2008), Homa Pourasgari’s The Dawn of Saudi (2009), John Updike’s Terrorist (2006), and Don Dellilo’s Falling Man (2007) provide an Orientalist depiction of Arabs/Muslims and take part in the vilification of these people and their religion: Islam is depicted as a source of violence and oppression for women and Muslims/Arabs are claimed to be the threatening “terrorist” Other whose presence among the American people is not only a threat to the national security but a source of personal trauma and psychic disturbance as well. In such a context, offering a startlingly positive portrayal of Arabs/Muslims in the aftermath of the 9/11 events seems to be a challenge. Messud, Adams, and Moore destabilize the demonization of the so-called “terrorist” Other and substitute to this stereotype portraits of peaceful Arab/Muslim characters who live with the American people without causing any harm to them, neither physical nor psychological. Their Arab/Muslim male characters treat women appropriately and lovingly without any kind of misogyny. Similarly, veiled/Muslim women in the selected novels appear to be positively portrayed. They are ordinary characters neither oppressed nor submissive. Unexpectedly, patriarchy which is associated with the East within the Orientalist discourse and is reinforced in post 9/11 American fiction, appears to be linked to the West in the post 9/11 novels under study. Messud, Adams and Moore extend the thread of their positive depiction of both Arab/Muslim males and females to their relationship with the American characters in the novels. This relationship is supposed to be fraught with psychological disturbance as portrayed in other post 9/11 American fiction; yet, the writers inject new positive images of peaceful coexistence, with an emphasis on the positive influence of the Muslim/Arab Other on the American Self.