Mother-Child Relationship in Fadia Faqir’s The Cry of the Dove: A Fragile Landscape
Eman Mahir Jaleel
Tikrit University -College of Arts- Dept. of Translation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.25130/jls.4.2.4
Keywords: mother child relationship, Arabian women, motherline, honour killing
Abstract
British-Jordanian novelist Fadia Faqir’s The Cry of the Dove is a story of an Arabian girl from a Bedouin tribe in the Levant, who is punished by death for flouting social norms of the tribe. Her tribe believed that dishonour can only be wiped off with blood. Apart from a covert advocacy of feminist ideals and women’s emancipation, the novel offers a window to the strong mother-daughter relationship, which in itself is viewed by prominent feminist critics as a form of rejection of patriarchal oppression. In the present paper, mother-child relationship depicted in the novel has been explored through a character analysis of the leading as well as minor female roles in the book, such as the protagonist Salma, her mother Hajjeh Amina, and her friend Noura and Madam Lamaa. The study concludes that in the novel mothers are depicted to forge a strong relationship with their children, especially daughters, in a continuum of motherline.
