Gendered Authorship of the Female Identity: A Gynocritical Comparative Study between Norwegian Wood and the God of Small Things

Abstract

The paper seeks to elucidate the differences in the representation of women in male- and female-authored texts, specifically analyzing Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Numerous critics over the years have noted that male and female authors often portray femininity in markedly different ways. While male authors tend to perpetuate prejudiced or stereotypical views of women, female authors, drawing from their direct experiences of womanhood, provide more authentic depictions that foster female empowerment. Theoretically identifying this marked difference is thus the primary aim of this paper and hence this study employs a qualitative textual analysis, utilizing theoretical frameworks such as Michel Foucault’s discourses of sexuality, Elaine Showalter’s gynocriticism, Hélène Cixous’s écriture féminine, Judith Butler’s gender performativity, and Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of gender stereotypes. The findings reveal a significant divergence in the way that male- and female-authored texts characterize female figures. Murakami, in his portrayal of Naoko and Midori, has often associated reductive and stereotypical attributes that in essence undermine their agencies and voices; their attributes and mannerisms were shown to be limited to emotional and/or sexual contexts that conflate the female experience and undermine gender fluidity. In contrast, Roy depicted Ammu and Rahel in accordance to feminist sensibilities as they can be seen to portray androgyny as well as employ their sexualities to challenge and subvert social norms and stereotypes. The study therefore concludes that women-authored narratives provide more nuanced and authentic representations of female experiences, whereas male-authored texts frequently reinforce patriarchal frameworks and stereotypical assumptions of one-dimensional gender linearity.