Providing the Voiceless with Voice: Cultural Dualisms,Objectification,Oppression, and Resistance in Three Selected Short Stories by Salwa Bakr

Focusing on the subordination of the female protagonists, and the exploitation of non-human creatures , respectively , this paper attempts to read Salwa Bakr’s three short stories, “Thirty-one Beautiful Green Trees” ,“Such a Beautiful Voice”, and “The Monkey Trainer” from an ecofeminist perspective . The paper also explores the course of events of the three short stories which render a general sense of social disharmony resulting from the oppression of both women and non-human creatures by patriarchal monopoly. Also, the ecofeminist tenet of the interconnectedness of all life forms and the parallelism between women and nature as victims of the cultural dualisms underlying patriarchal ideology is spotlighted in “Thirty-One Beautiful Trees” and “The Monkey Trainer”.
The direct outcome of gender inequality, social injustice, oppression of women and non- human beings, and the various forms of resistance of such oppression, is ultimately social disharmony. Evidently, the protagonists’ attempt to attain emancipation is not realized at the end of the three short stories. None the less, providing women and non-human beings with a voice of their own, and representing them as whole and complex beings is Salwa Bakr’s method of resolving the issues of social marginalization and oppression, a method which dismantles the cultural dualisms inherent in the anthropocentric domination of women, nature, and literary writing. Most importantly, they represent a textual manifestation of resistance, , and a means of emancipating women, and nature as well as a realization of justice in the literary text that could become viable in reality.