Female Self-Objectification and Identity in Fiction

Hammad Mushtaq in this book presents a study of female characters of two crossculturally selected gynotexts with an aim to unveil various aspects of being a female in cultures that objectify the female body and the issues concerning identity and subject formation. The crosscultural analysis of the texts— Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Sidhwa’s Water— provides an opportunity to discover the differences and similarities regarding identity formation and self-objectification of women and its impact on women in the Afro-American and Indian cultures. Objectification theory assumes that women generally style the image of their physical selves in light of the observers’ perspective which is conveyed to them through their gazes. This leads to certain undesirable behavioral patterns such as anxiety, depression, excessive body monitoring and sense of shame. Lacanian psychoanalytic approach is also applied on female characters of the two novels with special focus on the concepts of the Mirror Stage, the Lack and the Other. This book provides new insights into the effectiveness of psychoanalytic criticism and objectification theory for a deeper understanding of the female fictional characters.