PUSHED TO THE EDGE: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF ‘OTHERNESS’ IN ANITA SHREVE’S BODY SURFING

Abstract

This study seeks to investigate the ways in which the dominant gender i.e. man tries to promote the subservient status of woman on the basis of her constructed ideology of ‘weaker sex’. Women in society are often given the secondary role and importance by men, considering them powerless, deficient, incapable and weak. Theory of ‘Other’ provides the conceptual framework for the study which exclude women from the arena of social activities and behaviors. Critical Discourse Analysis is applied as a method of interpretation to the text of novel Body Surfing together with post-structural analytical perspective. It will try to highlight how language of the text is used to construct a dominant ideology of excluding women from social atmosphere. This social exclusion of women, on the basis of ‘other’ group, is turned into the concept of marginalization i.e. women constitute a class of their own due to other traits, other mentality, other activities, totally different from those of men in every respect. The various words, phrases and sentences will be analyzed under the theme of marginalization and the deeper and multi facets of meanings will explored to see how discourse legalizes women’s marginalization and make them ‘Other’.