In Barker’s war novels, she depicts the war-induced trauma sustained by soldiers and war journalists on the battlefield, by military doctors, veterans, volunteers and civilians at home. These characters are plunged into an ethical dilemma and are obliged to make ethical choices when confronted with their plight. In time of war, trauma is inevitable and many characters in Barker’s works suffer a lot when making ethical choices. By elaborating on the many unbearable trauma symptoms and the ethical dilemma her characters are confronted with and their ethical choices, Barker intends to expose the cruelty of wars and trauma engendered by wars and tries to remind people of the severe impact of war-induced trauma on individual lives, and calls on people to strive for peace in this world.

This paper attempts to analyse the concepts of place and space with reference to diaspora, migration and settlement. The paper elucidates the characters’ places of origin i.e. their birthplace, places where they spent their childhood and on the other their ancestors’ homeland i.e. their ancestral place. The past of the characters situated in diaspora plays a pivotal role. The correlation between one’s place of origin and ancestral place produces the “place of memory” which weighs heavily on the present-day lives of the characters. Having been immigrants in another land, the places of memory grant the characters identity and roots. Hence, their memories are often so powerful that they by and large return to the specific places. They create their own space in which they attempt to make the most of their lives. Edward Relph’s concept of “existential outsideness” and Henri Lefebvre’s theories on social space have been exploited in this article to enhance the authors’ objectives.

Alexander Pope’s epigraph, “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man.” captures the essence of what this paper sets to examine: Anchee Min’s recollections of her past through her memoir and how it reflects a fragmented self. Red Azalea, her memoir, poignantly delineates her confused and conflicted self. This genre is apt, as it provides the opportunity to reach the past and analyze past experiences. Min’s exploration of herself through her memoir is the first step to facilitate an understanding of self in order to reconstitute her self through her creative writing. By her self-narrative, Min engages in the role of an artist who allows the dynamics between her imagination and the power of language to be an agent of discourse for her past female self. This affable world of creative endeavor provides the space for writers to explore, rediscover and reconstitute the notion of self.

The main aim of this paper is to reveal the feelings of family warmth and psychological peace in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Besides, the paper seeks to indicate how strong ties and sincere love among the members of the family lead to the cohesion and stability of society. The novel tells the story of four sisters who are part of a poor but loving family. With their father off to war, the four sisters have only their mother left to encourage them to be the best version of themselves at all times. As they go through love and loss, they truly do learn to become “little women.” Love, warmth, and psychological peace prevailing in the four sisters’ family not only help them achieve success in life but also make their family, the central unit of society, stable and coherent.

The purpose of this study is to trace out different ways of exploitation of women. This study aims to examine Notre Dame de Paris (translated as The Hunchback of Notre Dame in English), which is structured on the consciousness of the general cultural suppression and exploitation of women in fifteenth-century France as portrayed by Victor Marie Hugo. Patriarchy subordinates women by prescribing images and roles for them. This qualitative study makes an analysis of the female protagonist who is exploited in every sphere of life—social, economic, psychological, sexual—and records how female exploitation has persisted as a continuous phenomenon. Through the discussion of the exploited character, the study brings awareness about the plight and existential rights of women.

This paper attempts a postcolonial feminist analysis of El Saadawi’s novella Woman at Point Zero (1983) in terms of how the politics of female body, in the post(-)colonial metropolitan Egypt, subsume into predicaments like subordination in marriage, homelessness leading to prostitution, and female genital mutilation. Through the fictional narrative of her protagonist, Firdaus, El Saadawi unravels how the institution of marriage, in the Arab-African socio-cultural tapestry, has been tailored to serve the phallocentric order in which women are trained to make up for the desire of men. This, at times, results in their rebellion against social and familial norms thus pushing them into homelessness and prostitution. Similarly, psycho-sexual violence against the female child makes her fear her own sexuality — a fear which often culminates in the genital mutilation of girls, especially in the Egyptian rural culture. Such oppression against women, in private and public spaces, is bound to affect female psychology which, in turn, leads to tragedies like the one experienced by Firdaus in El Saadawi’s narrative.

Nadine Gordimer’s apartheid fiction evinces a strong interest in the experience of white women of conscience under apartheid. This paper examines her white heroines’ struggle against their gender position to find respectable roles in life and relations with the counter sex. It delves into Occasion for Loving (1963) and The Late Bourgeois World (1966) to compare the status of these women with men, black and white. Their gender roles and relations are taken into consideration in an attempt to figure out inner capacities to challenge the patriarchal practices, at all levels, inherent in South Africa. Embarrassment in their case comes not from the fact of being females but rather from belonging to the white race. Gordimer’s fiction is an open terrain which offers feasible avenues for white women in South Africa particularly and other African societies generally to find appropriate modes of life despite their colonial heritage.

This paper focuses on Mary Stewart’s Arthurian Saga pentalogy that represents the most significant stage in her writer’s career. For a comprehensive study of Stewart’s Arthurian Romance, the descriptive and historical methods in the collection and systematization of language material are applied. The study also reviews some elements of analysis and synthesis. The author of the article has made an attempt to specify the genre of Stewart’s Arthurian Romance and analyse the main characters of the novels (Merlin, King Arthur, Mordred), with particular attention being paid to the place names that are considered from historical, geographical and linguistic points of view. The novels straddle the boundary between the historical novel and the fantasy genre. It is proposed to employ the new term ‘historical-fantastic novel’ to define the genre of the Arthurian pentalogy. M. Stewart combines a traditional idealization of the Arthurian legend, a detailed historical setting, and a vivid form of characterization. The novelist proposes the realistic depiction of Merlin: he is an ordinary human, having the visionary ability, but not a magician. Stewart’s King Arthur is definitely idealized and portrayed as a wise politician and a fair ruler. Mordred is depicted as a pawn of fate following the path of self-destructive behaviour. In the novels native Celtic and Latinised Celtic toponyms are used along with modern English geographical names.

Tagore expresses his dissatisfaction with the Western ideology of nationalism since it erases local cultures, promotes a homogeneous national culture, and leads to violence. Being a true humanist, he wards off sectarianism and casteism in his novel Gora to advocate syncretic nationalism through the secular image of Bharatvarsha. He propounds the idea of assimilating and accommodating nationalism which is universal in its outlook and which outshines the narrow version of Hindu nationalism. This nationalism essentially carries the spirit of Indianness. The paper studies Gora in light of Indra Nath Choudhuri’s understanding of Tagorian nationalism, according to which the construction of Tagore’s liberal or “non-parochial inclusive nationalism” (Choudhuri) is based on different aspects, such as social justice, adjustment of races and unity, universalism, humanism, faith in inheritance and Indian civilization. The paper explores these aspects as the foundation of nationalism in the novel and claims that Tagore outrightly rejects communal nationalism for its narrowness, self-centricity, exclusivity and aggressiveness; his idea of nationalism is heterogeneous, inclusive and humanistic; it promotes “universal ideas” “without a loss of national identity”.

The effort to name and ascribe duties to African gods using Eurocentric knowledge can lead to violence, hence causing them to be tagged negatively. Due to the imperial distortion of African history, the people were made to believe that they need civilisation, salvation, and reconstruction. The colonisers had to convince Africans that all that emanated from the continent was filled with ‘darkness’ and therefore needed to be civilised, reconstructed and humanised by Europe. African myths and religions suffer from this deceptive move by the Europeans and the gods are often relegated to being wicked and unjust. In this paper, which attempts to correct such erroneous beliefs, the focus is on Ogun, the Yoruba god of war, who has been subjected to mistaken identity by scholars, researchers and critics. It is against this backdrop and misrepresentation of Ogun that the authors delink from the notion that the god is a vengeful and obstinate god. They conclude that Ogun is not a god who engages in reckless devastation of life, as is commonly argued in literature criticisms of the Ogun figure, but a god who seeks justice when wronged. Decolonial thought and its view on ‘unthinking’ Eurocentric epistemologies on Africa are used to unpack Ogun’s characteristics as a god of justice in Ododo’s Hard Choice.