Journal of Woman in Culture and Arts

Journal of Woman in Culture and Arts

Feminine Character in The Homecoming: Women in Harold Pinter’s Plays

Document Type : Research Paper

Author
Maryam Dadkhah Tehrani
Phd, Department of Dramatic Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran
10.22059/jwica.2018.252587.1032
Abstract
Harold Pinter is among the most famous playwrights of the world and won Nobel Prize in 2005. How he used female characters in his plays is one of the most challenging issues in his dramatic texts. Many of these texts don't have any female personage while the others with female characters show complicated gendered and sexual functions. Many believe that these characters fit in common stereotypes of females in the world of theater. Among these challenging texts is The Homecoming which shows a unique character, Ruth, who has been controversial among critics. This essay tries to examine the representation of female character in Pinter's plays while focusing solely on The Homecoming. Given the representation of Ruth in this text, some of the critics read this text as a feminist one despite the others who believe Pinter is misogynist. In this essay, after studying the previous views on the play, I try to show how both perspectives can be seen in this text. In fact, just by this article, we cannot accuse Pinter of being misogynist neither acclaim him to be feminist. Pinter indeed wants to decentralize the patriarchal structure of family and the society, using his Pinteresque dialogues and devices.
Keywords
The Homecoming
Harold Pinter
feminity
dramatic personage
Subjects
[1] اسلین، مارتین (1366). بررسی آثار پینتر، ترجمة فرشید ابراهیمیان و لیلی عمرانی، تهران: واحد فوق‏برنامة بخش فرهنگی دفتر مرکزی جهاد دانشگاهی.
[2] پینتر، هارولد (1390). بازگشت به خانه، ترجمة فتاح محمدی، چ 3، زنجان: هزارة سوم.
[3] دوبووار، سیمون (1384). جنس دوم: ج اول، ترجمة قاسم صنعوی، چ 4، تهران: توس.
[4] Aston, Elaine (1988) “Foreword” in Feminism and Theatre by Sue Ellen Case, London: Macmillian.
[5] Aston, Elaine (1995) An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre, London: Routledge.
[6] Case, Sue-Ellen (2008) Feminism and Theatre, London: Macmillan.
[7] Esslin, Martin (1984) Pinter the Playwright, London, Methuen.
[8] Gordon, Robert (2012) Harold Pinter: The Theatre of Power, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
[9] Haney, S. William (2002) Culture and Consciousness: Literature Reagined, Lewisburg: Bucknell UP.
[10] Hewes, Henry (1967) “Probing Pinter’s Plays”, Saturday Revies, 50, pp. 56-96.
[11] Lahr, John (1978) “Homecoming: Criticism”, Play & Players, 25, pp. 24-5.
[12] Millet, Kate (2000) Sexual Politics, Champaign: Illinois.
[13] Milne, Drew (2001) “Pinter’s sexual politics” in The Cambridge Companion to Harold Pinter, ed. Peter Raby, Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
[14] Morris, Pam (1993) Literature and Feminism: An Introduction, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
[15] Mulvey, Laura (1999) “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Reading, eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, New York: Oxford UP.
[16] Pinter, Harold (1999) Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948-2009, London: Faber and Faber.
[17] Quigley, Austin E. (1975) The Pinter Problem, Princeton: Princeton UP.
[18] Silverstein, Marc (1993) Harold Pinter and the Language of Cultural Power, Lewisburg: Bucknell UP.
[19] Sakellaridou, Elizabeth (1988) Pinter’s Female Portraits: a Study of Female Characters in the Plays of Harold Pinter, London: Macmillan Press.
[20] Pinter, Harold (2018) “Harold Pinter Nobel Lecture: Art, Truth & Politics,” Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html> May 3 2014
[21] Bergoffen, Debra (2018) "Simone de Beauvoir", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/beauvoir/>
Journal of Woman in Culture and Arts
Volume 10, Issue 3
Autumn 2019
Pages 435-449