Language:
Hebrew
Year of publication:
2017
Titel der Quelle:
תיאוריה וביקורת; במה ישראלית
Angaben zur Quelle:
48 (2017) 59-80
Keywords:
Serri, Bracha Criticism and interpretation
;
Hebrew literature Women authors
;
History and criticism
;
Jews, Yemeni, in literature
;
Jews, Yemeni
;
Man-woman relationships in literature
;
Incest in literature
Abstract:
This article analyzes “Kri’a” (Tearing, 1980), a story by Bracha Serri (1940–2013). I argue that the story presents a fierce critique of what I call “the incestuous order,” namely the way in which incest is symbolically regularized in the power relations between the sexes. According to my reading, this story presents incest as a model of gender relations that crosses ethnic, ideological, social, and economic boundaries.“Kri’a” tells the horrific story of a young girl who, in obedience to her father, is married to an old widower. In her total naïveté, she has no knowledge of what to expect on her wedding night. As seen through her eyes, that night involves a violent act of rape, which functions as the ritual to guide her into mature femininity – or, in other words, to a life of total subjugation in the domestic and familial sphere.Seemingly, it is not a story about incest. Yet my reading shows that it directs a fierce critical gaze, from the perspectives of gender and ethnicity, at the vertex of the incestuous canon. By presenting traditional marriage in Yemen and in Israel as a symbolic act of incest in which patriarchal men subjugate young girls – a process enhanced by the biblical intertext employed – Serri blurs the clear borders between East and West, tradition and progress, questioning the success of the gender revolution in the Zionist project.
URL:
אתר את הפרסום בקטלוג המאוחד של ספריות ישראל
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