Marriageability, Narration, and Counter-Discourse in Rajaa Alsanea's Girls of Riyadh a Feminist and Positive Discourse Analysis of a Serial Email Novel

Abstract

This paper examines how a woman’s marriageability is shaped by the social norms and expectations that define her as “timely,” “desirable,” “respectable,” and “suitable” for marriage in Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh. The study used bilingual close readings of the Arabic original and the English translation of the novel along with Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), and Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA). Through FCDA the study examined how names are given to individuals, predicates are attached to them, their agency is represented, modalities are expressed, and evaluations are made to define a woman's marital status as a measure of her social worth. The study also examined the linguistic and narrative techniques that allow the narrator and the four female protagonists to accept, reject or transform the evaluations they have been subjected to. Marriageability was defined by five major themes: The temporally disciplined lives of women; Success in life measured by a woman's marriage; Socially distributed mechanisms for surveillance; Unequal moral assessments of the intimacy of relationships and divorces; And the transition from being an evaluated object to becoming a self-identified subject. All of these themes reveal how marriageability is maintained through social time, hierarchical evaluations, diffuse sources of authority, and the inequality of agency. These counter-narratives were found through reattribution, solidarity, different assessments, and continuing to tell stories