Betty Shamieh’s Play The Black Eyed Treating Violence through Four Different Ages

Abstract
This paper treats the concept of violence against women in general and the Palestinian women in particular. Betty Shamieh (1979- ) concentrates on Palestinian women's crises because of the Israeli occupation. In her play The Black Eyed (2005), she shows the influence of violence against Palestinian women through four different ages represented by four women. She is also very objective in her portrayal to the extent of blaming her ancestors for practicing abuse against one of the females in the story, namely, Delilah. These female voices in The Black Eyed refuse to be subservient. They introduce a postcolonial feminist perspective through their stories. Rather than identifying themselves with traditional roles such as wives or mothers, they actively debate the social injustices within their community. Western feminism has never been heedful to the differences pertaining to class, race, feelings, and settings of women of once colonized territories. Postcolonial feminism rejects Western feminism on the ground of its utter ‘eurocentrism’. Of course, the long Western tendency to homogenize and universalize women and their experiences led to the emergence of ‘postcolonial feminism'. The postcolonial feminist theory is a suitable frame of reference to Betty Shamieh female characters in TheBlack Eyed. The four women fight the stereotypical image of Western views towards the Eastern women. Western literature used to depict Eastern women as victims of female genital Mutilation, patriarchal hegemony, Arab familial system, or victims of the Islamic code. Shamieh fights this universality genuinely.  Four females died due to their active participation in political struggle against the colonizer. The objective of this paper is to show how Shamieh challenges the Western views of Eastern women directed by Raj Kumar Mishra in relation to postcolonial feminism. Violence against Palestinian women is also discussed framed by Kumari's definitions of violence against women.