Spaces of Resistance in Assia Djebar's Ombre Sultane [A Sister to Scheherazade] and Femmes d'Alger Dans Leur Appartement [Women of Algiers in Their Apartment]

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article is a study of the transformation of harems and hammams from marginalized, gender-secluded locations to sites for and of resistance in Assia Djebar's Ombre Sultane [A Sister to Scheherazade] and Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement [Women of Algiers in Their Apartment]. It argues that domestic and private spaces like the harem and hammam denotes both "a space and a category of people" and contends that the female dwellers of Assia Djebar's stories, whose identities are integral to the places they inhabit, actively change these places, break the stereotypical image of the Arab women as docile, and represent themselves as independent female subjects of postcolonial Algeria (Schick, "Harem" 69).