Md. Rezoan Hossain
Department of English, Port City International University, Chattogram, Bangladesh.
Email: mailbox.rezoan@gmail.com
Abstract: In Riders to the Sea, John Millington Synge exhibits how the female agency is concealed and sidelined in a patriarchal establishment due to the males’ refusal to accept the females as their equal ‘selves’. This paper contextualizes Synge’s Riders to
the Sea within feminist literary criticism to understand how female agency is shadowed and marginalized in a masculine domain under the aegis of religious institutions, linguistic politics, and cultural hegemony. It scrutinizes the micro-politics behind the
binary construction of homemaker-breadwinner, and its connection to patriarchal domination in every masculine domain like the Aran Island one. The way female experiences, opinions, and judgments are devalued in Riders to the Sea ultimately questions whether the female agency is achievable considering the contingency of patriarchal establishment in a masculine world. By mapping female agency in the masculine domain, the study attempts to expose how Synge brings into the foreground the existing gender inequality and oppression of his time.
Keywords: Female agency, masculine domain, patriarchal establishment, gender inequality
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