Document Type : Original Article

Author

• Melika Ramzi

PhD Candidate, Department of English Literature and Language, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences

Abstract

The concepts of power, discipline, and resistance lie at the heart of Michel Foucault’s philosophy and provide a productive framework for analyzing the complex portrayals of female agency in literature. The present comparative study examines Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath from The Canterbury Tales (1476) and Sadegh Hedayat’s “Alavieh Khanoum” (1950) through a Foucauldian lens, focusing on how both female protagonists navigate patriarchal structures in their respective socio-historical contexts. Unlike previous readings that analyze each character independently or within psychological and sociological frameworks, this research applies Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary societies, bio-power, counter-conduct, and technologies of the self to explore how power operates through marriage, religion, superstition, and performance. The study investigates whether these women can transcend dominant discourses or merely reproduce them through tactical compliance. The findings reveal that both the Wife of Bath and Alavieh Khanoum perform acts of resistance that generate only echoes of empowerment, as their agency remains circumscribed by the very patriarchal systems they seek to subvert. Ultimately, their circular narratives demonstrate the inescapability of disciplinary power, where rebellion is both enabled and constrained by the mechanisms of discourse itself.

Keywords

• Alavieh Khanoum
• disciplinary societies
• female agency
• Foucauldian discourse
• patriarchal power
• The Wife of Bath