Repressed Female Desire and Performed Femininity: A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of Hedayat’s “The Doll Behind the Curtain” and Hemingway’s “Cat in the Rain”

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 MSc student, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Persian Language and Foreign Languages, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran.

2 BSc graduate, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Persian Language and Foreign Languages, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran.

10.22091/slic.2026.14325.1014

Abstract

Abstract
In literature and sociocultural domain, female Desire remains a contested ideological battlefield. This article analyzes the comparative feminist discourse on the reconfiguring of female subjectivity through patriarchy and the repressive silencing of discourse in Sadegh Hedayat's "The Doll behind the Curtain" and "Cat in the Rain" by Ernest Hemingway. This article draws on theorist Judith Butler's gender performativity, Michelle Lazar's Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis, and Sandra Bartky's theory of discipline power to analyze the complexity of silencing and objectification. The discourse reveals that Hedayat's account illustrates literal silencing through overt and covert forms of objectification. In contrast, Hemingway's account depicts the silence and erasure of feminine identity via emotional repression and discursive silencing. This study sheds light on an area of cross-cultural feminist literary criticism. The study reveals the forms of female repression in the East and West and how control of Desire exposes the dominant discursive order. The findings suggest that literature can assert and reconstruct patriarchal power in the politics of Desire, which remains silenced.
 
 

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Studies in literature and Culture: from Theory to Practice

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 22 February 2026

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