The Cixousian Woman in Jhumpa Lahiri's " The Treatment of Bibi Halder"

MA student-IAU, Central Tehran BranchAbstractTo generate her own form of poststructuralist feminism, Helene Cixous adopted and improved elements of Freud’s and Lacan’s theories. Cixous’ acceptance of Lacanian psychoanalysis is comparatively optimistic about the feasibility of transforming the patriarchal symbolic order by giving women a new sense of themselves and affirming different feminine meanings and values. For Cixous, as for other poststructuralist feminists, the reproduction of specific forms of power relations in society is integral. How the individuals comprehend their material conditions of existence is a source of struggle and these conditions can be either reproduced or transformed. Poststructuralist feminists try to theorize patriarchal thought as misrepresentation of the actual power relations between the sexes in their public life. The present article seeks to observe two Cixousian concepts, namely, “the other” and “the feminine”, in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Treatment of Bibi Halder”, one of the stories of the collection Interpreter of Maladies and views the protagonist as an example of Cixousian woman.