The Influence of Feminine Writing in the Book ‘Da’

Écriture Féminine (feminine writing) introduced by some advocates of the feminist movement in the second half of the twentieth century, is a subdivision of feminist criticism. At first, due to the biased notions of the movement, the theory compared writing by women with that of men from a “contradictory” point of view and defined feminine writing as one which seeks to create a new language in order to find an identity independent from men. Later on, after prejudices of the time faded, the first theory was dismissed and the attributes of feminine writing were examined from a “difference” point of view. Proponents of this theory said that women, due to their distinct mentality and feelings, possess a language whose features are not seen, or are seldom found, in the language of the opposite sex. They discussed these difference through investigating words, sentences and themes in the works of women, especially in the field of literature. The book “Da” is among works having these features as the author of the book and the narrator is a woman. This paper is to briefly describe these features, explain their function in the book “Da”, and finally show that while recounting memories concerning the war has somehow undermined the presence of these features in the work, we still have a writing with feminine identity which is suggestive of Écriture Féminine (feminine writing).