Published Paper Details:

This thesis analyses a selection of Shaw's female characters to reflect on women's roles and expectations within Shaw's contemporaneous Britain, and within modern Kurdish society. Employing interdisciplinary methodologies (close literary readings, sociological analysis, cultural studies theory, comparative literature approaches, historiographical research), the thesis demonstrates that an interpretation of Shaw's work from a feminist perspective needs updating for the 21st century. Moreover, perhaps, for the first time, the thesis reveals how Shaw's representations of femininity and feminism are extremely pertinent to Kurdish social/gender constructs. Consequently, this thesis provides original insights, which engage with the contemporary moment. The main-body of the thesis is arranged into three sections, which focus on three of Shaw's plays: Pygmalion (1912), Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893) and Saint Joan (1923). It identifies three different female "types" within the three plays, respectively: the aspirational young woman; the matriarch; the female 'warrior' figure, and argues that these feminine "types" are also prominent in Kurdish socio-cultural contexts. Correlatively, the thesis argues that when experiencing the plays from a Kurdish viewpoint, there is a dual-level of interpretation: not only do Shaw's characters evoke the stories and experiences of inspirational Kurdish women; a knowledge of these Kurdish women and their narratives, imbue Shaw's plays with layers of significance and connotations which would be absent from a British person's interpretations of the play. From this basis, the thesis elicits the similarities and differences between Western and Kurdish concepts of femininity and feminism.