Exhibition of Traditional Gender Roles through Symbolic and Semiotic use of Language in Alice Munro’s ‘Royal Beatings’

Abstract

his paper presents the feminist analysis of short story ‘Royal Beatings’. It involves the beating of a teenage girl by her father who became the victim of domestic violence on her misconduct with her stepmother. The theoretical framework used for analysis is ‘Feminism’ and character’s actions are analyzed from the two feministic lenses that are ‘Traditional Gender Roles’ and Julia kristeva’s symbolic and semiotic perspective of language. The paper concludes that deep rooted patriarchal structures where men are deemed authoritative, have control on their female members and a high degree influence in their lives are considered the real causes of female oppression.