The Experience and the Overcoming of Female Anxiety of Authorship in Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love

This paper explores in detail how female creativity collides with marriage and motherhood, and how women characters in Shafaks The Forty Rules of Love experience and overcome anxiety of authorship. Because women were restricted to traditional and stereotyped confines which shaped their roles, they encountered many obstacles in creating literary works and considering themselves as authors. Hence, they experienced what Gilbert and Gubar call female anxiety of authorship. The aim of the paper is to show how women characters in Shafaks work are imprisoned in the central role of marriage and motherhood, an imprisonment that leads to their experience of anxiety of authorship. However, these women prove to be strong and determined in their relentless pursuit for authorship. They succeed to establish themselves as equal to men, or, at least, they are resilient enough to emerge, against all odds, strong and intact.