Women’s agency, empowerment and emancipation are those utopian dreams that feminists have cherished for so long, especially since the 1960s and the 1970s.These dreams, hopes and desires have found their way not only in theoretical canon, but also, either consciously or unconsciously, in the works of the authors and the artists since then.
One of the most prolific and influential theorists in the academy whose ideas have significantly contributed to the formation of recent feminist views is Judith Butler.
Butler denies the possibility of the full-scale overthrow of the present patriarchal hegemony, and instead, conceives a political project she calls “internal erosion.”
Subversion, as she observes, may become possible for female subjects only through the mobilization of the potentially generative aspects of regulatory norms, the proliferation of the intelligible gender identities and roles, the displacement of the sites of (im)permeability, gender performativity and gender parody. Butler’s theoretical views have been highly credited since they not only rock the foundations of current feminist concepts, but also clearly define the intimate relation between late feminism and postmodernism. One of the most prominent postmodernist dramatists whose female portraits, as far as the present author is concerned, are exceptionally attractive and noticeable is Harold Pinter. Though some of Pinter’s earlier female sketches seem to be archetypal, some later female characters ultimately manage to get the upper hand in their serious struggles for power with men, and finally achieve autonomy, authority and freedom within an initially hostile and male-dominated surrounding. The present article aims at examinig the way Pinter’s female characters’ process of emancipation might be studied in the light of Butler’s feminist views. The article will hopefully provide and original reading of Pinter’s female portraits, illustrate the way Butler’s theorization might be applied for practical analysis, and show the female subjects an actual way to make their dreams come true in reality.