Caricature of Marriage

This article studies caricature techniques used in very short stories written by Palestinian women writers in Israel. The study analyses three very short stories in which caricature is manifested in events, characters and language. The study found that in all three stories caricature was used in order to express the unhealthy relations between men and women within the institution of marriage, relations built on a lack of equality between the spouses: Men are in authority, while women have no will of their own. As a result, we see in the stories women who would rather not enter into a relationship with a man, preferring to dwarf the man’s personality and to lay it bare, in exchange for a feeling of mental contentment due to their living alone. We also see the scorn which they heap on their society’s traditional insistence that women marry, and their rebellion against such traditions.