Marginalized Voices, Marginalized Spaces: Saudi Women’s Solitude and Literary Engagement

The isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic changed how many Saudi female students engaged with English literature, especially the writing of black, female, and postcolonial authors. This article draws on Virginia Woolf’s notions of solitude and Gayatri Spivak’s interpretation of silence to suggest that, freed from the usual classroom pressures, students engaged with the texts in a freer and more intimate way. Reading became slower and more introspective without the usual demands of the traditional classroom. Students started to see their own lives reflected in stories of exclusion, resilience, and resistance. The change also illuminated the problem of reading English literature in a non-native context, a problem common in such contexts. As the connection grew, cultural and linguistic differences started to disappear. This article presents a feminist and postcolonial reading of how disruption can be a source of unexpected opportunity in the teaching of literature, through reframing solitude not as an obstacle but as a stimulus for contemplation.