Abstract:
The objectives of this thesis are to anaylze Malay women identities shown in Muslim Malay women contemporary literary works of 5 well-known Muslim Malay women writers; namely Khadijah Hashim, Azmah Nordin, Rosmini Shaari, Zurinah Hassan and Siti Zainon Ismail, and to explore the social, economic, political, cultural, and religious contexts in accordance with these Muslim famales identities. The results of the study reveal that Muslim Malay women writers obviously portray two distinctive concepts of Muslim females identities, including Wanita Melayu (conventional) and Wanita Professional (professtional) females identities. Those writers elaborate the narrative techniques to myriad their thoughts and repressive pressure influenced by the social norms and ideology. They also narrate the concept of the female relationships  amongst female friendship and amongst the mother - daughter relationships, showing the narrative technique to eradicate the torments from the struggles in their life. The female characters in these literary works construct the females strength both in the marital and maternal status, taking care of the family and notifying the value of their life based on Islamic teachings to lighten their way of life. More specially, these female literary works reveal the Malaysian modernism. These works portray the Muslim female image encountered with the traditional beliefs, and the changing their stereotypes to the concepts of modern Muslim females. These writers signify the importance of education as the main factor to develop the status of Muslim females in the future. Furthermore, these Muslim females literary works play an important role to help us understand the Muslim females identities both in unique and diversity of characteristics amongst multi-ethics in the their society. Those writers show the female characters which are the marginal characters in the historical tales to myriad the ancient female status violated as the victims from the males benefits. The Muslim literary works seem to construct the awareness of femaless rights and freedom of the expression. Finally, the Muslim Malay women writers formulate the narrative techniques to portray the way of life of cosmopolitan identities through their contemporary narratives. Not only raising the problem of their living but also highlighting their challenging of life, the writers try to balance their literary works by representing the current issues of ASEAN population dealt with the others in modern world. Globalization and rapid social dynamic are considered by Muslim Malay women writer as well.