The Coming of Age of Aisha in Ahdaf Soueif’s I Think of You

Abstract

Every individual undergoes different changes while stepping out and moving towards another stage during the process of maturation from childhood to adulthood, mainly as the case of Aisha, the main protagonist of the three short stories included in Ahdaf Soueif’s collection of short stories I Think of You (2007). In the field of character study, there lies the main concern of the Bildungsroman tradition that traces the years of formation of a protagonist from youth to maturation. Therefore, this study aims at analyzing the years of development of Aisha’s character and identity by stating the elements that make up a Bildungsroman according to both Buckley and Al-Mousa’s studies. The themes include: childhood, conflict of generations, provinciality and the larger society, a cross-cultural conflict and a spiritual crisis reaching at the end a reconciliation of two cultures and self actualization. Furthermore, in the light of a postcolonial view and a psychoanalytic understanding, this study makes use of both literary theories in order to approach the cross-cultural context and the character development of Aisha.