







































Volume 02 Issue 11-2022 88 

                 

 
 

   
  
 

American Journal Of Philological Sciences   
(ISSN – 2771-2273) 
VOLUME 02 ISSUE 11 PAGES: 88-92 

SJIF IMPACT FACTOR  (2022: 5. 445)  
OCLC – 1121105677    METADATA IF – 5.963 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Publisher: Oscar Publishing Services 

Servi 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT 

This article deals with the functional aspects of letters, arguing that the epistolary form was appropriated for an 

increasing variety of uses. It also charts women's growing familiarity with letter-writing practices. The chapter begins 

by looking at the conveying of news in women's correspondence and the ways in which letters performed social 

courtesies. 

 

KEYWORDS 

Letter-writing, literary device, epistolary fiction, woman writing, female, allegory, a contemporary allegory,  female 

creativity, feminization, epistolary discourse. 

INTRODUCTION

A few centuries ago, letter-writing was the only means 

of communication of people who live in far away places 

and different countries. If we look into the ancient 

history of literature, letter-writing plays a major role in 

communicating people. Although diary writing is 

another mode of expression one’s experiences, it is not 

  Research Article 

 

LETTER WRITING AS ALLEGORY FOR THE WOMAN WRITER 
 

Submission Date: November 05, 2022, Accepted Date:  November 15, 2022,  

Published Date: November 29, 2022  

Crossref doi: https://doi.org/10.37547/ajps/Volume02Issue11-12 

 

 

Manzila Nuriddinovna Habibova 
Bsmi, Teacher Of English Language Department, Uzbekistan 

  

 

Journal Website: 

https://theusajournals.

com/index.php/ajps 

Copyright: Original 

content from this work 

may be used under the 

terms of the creative 

commons attributes 

4.0 licence. 

 

https://doi.org/10.37547/ajps/Volume02Issue11-12
https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?q=LETTER%20WRITING%20AS%20ALLEGORY%20FOR%20THE%20WOMAN%20WRITER
https://www.mendeley.com/search/?page=1&query=
https://theusajournals.com/index.php/ajps
https://theusajournals.com
https://doi.org/10.37547/ajps/Volume02Issue11-12
https://doi.org/10.37547/ajps/Volume02Issue11-12


Volume 02 Issue 11-2022 89 

                 

 
 

   
  
 

American Journal Of Philological Sciences   
(ISSN – 2771-2273) 
VOLUME 02 ISSUE 11 PAGES: 88-92 

SJIF IMPACT FACTOR  (2022: 5. 445)  
OCLC – 1121105677    METADATA IF – 5.963 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Publisher: Oscar Publishing Services 

Servi 

for communication. Diary is about self and it is a record 

of the important events that took place in the life of an 

individual. Letter-writing varies in its kind. There are 

personal letter, official letter and business letter. These 

letters express different matters ,experience, needs 

and aim of life. The pattern or the method of writing 

too differs from one type of letter to another type of 

letter. Personal letter is written to the known person in 

an informal manner whereas the official and business 

letters are more formal. They are written to the people 

who are not known or who are officially known. 

Whatever the letter is, Letter-writing is a part of 

literature. It requires a command over language and 

fluency in it. A good letter comes out of one’s good 

language and writing skills. 

The figure of the woman letter writer can be seen as an 

emblem of changing cultural notions of both sexuality 

and textuality, since the 1980s women’s epistolary 

fiction is not only a site of resistance, but an allegory 

for the literary woman writer. By proposing the letter 

as “an allegory for the woman artist” I wish to convey 

a symbolic reading of the creative act—not that 

allegories may be read into the plots or that the texts 

here analyzed are manifestations of allegories. By 

means of the figure of woman-as-letter-writer, the 

texts encapsulate a new truth about the woman 

writer. If traditional epistolary fiction generated by 

men was a reflection of women’s imprisonment, 

contemporary women writers tell a different story in 

that they use letter fiction to seek self-definition. It is 

important to retain the concept of allegory as a literary 

device, because we need to acknowledge that the 

woman writing a letter at her desk is a demonstrative 

form of representing contemporary female 

epistolographers in an extended metaphor. In other 

words, it is not limited to the fictional letter writer; it 

extends to the historical author, suggesting that the 

pictorial instance of a woman writing a letter has a 

connection to a reality underlying its rhetorical or 

fictional uses. Thus, the letter embodies the 

epistolographer and becomes an allegoric form of 

communication. As a contemporary allegory of the 

woman artist, the letter also tells a less private story 

than modern allegories. This shift in contemporary 

allegory still points to letters as a symbolic 

representation of the creative act, and has therefore a 

public dimension that, as we shall see, contemporary 

women authors explore in novel ways that empower 

their narratives. 

In her discussion of how restraints on gender and 

sexuality may lead to textual 

resistance and subversive writing, Kay Turner suggests 

that letter-writing has the 

potential to disrupt any conventional boundary for 

literary expression because it is linked to the general 

history of women’s constraint under patriarchy. 

Amorous letterwriting has for centuries been 

https://doi.org/10.37547/ajps/Volume02Issue11-12
https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?q=LETTER%20WRITING%20AS%20ALLEGORY%20FOR%20THE%20WOMAN%20WRITER
https://www.mendeley.com/search/?page=1&query=
https://theusajournals.com/index.php/ajps


Volume 02 Issue 11-2022 90 

                 

 
 

   
  
 

American Journal Of Philological Sciences   
(ISSN – 2771-2273) 
VOLUME 02 ISSUE 11 PAGES: 88-92 

SJIF IMPACT FACTOR  (2022: 5. 445)  
OCLC – 1121105677    METADATA IF – 5.963 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Publisher: Oscar Publishing Services 

Servi 

trivialized as a woman’s art while elevated to an art for 

when authorized by a male writer. Letter-writing 

became a site of self-invention for women; on the page 

they expressed a version of the self in excess of what 

was considered ‘appropriately female’ in a male world, 

or as Benstock expresses in Textualizing the Feminine: 

On the Limits of Genre (1991), letter-writing became a 

site for thinking about the potential subversiveness of 

women’s letters as “they attempt to create an image 

of self and are the effect of such an effort”. As 

previously mentioned, for Benstock letters as a 

“private” form of writing, have the potential to disrupt 

conventional boundaries for fixed identity and desire, 

revealing the idiosyncratic self-interpretation of the 

individual letter-writer. 

A fictional text represents the individual’s self-

interpretation at the interface of writer’s life 

experiences of the physical, cultural, or social. Texts, as 

“man-made products,” regardless if they are works of 

fiction, are invaluable means for examining and 

communicating human matters. Susan Lanser’s The 

Narrative Act (1981) confirms that a text “is  essentially 

ideological as well as aesthetic, for the act of writing, 

indeed the act of using language, is defined, 

constrained and conventionalized according to a 

system of values, norms, and perceptions of the 

world”. Writing subjects make sense of the world 

around them by interpreting their cultural situations 

and experiences, creating scenarios for themselves 

and others to easily imagine in their reading and 

expanding their perception of the world and 

themselves. 

Sherry Benstock confirms the idea of letter writing as 

emblem for the woman artist. She shows that, in the 

historical context and development of the genre, 

women were “separated from male enterprise and 

worldly activity” but “women established links with 

others through correspondence; they represented 

themselves through the written word and substituted 

the act of writing for the action of living, finding in the 

blank page the occasion to create an ideal version of 

themselves”. This being the case, women’s epistolary 

writing seems to represent a trope of their selves as 

having been historically linked to an amorous 

heterosexual discourse where “everything that is 

related to the image of the beloved” [becomes] “the 

repository of all identity and desire” (Linda 

Kauffmann). 

The historical trajectory of women’s letters and the 

fictionalization of their letter writing have led to the 

feminization of the genre, but at the expense of 

women’s artistic originality. Benstock observes that 

“the exchange of women’s letters for a literary genre 

based on women’s letters, initiates a series of 

substitutions, including the appropriation of female 

creativity under the guise of heterosexual desire”. The 

idea that female’s literariness materialized through 

letter-writing, which then becomes a genre of 

https://doi.org/10.37547/ajps/Volume02Issue11-12
https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?q=LETTER%20WRITING%20AS%20ALLEGORY%20FOR%20THE%20WOMAN%20WRITER
https://www.mendeley.com/search/?page=1&query=
https://theusajournals.com/index.php/ajps


Volume 02 Issue 11-2022 91 

                 

 
 

   
  
 

American Journal Of Philological Sciences   
(ISSN – 2771-2273) 
VOLUME 02 ISSUE 11 PAGES: 88-92 

SJIF IMPACT FACTOR  (2022: 5. 445)  
OCLC – 1121105677    METADATA IF – 5.963 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Publisher: Oscar Publishing Services 

Servi 

“absolute rigid law,” that limits women’s artistic 

visibility, is precisely what the contemporary woman 

artist challenges in her literary self-portrait. If 

historically letters have been made to serve the law of 

the genre, how do women writers transgress 

epistolary generic laws in order to not only debunk 

“the generic claims’ of amorous epistolary discourse,” 

(Turner) but to make a statement about their artistic 

creativity? Monteserrat Abumalham’s short epistolary 

novel is a case in point for how women artistically 

deconstruct amorous epistolary discourse in order to 

defy fixed literary binaries between men’s and 

women’s writing.  

CONCLUSION 

Letters were penned in dining rooms, parlours and 

closets, by firesides, and on desks and laps. In their 

letters, women projected images of themselves 

scribbling epistles to friends in order to maintain their 

mental intimacy. Space was both real and imagined 

and the physical realities of a hand-written and hand-

delivered letter gave way to the imaginative 

possibilities brought by networks of epistolary 

exchange and the alternative spaces of creative 

thought. By reinstating the home more fully in the 

history of female intellectual experience, a more 

nuanced view of the domestic arena can be developed 

: one that sees the home not as a site of exclusion and 

confinement, but as a space for scholarship and 

exchange. 

REFERENCES 

1. Kauffman, Linda. Discourses of Desire: Gender, 

Genre, and Epistolary Fictions. Ithaca: Cornell 

University Press, 1986. 

2. Benstock, Sheri. “The Printed Letters in Ulysses.” 

James Joyce Quarterly 

3. 1982. 

4. Benstock the, Sheri, ed. The Private Self: Theory 

and Practice of Women’s 

5. Autobiographical Writings. Chapel Hill: U of North 

Carolina P, 1988. Print. 

6. Turner, James Grantham. “Richardson and His 

Circle.” The Columbia History of British Novel. Ed. 

John Richetti. New York: Columbia University 

Press. 

7. Habibova, M. N. (2021). Jorjina Houellning “Queen 

of the desert” biografik asarida gertruda Bell 

timsoli tasviri. Academic research in educational 

sciences, 2(2), 770-778. 

8. Habibova, M. N. (2021). The theme feminism in the 

epistolary novels in modern times. ISJ Theoretical 

& Applied Science, 11(103), 1101-1105. 

9. Habibova, M. N. (2022). THE HISTORY OF THE 

RUSSIAN EPISTOLARY NOVEL IN EIGHTEENTH 

CENTURY. Eurasian Journal of Social Sciences, 

Philosophy and Culture, 2(3), 135-139. 

10. Habibova, M. N. (2022). EVALUATIVE 

OBSERVATION ON DH LAWRENCE'S EPISTOLARY 

https://doi.org/10.37547/ajps/Volume02Issue11-12
https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?q=LETTER%20WRITING%20AS%20ALLEGORY%20FOR%20THE%20WOMAN%20WRITER
https://www.mendeley.com/search/?page=1&query=
https://theusajournals.com/index.php/ajps


Volume 02 Issue 11-2022 92 

                 

 
 

   
  
 

American Journal Of Philological Sciences   
(ISSN – 2771-2273) 
VOLUME 02 ISSUE 11 PAGES: 88-92 

SJIF IMPACT FACTOR  (2022: 5. 445)  
OCLC – 1121105677    METADATA IF – 5.963 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Publisher: Oscar Publishing Services 

Servi 

ACHIEVEMENT. EURASIAN JOURNAL OF 

ACADEMIC RESEARCH, 2 (4), 489–494. 

11. Habibova, M. (2022). THEORIES OF 

INTERTEXTUALITY AND THE BASIC FRAMEWORK 

OF KRISTEVA’S FORMULATION OF HER THEORY 

OF INTERTEXTUALITY. Eurasian Journal of Social 

Sciences, Philosophy and Culture, 2(5), 301-307. 

12. Habibova, M. N. (2022). A BIOGRAPHY IS A 

SPECIALIZED FORM OF HISTORY AND BASIC TYPES 

OF BIOGRAPHIES. Oriental renaissance: 

Innovative, educational, natural and social 

sciences, 2(5), 495-503. 

13. Habibova, M. N. (2022). Epistolary Novel as a 

Scientific Problem. American Journal of Social and 

Humanitarian Research, 3(10), 211–214. Retrieved 

from 

https://www.grnjournals.us/index.php/ajshr/article

/view/1575 

14. Habibova, M. N. (2022). The Epistolary Form and 

Art in Modernist Literature. American Journal of 

Social and Humanitarian Research, 3(10), 206–210. 

Retrieved from 

https://www.grnjournals.us/index.php/ajshr/article

/view/1574 

15. Mirzaeva, A. S. (2022). INTRA-LINGUISTIC AND 

EXTRA-LINGUISTIC FACTORS RELATED TO THE 

LANGUAGE AND VOCABULARY OF THE BASIC 

CONCEPTS OF RENAISSANCE ENGLISH 

PHILOSOPHY. Eurasian Journal of Social Sciences, 

Philosophy and Culture, 1(5), 9-17. 

16. Aziza, M. (2022). THE THEORY OF 

INTERTEXTUALITY AS A PARADIGM AND THE 

IMPACT OF THIS THEORY ON TRANSLATION. 

Eurasian Journal of Academic Research, 2(5), 990-

995. 

17. Nematova, Z. T. (2019). THE USAGE OF 

SUGGESTOPEDIA FOR TEACHING FOREIGN 

LANGUAGES AND INCREASE SPEECH ACTIVITY. 

Новый день в медицине, (3), 21-24. 

18. Нематова, З. Т., & Хакимова, М. А. (2021). Идеи об 

идеальном человеке, языке, процветании в 

эволюции общественно-политических взглядов 

узбекских джадидов начала XX века. Central 

Asian journal of theoretical & applied sciences, 

2(5), 219-224. 

19. Ziyodillaeva Mahbuba Ermatovna. (2022). 

ITERLINGUISTIC FEATURES OF AMERICAN 

ENGLISH AND MEXICAN SPANISH. 

SOCIOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH ON CHICANO 

ENGLISH. Galaxy International Interdisciplinary 

Research Journal, 10(2), 328–332. 

20. Ziyodillaeva Mahbuba Ermatovna. (2022). 

BILLINGUALIZM IN UZBEK AND CHICANO 

LITERATURE. MARTIN ESPADA AND SADRIDDIN 

AYNIY AS A FAMOUS BILINGUAL 

REPRESENTATIVES. EURASIAN JOURNAL OF 

ACADEMIC RESEARCH2, 2(3), 363–368.  

https://doi.org/10.37547/ajps/Volume02Issue11-12
https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?q=LETTER%20WRITING%20AS%20ALLEGORY%20FOR%20THE%20WOMAN%20WRITER
https://www.mendeley.com/search/?page=1&query=
https://theusajournals.com/index.php/ajps

