MA Literary Studies
Orientalising the Other Today: Arab Feminism in
Western Discourse
Alifa Rifaat’s Distant View of a Minaret and Nawal El
Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero in Comparison
June 2014
Supervisor:
Jane Lewty
TABLE OF CONTENT
1. Introduction……….1-5 2. Alifa Rifaat’s Feminism or “Perfect Beauty is only to be found in Women”……….5-22
2.1 Introduction………..………..5-6 2.2 Distant View of a Minaret Analysis………...……..7-21 2.2.1 Alifa Rifaat’s Invisible Positionality………..7-10 2.2.2 Gender Dichotomy: Prodigality and Compensating Tenacity………….10-13 2.2.3 Concord Sexual and Spiritual Repletion………..……….13-16 2.2.4 Passivity’s Subversive Potential……….………….16-18 2.2.5 Rebellion Preventing Stigmatisation………..……….19-21 2.3 Conclusion………..………….21-22 3. Nawal El Saadawi’s Feminism or “No Woman can be a Criminal. To be a Criminal one must be a Man………..………..23-41 3.1 Introduction……….………..23-24 3.2 Woman at Point Zero Analysis………..…24-39 3.2.1 Nawal El Saadawi’s Controversial Positionality………24-27 3.2.2 Gender Dichotomy: Vilification and Victimisation……….27-30 3.2.3 The Female Body as Bearer of Male Power Abuse………..…….30-33 3.2.4 Subversive Role Reversal as Death Sentence……….…..33-36 3.2.5 Firdaus’ Exceptional Struggle Attains Collectivity……….…….36-39 3.3 Conclusion……….………..39-41 4. Alifa Rifaat’s Distant View of a Minaret and Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero in Comparison as a Reflection of Wider (Neo-)Colonial Western Hegemony………..41-60
4.1 Introduction………41-43 4.2 Distant View of a Minaret and Woman at Point Zero in Comparison………44-60
4.2.1 Rifaat’s Obscurity versus El Saadawi’s Ubiquity……….……….44-46 4.2.2 Female Strength versus Male Vileness……….………….46-50 4.2.3 Deprived Desire versus Sexual Bondage……….……….50-53 4.2.4 Subversion in Collectivity versus Subversion in Death…….………..53-56 4.2.5 Women’s Fragmentation as Death Sentence………..……….56-60 4.3 Conclusion………..60 5. Conclusion………..……….61-63 6. Appendix………64 7. Works Cited……….65-70
1.INTRODUCTION
Egypt’s Lotus Revolution in 2011, Mubarak’s ensuing overthrow and the country’s
subsequent fragile state provoked a renewed Western interest in Egypt’s political and socio-economic situation concurrent with a revived interest in Egyptian culture. Women’s
conspicuous revolutionary engagement meeting military violence, such as epitomised in the “blue bra” photograph of a half-naked woman on the ground beaten by soldiers, nurtures Western sensational interest in Muslim women’s oppression (Soueif; fig. 1). Despite Egypt’s liberation in 1954, after seventy years of British occupation, the country is still tightly interconnected with Anglophone culture and subject to Western imperialist tendencies, especially in times of political turmoil, extending to cultural explorations of the Middle East in Western literary circles (Saliba 133). Particularly women’s abnormal oppression in Arabo-Islamic countries in conjunction with the threat of religious fundamentalism sparks
controversy and discussions in the West in political as well as literary circles (Amireh “Framing” 220).
Two prolific 21st century Egyptian authors, the late Alifa Rifaat and Nawal El Saadawi,
explore the female consciousness as influenced by patriarchal Muslim society in their literary works. El Saadawi as a controversial figure has received considerable attention in the West, since her writings had serious implications on her personal life, namely the loss of her job in the Egyptian Ministry of Health, an intermittent imprisonment, censorship and her subsequent exile in the United States (Lancaster 26). Her exceptional upbringing has granted her education in Cairo as well as in the United States and triggered an immersion in Western as well as Egyptian society (Cooke iii). In contrast, Alifa Rifaat has received less Western attention due to her exclusive existence within Egyptian society as a devout Muslim and her monolingualism rendering her largely unaffected by Western influences
(Johnson-Davies i). Consequently, the two authors, despite both expounding on feminist ideas and therewith exhibiting certain similarities, display pronouncedly different
feminisms. Generally considered a Western concept, feminist stirrings arose as early as the 20th century having led to women’s current legal and social enfranchisement (Hamid 77).
Since the early 20th century Western feminism has undergone a long process of
modifications, progression and currently ongoing digressive tendencies generating a recent interest in queer studies. Gender generally acknowledged as a cultural construct provides the vantage point for and fuels the still evolving process of establishing equality between the sexes. Yet, inequality still prevails in many parts of the world (also in the West), wherefore attempts at deconstructing gender roles in order to grant equal rights to everyone continue to be made. As a consequence, Western evaluation of Arabic feminist authors is strongly influenced by an insistence on gender/sex distinction, a defiance of traditionally patriarchal gender roles and the right to equal opportunities (79). Hence, due to her conformity to prevailing Western feminist approaches Nawal El Saadawi is frequently regarded as militantly feminist, whereas Alifa Rifaat – if discussed in literary criticism – is regarded as at most mildly feminist due to exhibiting a fundamentally Other1, i.e. distinctly
Arabic feminism.
Not only feminist, but also neo-colonial perspectives play an important role in the examination of Egyptian literary works in the Western hemisphere. Notwithstanding the
1 As constituted by Emmanuel Levinas the distinction between Self and Other serves to
construct the Western Self as opposed to the entirely alien Other. In its absolute difference the Other cannot be known and thus poses a threat that can only be overcome in its absorption or approximation (Harrist and Richardson 346-7).
British Empire’s collapse at the end of the 20th century, Anglophone culture still exerts a
great influence on its former colonies, protectorates and moreover even the rest of the world, resulting in a preponderance of Eurocentric concepts in cultural discourses.
Regardless of the ongoing decolonisation processes in the 20th century facilitating cultural
self-definition, neo-colonial tendencies constituted by Western imperialist influences are still pervasive and can be traced back in political and economic developments as well as in literary criticism. Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism as an identity formation process for both East and West seeks to circumvent neo-colonial influences in highlighting the
constructedness of Western presuppositions defining the East generally as retrogressive in opposition to the progressive West (300). Correspondingly, Gayatri Spivak’s concept of the muted subaltern as misrepresented or altogether neglected minorities is similarly valid to neo-colonial analyses (78).
In order to re-evaluate both Alifa Rifaat and Nawal El Saadawi’s feminist stances, their display of Western imperialist influences and their reception in Anglophone Western culture, I will offer a close reading of Rifaat’s collection of short stories Distant View of a
Minaret (1983) and El Saadawi’s creative non-fictitious novel Woman at Point Zero (1983)
and apply an intersectional approach of feminist secondary sources and neo-colonial concepts. So as to offer a comparison between those two radically different authors, important questions will concern the representation of the female consciousness and Muslim patriarchal society, and to what extent they coalesce and differ. While Rifaat in her collection of short stories offers a heterogeneous cross-section of Muslim female
experience, El Saadawi constructs a metanarrative in her novel, embedding the story of her marginalised main character in her own experiences as a doctor investigating the
works concern traditional gender roles in Muslim society, religion, women’s passivity, sexuality and subversion. In displaying the hardships women suffer, both authors raise questions paramount to women’s positioning within patriarchal Egyptian society. Non-fiction sources such as newspaper articles and reviews aid in the examination of the
authors’ reception and evaluation in the West presumably tightly interconnected with their delineation of Western imperialist influences. El Saadawi and Rifaat are radically feminist in breaking the “silence . . . that is imposed on women through value systems informed by patriarchal ideology” in voicing and denouncing women’s hardships and oppression (Nkealah 28). So as to ascribe both authors the attention they deserve I propose that Alifa Rifaat’s representation of the female consciousness in Distant View of a Minaret, despite offering a radically different feminism from Nawal El Saadawi’s radical condemnation of patriarchal Muslim ideology and concurrently men in general in Woman at Point Zero, proffers subversive strategies for Muslim women – undeterred by her doubtlessly milder precepts and her full incorporation in Muslim society – that are more practicable than El Saadawi’s tendency to advocate a complete overthrow and radical reorganisation of the entire Egyptian social order, rendering her women as marginalised outcasts.
In order to assess my hypothesis mentioned above I will first offer a close reading of Alifa Rifaat’s collection of short stories Distant View of a Minaret in relation to secondary sources rendering a feminist perspective. The second chapter will provide a close reading of Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero, yet again in relation to specific secondary sources expounding on her feminist perspective. The third and last chapter will consist of a
comparison between both feminisms exhibited in the two literary works and their
interrelation with regard to a neo-colonial angle, i.e. traces of Western imperialism found in the works and their reception in the West. The final part of the paper will tie in all chapters
and provide a concise and coherent conclusion on the topic of Arabic feminism and its explicitly neo-colonial connection with Anglophone Western culture as exhibited in Alifa Rifaat’s Distant View of a Minaret and Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero.
2.ALIFA RIFAAT’S FEMINISM OR “PERFECT BEAUTY IS ONLY TO BE FOUND IN WOMEN”
2.1INTRODUCTION
Alifa Rifaat’s collection of short stories Distant View of a Minaret translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies and published in English in 1983 provides the Western
Anglophone readership with an intimate insight into a collective female Egyptian consciousness by portraying the lives of a cross-section of Muslim women comprised of mothers, daughters, wives, widows, spinsters, sisters and servants from lower, middle and upper classes in rural as well as urban Egypt, specifically Cairo. Each short story offers a glimpse into a particular fragment of different women’s lives; taken together they vividly paint a heterogeneous picture of Muslim women’s experiences in their designated sphere of patriarchal society – the home – and so denounce the common plight uniting all these women. Accordingly, Rifaat renders a universal picture of women’s lives by expounding on and combining individual narrations. All her characters encounter obstacles, be they of emotional, spiritual or practical nature, imposed by patriarchal hegemonic ideology that forms part of women’s everyday lives. While several difficulties can be solved with cunning resourcefulness, such as a mother pretending to conceive in order to save her illegitimately pregnant daughter from societal expulsion, other less tangible problems such as loneliness or sexual dissatisfaction have to be alleviated by dint of imaginative energy establishing the mind as an alternative space for female expression and subjectivity in order to foreclose social stigmatisation (Rifaat 23-27). In representing Egyptian women as the underdog of
society Rifaat draws attention to injustice, maltreatment and frustration generated by a prevalent reactionary, patriarchal ideology that confines women to the domestic domain and accordingly imposes invisibility on the female consciousness and its plight. Against the backdrop of the family as the central entity constituting the setup of Muslim patriarchal society, Rifaat’s stories exemplify women’s importance in perpetuating traditional values enforced and heightened by religious creeds to ensure society’s functioning (Feldman and Clark 13). Yet, in depicting a collective female dissatisfaction, Rifaat discloses patriarchal society as dysfunctional insofar as that its oppressive tendencies are paradoxically aimed at society’s core of tradition, considered as of the utmost importance, i.e. the family and more specifically women. Due to the author’s adherence to the Qur’an and Islamic teachings, Rifaat seems to be writing from within an orthodox framework, but simultaneously breaks with especially the Western reader’s expectation of Islam as a reactionary and oppressive force in portraying the Islamic belief oftentimes as the only source for consolation (Johnson-Davies i). She alternatively exposes society’s flawed interpretation thereof and its
subsequent repressive practices as the actual predicament. In breaking taboos imposed on sexuality, frustration, oppression and injustice, Alifa Rifaat defies male-authorised
conventions and thus patriarchal supremacy, accordingly furthering feminist concerns such as women’s inferior positioning in society. Distant View of a Minaret, despite its traditional dimension in its devotion to Islam and its acceptance of differing gender roles, radically challenges patriarchal hegemony in disclosing men’s flawed and harmful deportment, and moreover lends a voice to silenced issues such as sexuality to illustrate women’s
resourcefulness and strength in paradoxically employing passivity as resistance, thus
creating a female subjectivity in an autonomous space – the mind – simultaneously avoiding societal stigmatisation.
2.2DISTANT VIEW OF A MINARET ANALYSIS
2.2.1 Alifa Rifaat’s Invisible Positionality. Alifa Rifaat’s predominant invisibility in the
Western hegemonic discourse of feminism stems from her alterity2 manifested in her
acquiescence of distinct gender roles and her devotion to Islam, generating her to only be marginally visible and at most regarded as mildly feminist.
As Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke state “[m]uch of Arab women’s feminist expression has eluded people because of its invisibility” (xv), since women’s writings frequently did not infiltrate public consciousness, but remained veiled due to patriarchal mechanisms operating in society both implicitly as well as explicitly, such as for example authoritarian state interference in the 1960s generating numerous writers’ imprisonment or censorship (xviii). Yet, despite all hindrances, Arab women’s writing has been in circulation since the late 19th century and is publicly acknowledged if not necessarily approved of since the mid-20th century (xviii). Similarly Rifaat’s writing emerged from the private sphere infiltrating public awareness, but is perpetually marginalised in the West. The publication of her short story collection Who is Man? as breaching the silence on contested issues such as female circumcision attracted fundamentalists’ wrath, resulting in her censorship (Salti 109). By virtue of her controversy in the Middle East playing into Western sensationalist
assumptions of Arab men’s malignity and Arab women’s consequential victimisation, Rifaat subsequently entered Western public consciousness.
Yet, Rifaat remains a predominantly invisible figure in the West evidenced in the absence of interviews and only a single translation of a fragment of her literary works, i.e.
2 Based on Bakhtin identity as dialogic is always conceived in relation to another.
the collection of short stories Distant View of a Minaret discussed in the paper at hand (Mitra 314). Notwithstanding her short-lived attention Rifaat is frequently elided as a feminist in Western discourse, since she refrains from corrupting the entire traditional and religious setup of society, but largely writes from within an Islamic framework. Her
particular angle thus seems paradoxical in the West, since orthodox ideologies, especially Islam, and feminism are defined as mutually exclusive (Hajibashi 44). Moreover, Rifaat has even been labelled “nonfeminist” in certain reviews on compilations of Middle Eastern women’s writings due to her existence within patriarchy and her accentuation of female frustration, disregarding her bold critique on women’s enforced inferiority (Amireh “Egypt” 860).
The overriding Western tendency of dismissing Rifaat as non-feminist or engaging a tempered feminism stems from her seeming acceptance of different gender roles strongly contested in Western feminism and her devotion to Islamic teachings embodied in her persona as well as her short stories. Considering her orthodox upbringing and her absolute seclusion from Western influences, Rifaat has oftentimes not been regarded as a
controversial or for that matter radical figure (Johnson-Davies vii). Moreover, her husband’s intervention and subsequent interdiction of her writing suggests a submissiveness to
patriarchy countering feminist ideologies, but notwithstanding her husband’s instructions Rifaat continued to write in secrecy to finally publish her works after her husband’s death (Badran and Cooke xxix). Her attachment to and appraisal of traditional and religious values can moreover be deduced from her tendency to portray believing female characters, who adhere to Islamic rituals. Family as the vantage point for all of her stories and
simultaneously the societal core is belted by women and sustained by their outward obedience and submissiveness. In the story “Badriyya and Her Husband” Badriyya states
that “[a]fter all, who [is] there to stand by a man in bad times but his wife?” and accordingly continues to finance her husband recently released from prison (Rifaat 34), despite his unmistakable moral laxity, rakishness and unwillingness to work. Her story “The Long Night of Winter” presents the reader with Zennouba, a frustrated wife frequently maltreated and abused by her husband, who is yet determined to remain loyal to her family declaring that “[i]n compliance to her husband, and for the sake of the children, she had submitted to the role of wife and mother, a woman protected by marriage and by the home that she would leave only when they bore her to her grave” (56). Accordingly, men and women have to fulfil disparate traditional roles and duties, whereby women are ascribed the task of
ensuring a harmonious domestic sphere and supporting the master of the house, i.e. either husband, father, brother or any other close male relative. Despite men and women’s inherent difference visualised in their distinct traditional roles as prescribed by patriarchal society, constituted in the physical existence or rather the female physicality, Rifaat moreover conveys an awareness of cultural inscriptions on the body. Therewith she distances herself from biological determinism and exhibits what Ramanathan and Schlau term “studied essentialism”3 (3). This “studied essentialism” can be discerned in Rifaat’s
story “Bahiyya’s Eyes” wherein the narrator relates to her daughter that “it’s all written on the forehead and there’s not a doctor alive or dead [who] can change fate . . . It all comes from the tears [she] shed since [her] mother first bore [her] and they held [her] up by the leg and found [she] was a girl” (6-7). Consequently, women’s afflictions stem from their physical existence as women, since patriarchal norms and conventions are inscribed on and
3 “Studied essentialism” is defined as “an adversarial recognition that the strict confinement
thus eternally connected to the female body. However, Bahiyya is conscious of cultural ideologies inflicting inequities on women rather than an essential characteristic in women’s biological sex, deduceable from her lamentation that “[her] life and [her] youth . . . have come and gone without [her] knowing how to live them really and truly as a woman” (11). Correspondingly, Rifaat abstains from refuting gender roles, but exhibits an awareness of cultural inscriptions determining the distribution of these roles.
Her portrayal of overall traditional gender roles and her characters’ religious
devotion establishes an orthodox framework engendering her to intermittently be invisible in Western discourse or dismissed as exhibiting a tempered feminism due to not explicitly voicing societal reforms and thus not being in accordance with Western feminist tendencies becoming progressively more radical.
2.2.2 Gender Dichotomy: Prodigality and Compensating Tenacity. Despite her purportedly
mild feminism Alifa Rifaat challenges traditional patriarchal hierarchy in portraying men’s societal failure of fulfilling their role adequately as prescribed by the Qur’an contrasting starkly with women’s complementary strength and endurance, thus implicitly questioning hierarchical power structures.
Since Rifaat explores the female consciousness, all of her short stories are set in the domestic domain portraying male and female interaction in the private sphere as
constituting the traditional core of society. In disclosing difficulties between men and women, she implicitly questions the traditional and hierarchical setup of the family and society. Rifaat explores the sexist dichotomy inherent in patriarchal societies in depicting men as actively selfish opposing women as passively complacent and submissive (Victor 9). Despite not explicitly advocating equality, Rifaat decries men’s self-centred attitude leaving
women frustrated and melancholic, requiring even greater stamina to retain the family as the heart of tradition.
In her constant references to religion as a source of alleviation for her female
characters, Rifaat accentuates men’s deficiencies with regard to their neglect of the Qur’an. According to Islamic teachings “the [Qur’an persistently focuses] on the . . .
complementarity between the male and the female, each having rights and duties the one to the other” (Cooke “Prisons” 140). Her male characters’ neglect of Islamic decrees as opposed to women’s religious dedication runs parallel to men’s neglect of their duties towards women. In Rifaat’s eponymous story “Distant View of a Minaret” the protagonist’s husband not only denies her sexual and emotional fulfilment, but also discards his religious duties, since he ignores “the call to afternoon prayers filtering through the shutters of the closed window . . . With a groan he let go of her thigh and immediately withdrew. He . . . turned his back to her and went to sleep” (2). Accordingly, he disregards his religious and marital duties, therewith depriving his wife of her rights. In aligning religious and marital obligations, Rifaat not only criticises the Qur’an’s shortcomings in failing to provide equal rights pertaining to marital laws, but also indicates its cultural misinterpretation practiced in Egypt (Botman 558). Notwithstanding her religious criticism, Rifaat does not question the Qur’an inherently, but its orthodox interpretation generating unjust cultural practices, i.e. men’s sanctioned failure of complying with their duties. Hence, as Abdo states, Rifaat advocates an “ethical Islam” stressing the humanitarian aspect of society in treating each other justly, despite having to adhere to different demands placed on gender roles (403). Her concept of an “ethical Islam” is severely violated by all men’s behaviour, be it brothers, husbands, uncles or state authorities (403). For instance Omar in “Badriyya and Her
but frequently “[h]e would return in a state of exhaustion from drink or drugs and would flop down on the bed and sleep fully clothed till late the next morning” (Rifaat 36). Accordingly, he disrespects his wife in expecting unwavering support despite his lack of effort in seeking employment and his lack of appreciation manifested in his absence and infidelity. In her story “Mansoura” a neighbour attempts to lure another man’s wife into a sexual relationship and since she is resistant, “[b]linded by desire and jealousy, he attacked her, hoping to have his way with her” (53). Men are thus portrayed as irresponsible and immoral, neglecting or abusing their wives, daughters and mothers. Rifaat accordingly displays men’s inability to justly exert their superior position, implicitly hinting at an unwarranted power distribution. Moreover, she demonstrates men’s disrespect for Islam and exposes their moral laxity in their abusive treatment of women. As Nkealah asserts “Rifaat paints a heartrending picture of women who suffer emotional abandonment . . . resulting from men’s misuse and distortion of power and privilege” (37).
In consequence, men’s incompetency heightens women’s strength, since their maintenance of a harmonious family life is strongly aggravated by men’s misdemeanour and thus deserves the more credit and respect. While Rifaat’s female characters seem passive at first glance, they de facto are even stronger and more tenacious in struggling to retain loyalty and devotion to familial and religious values, in enduring men’s behaviour despite all difficulties. In “The Long Night of Winter” Zennouba’s “pent-up hatred against [her husband] had long ago changed to a cold contempt; the hopes that things would change had now gone, but the ache to love and be loved was still there, as physically part of her as her sight or sense of smell” (Rifaat 58). Yet, in order to satisfy others’ needs Zennouba stays with her husband despite his abusive treatment and adultery, therewith prioritising her family over her own desires. Women’s conspicuous self-sacrifice as a motif features in many of Rifaat’s
stories. Despite her portrayal of family as paramount to society’s functioning, Rifaat unveils its romanticised image and exposes profound difficulties rendering women unhappy and frustrated (Gordon 78-9).
Therewith, Rifaat critiques power distribution determined by patriarchal
misinterpretations of the Qur’an restricting women to an inferior position despite their importance to tradition in upholding family structures aggravated by men and thus paradoxically emphasising female strength and power.
2.2.3 Concord Sexual and Spiritual Repletion. Notwithstanding her female characters’ silent
endurance, Alifa Rifaat voices women’s sexual dissatisfaction and enhances its importance by dint of Islamic creeds, thus revolutionarily connecting spiritual and sexual fulfilment, and consequently hinting at society’s repressive and dysfunctional tendencies.
In her stories all women without exception are sexually dissatisfied engendering frustration, resignation and an emotional void, but refrain from explicitly formulating their desires. This silence stems from the taboo imposed on women’s sexuality denigrating female sexual desire as shameful and potentially dangerous. This reactionary interpretation of female sexuality is manifested in “Arabo-Islamic cultural practice . . . [perceiving it] . . . as a ‘dangerous distraction,’ a ‘disruptive power’ . . . that can and will cause social and spiritual chaos”, i.e. fitna (Abdo 405). As a consequence, women’s sexuality is ascribed a dangerous potential that has to be kept in check in order to avoid societal pandemonium. Hence, the functioning of society is allegedly dependent on a curtailed and repressed female sexuality.
Rifaat with her collection Distant View of a Minaret however expounds on the misapprehension that society’s functioning must be based on repressive energies rendering women unhappy and frustrated. She rather voices an oppositional stance by breaking the silence reigning over women’s sexuality and exposing sexual satisfaction as a prerequisite
for a functioning marriage, constituting a substantial unit in society in forming an integral part of the family. For instance in Rifaat’s story “Distant View of a Minaret” the protagonist longs for a sexual climax, but when she attempts to physically reveal her desire in “[digging] her fingernails into his back, compelling him to remain inside her . . . [h]e had given a shout as he pushed her away and slipped from her: ‘Are you mad, woman? Do you want to kill me?’” (2). Her husband’s reaction clearly exposes the culturally ingrained superstition of a dangerous female sexuality rendering women unfulfilled. In solely portraying failed marriages and failed sexual gratification, Rifaat emphasises men’s incompetence or more literally impotence in accordance with their failure to adhere to religious practices. Women are victimised and employed as a void vessel existing to satisfy men’s sexual needs while simultaneously being denied their own sexual drive. As Miriam Cooke rightly observes in the exemplified story mentioned above, the protagonist is deprived of her sexual rights while at the same time her view on the minaret is increasingly obscured by new buildings thus equating sexual fulfilment with religious fulfilment (“Prisons” 146).
Hence, Rifaat alludes to the “Qur’an’s liberal and inclusive sexual ideology” granting both women and men equally the right to sexual gratification within the marital institution (Mitra 311), since intercourse constitutes a special connection serving as foundation for marriage. Rifaat exemplifies the importance of sexual contentment in paralleling
malfunctioning intercourse with malfunctioning marriages, such as in “The Long Night of Winter” in which Zennouba remembers her first sexual encounter, which “had been a night of violence and pain, utterly unrelated to any previous experience she had had. Since then it had been repeated hundreds of times, with the element of pain replaced by that of
repugnance at the rough hands that kneaded her body” (56). The unpleasant experience of intercourse is a common plight for all of her female characters, just as they exhibit a
common longing for sexual gratification. In her allusion to sexual and spiritual fulfilment complementing each other, Rifaat’s story “My World of the Unknown” is the most explicit and outspoken in that the protagonist experiences a sexual encounter with a female djinn4
in the form of a snake. Due to the radically controversial topic of having sex with a spiritual being in the guise of a female animal numerous critics focus exclusively on this story
generating various, at times coalescing and at times contradictory, discourses. Leaving aside numerous theories on Rifaat’s defiance of heteronormativity in displaying same-sex love, the most eminent factor constitutes her reintegration of religion and sex in portraying sexual gratification as an act sanctioned by God. As Abdo rightly asserts Rifaat emphasises mystical over orthodox Islam in accordance with her plea for a more felicitous interpretation of the Qur’an, thus portraying female sexuality as something that is beautiful and divine and should not be besmirched and disparaged (407). By drawing on magical realism, i.e.
“imbuing [her narrative] with . . . a dreamlike quality” (“Magic Realism”), Rifaat succeeds in safely discarding the shame and repression surrounding women’s sexual energy and
encourages indulgence in sexual pleasure, deploying the snake as her and the Qur’an’s funnel. Her fusion of mystical Islam and magical realism allows for the transgressive and subversive potential inherent in numerous of the snake’s remarks, such as
‘[c]ome, let me sleep with you as I have slept with beautiful women and have given them bliss. Come, let me prise out your pearl from its shell that I may
4 A djinn is an “‘intermediary [being], above [the] terrestrial realm but below the celestial
realm.’ Made of smokeless fire, [they] are . . . much like humans in that they are intelligent beings in possession of free will, who can shift anytime ‘toward goodness or toward evil’” (qtd. In Abdo 401)
polish it and bring forth its splendour . . . Perfect beauty is to be found only in woman . . . so yield to me and I shall let you taste undreamed of happiness’. (Rifaat 72, 75)
Accordingly, the equation of spiritual and sexual fulfilment as sanctioned by Allah allows for Rifaat to explicitly and revolutionarily address silenced topics in order to further equal sexual rights, heal women’s frustration and encourage a female sexual identity.
2.2.4 Passivity’s Subversive Potential. Alifa Rifaat’s characters’ (sexual) dissatisfaction
manifested in their passivity paradoxically contains subversive potential and simultaneously emphasises women’s internalisation of their purported inferiority indoctrinated by
patriarchal ideologies and reactionary Islamic interpretations, which ultimately generate alienation and isolation moreover hindering outspoken rebellion and change.
In Distant View of a Minaret, all male characters deny women’s active sexuality, therewith estranging them from their existence as sexual beings and compelling them to retreat into passivity. This passivity functions simultaneously as self-protection and as the physical expression of exasperation compensating for the proscription on verbal articulation of female desire. In “Distant View of a Minaret” the protagonist, after having been rebuffed by her husband for the physical display of sexual desire, “[submits] to her passive role” so as to protect herself from further shameful reprimands (Rifaat 2). Additionally, her passivity allows for her indifference regarding her husband’s extramarital affairs, therewith sparing her emotional suffering. Furthermore, as the critic Nkealah observes, in the story “The Long Night of Winter” Zennouba retreats into passivity that transforms into repulsion due to her husband’s violent sexual behaviour (35). Her passivity indicts his inability to meet her sexual needs therewith hinting at his insufficiency not only imbuing their sexual life, but also their emotional bond. Accordingly, women’s appropriation of their enforced passivity provokes
its transformation into a form of active passivity as a means for protection and safe denouncement of men’s failure to adhere to their duties.
Furthermore, women’s passivity is not only an appropriated coping mechanism, but also discloses an internalisation of their purported inferiority inflicted by prevalent
patriarchal ideologies. This internalisation can be deduced from women’s imitation and execution of repressive conventional mores, such as female circumcision. In the story
“Bahiyya’s Eyes”, several women circumcise Bahiyya seemingly as punishment for her sexual curiosity, which demonstrates women’s adoption of male anxiety concerning women’s allegedly dangerous sexuality (Nkealah 34). Not only women’s inferiority, but also men’s superiority is adopted as a given. Bahiyya’s mother chides her daughter when she criticises her brother’s cruel and condescending behaviour by stating that “‘[w]hen your father’s gone he’ll be the man in the family and what he says goes so you’d better get used to it’” (Rifaat 7). Thus, her mother anticipates her husband’s absence and instructs her daughter at an early age that male superiority is immutable.
Women’s internalisation of a biased power distribution in their (active) passivity evokes alienation and isolation. In “Distant View of a Minaret” the protagonist’s passivity results in complete alienation from her husband and an almost out-of-body experience while they are having intercourse. During their sexual act “[s]he was suddenly aroused from her thoughts by his more urgent movements. She turned to him and watched him struggling in the world he occupied on his own” (Rifaat 2). Her estrangement and emotional distance could not be described any more vividly. In inhabiting different worlds the protagonist retreats into her thoughts, thus appearing to be entirely separated from her physical being, whereas her husband inhabits his own corporeal world, selfishly gratifying himself while nearly neglecting his wife’s existence (2).
A general sense of alienation between men and women pervades Distant View of a
Minaret and while this pertains more profoundly to the relation between the sexes, women
additionally tend to be alienated from one another living enveloped in deep isolation, thus preventing an experience of relief in confiding their problems to each other. Women’s sexuality as charged with a sense of shame as literalised in the story “My World of the Unkown” in which the protagonist stigmatises her own sexual desire as an illness divulges women’s reluctance of verbalising controversial issues pertaining to sexuality (Li 73). In the story “Thursday Lunch” isolation strongly comes to the fore in that the protagonist seems forlorn wondering why people “make barriers between [themselves] and those nearest to [them]” (Rifaat 18). It seems futile to discuss her marital problems with her mother. Therewith, a potentially relieving female bond is barred, leaving her isolated and sad. She expresses her longing for a more intimate bond with her mother in stating that “[she] wished that it were possible . . . for [them] to make contact and for [her] to talk openly to her [mother] about [her] bewilderment as [she] faced a problem whose dimensions [she] couldn’t define” (21). Hence, Rifaat illustrates women’s isolation as aggravating their inferior position in society, since change or amelioration is nearly impossible if alone. Accordingly, women’s isolation and their distanced relationships hinder a feeling of community, circumvent a sense of shared fate and forego help by not confiding in each other.
By dint of her short story collection Distant View of a Minaret Rifaat breaks the silence imposed on women’s sexuality, exposes their state of isolation and therewith encouragingly displays the possibility of voicing frustrations and questioning patriarchal wisdom, and thus establishes a platform for women’s collective experiences that can be alleviated by sharing their stories and lives.
2.2.5 Rebellion Preventing Stigmatisation. In voicing inequities and disclosing a tendency for
isolation among women, Alifa Rifaat proffers imagination and the mind as an alternative space for autonomous female subjectivity as a solution circumventing marginalisation and social death while at the same time providing a collective female consciousness implicitly aiding in forming sisterhood and thus potentially enabling outright rebellion.
Distant View of a Minaret creates an imaginative space for women in enabling
identification with its female protagonists, since their stories offer a glimpse into a collective female consciousness. As Gordon contends Rifaat provides her readers with a female
subjectivity that engages imaginatively, not only submissively, with men and voices self-contained desires frequently pertaining to their sexuality as usurped by and included in an ingrained pattern of power abuse (74-5). In illustrating female sexuality as natural and a catalyst for emotions, which if suppressed result in dissatisfaction, melancholy and
loneliness, Rifaat institutes sexuality not as dangerous but as everyone’s right, decrying its perversion and corruption as a foundation for patriarchal hegemony. Since all her characters are portrayed as centrally located within society and not as marginalised outcasts, Rifaat proffers imagination as a potential outlet for frustrations. Imaginative energy is frequently released during religious rituals as for instance in her story “Telephone Call” in which the protagonist has to concede her husband’s death and finds comfort in “[sitting] with [her] prayer-beads . . . enveloped in a cloak of contentment and gratitude” (Rifaat 15). Not only religious rituals, but also the state between wake and sleep and the evocation of memories provide her characters with relief as in “The Long Night of Winter” in which Zennouba, abused by her infidel husband, seeks for alleviation, and “as on many such a night she guided herself back to the days of her childhood . . . days of security in a house where love
and tenderness were a child’s right and did not have to be earned, where death was without dominion and sorrow never lasted beyond a night” (55).
Accordingly, Rifaat lends a voice to oppression proffering imagination as a means of subversion and a safe space for the articulation of rebellious thoughts, thus avoiding marginalisation in portraying her characters as deeply ingrained in patriarchal society reluctant to reverse power structures. As a result, she does not threaten male hegemony to such an extent as that her female characters’ existence could only be continued on the fringes of society, generating increased suffering. Yet, she is outspoken and explicit in her critique in clearly identifying society’s dysfunctional tendencies, therewith complying with Dorothy Will’s concept of “noisy silence”, i.e. remaining within a traditional framework and simultaneously denouncing traditionally justified oppression and inequities, thus allowing for an inception of subversion and alteration (qtd. In Nkealah 31-2). She depicts women without men as stigmatised and increasingly frustrated and lonely as for instance in her story “The Flat in Nakshabandi Street” in which the old spinster Aziza is dying, but due to her isolation cannot be rescued (Rifaat 100). Her isolation renders her helpless and she “tried in vain to struggle against the giddiness that swept her up . . . and soon there was nothing but her pain and her terror binding her to her sofa” (100). Accordingly, Rifaat depicts social stigmatisation just as undesirable as suffering under a man’s oppressive hegemony.
Isolation as a pervasive topic throughout all short stories highlights the need for exchange and communication, especially between women, in order to establish a feeling of connection and sisterhood. In writing stories about women covering all age and class strata and voicing similar feelings, desires and frustrations, Rifaat establishes a collective female consciousness that proffers the possibility of alleviation via female relations. In “The Long
Night of Winter” Zennouba longs for confiding her marital and familial problems to her mother and ponders on the questions whether “her mother [had] suffered the same sort of nightmare of a life as she did? Was this the fate of all women? Her mother . . . had given her a glance that had silenced her, a warning not to tread on forbidden territory” (Rifaat 57-8). Hence, Rifaat illuminates the potential of and need for alleviation in sharing a collective dissatisfaction therewith critiquing isolation as an oppressive condition and promoting unity between women in order to free them from the confines of patriarchal repression and its resultant isolation.
Despite numerous critics and among others Ahmed alleging that staying within a traditional framework is “a position imposed on feminism and feminists by the internal needs of the Islamicate civilisation . . . [, a] consequence that feminism in the Arab world has never . . . seriously challenged that civilization’s conception of the role of women” I contend that Rifaat indeed does seriously challenge patriarchal hegemony (161), notwithstanding her circumvention of societal stigmatisation and her adherence to a traditional framework. 2.3CONCLUSION
Alifa Rifaat’s collection of short stories Distant View of a Minaret as a whole portrays a vivid picture of women’s lives in Muslim patriarchal society in Egypt. In remaining close to
Qur’anic teachings and accepting different gender roles, but simultaneously depicting deficiencies in men’s fulfilment of their roles, Rifaat manages to allow for her female readership to acknowledge their own strength and find an outlet for (sexual) desires and needs in their imagination, while moreover encouraging sisterhood in portraying a collective female consciousness. Consequently, female readers are inspired to make room for
for submissive tendencies in order to prevent an existence as society’s outcasts. Moreover, as Salti observes Rifaat avoids exclusive tendencies in “[h]er linguistic contribution, her courage to write about things that need to be discussed yet are often left unspoken, and her realistic and genuine style have done much to improve the situation of Arab women as a whole, and have given boost to an already growing feminist movement in Egypt” (112). Her subversive potential finds concrete actualisation not only in her themes, but also due to writing in the vernacular, thus allowing for a broader readership reaching women from various social classes.
Accordingly, Rifaat provides a cultural base for women to unite, initiate
improvement and assert their own rights. Her revolutionary potential comes to the fore in
Distant View of a Minaret and offers women a possibility for identification. At the same
time, Rifaat’s Western readership gains an insight into the common plight of women in Egypt, and yet is not encouraged to endorse common stereotypes of Arab women as victimised and Arab men as solely villainous. She depicts both Arab men and women as confined in their traditional structures in highlighting cultural conditioning based mainly on the repression of female sexuality as the oppressive structure that has to be broken up. By breaking the silence on controversial topics, both Arab and Western readers are encouraged to break through ingrained and restricting simplistic, stereotypical and binary thinking. Despite Alifa Rifaat not labelling herself a feminist, she hence exhibits pronounced feminist tendencies and encourages women “[to know] how to live [their lives and their youths] really and truly as . . . [women]” (11).
3.NAWAL EL SAADAWI’S FEMINISM OR “NO WOMAN CAN BE A CRIMINAL.TO BE A CRIMINAL ONE MUST BE A
MAN”
3.1INTRODUCTION
Nawal El Saadawi’s semi-fictional novel Woman at Point Zero translated from the Arabic by her husband Sherif Hetata and published in English in 1983, relates the compelling story of the convict Firdaus, who murdered her last pimp after having endured a life of never-ending (sexual) abuse, where she was coerced into prostitution. This ultimately prompted her death sentence. The story as embedded in a metanarrative related by a psychiatrist conducting a case study on women’s neuroses in Egypt’s Qanatir prison exclusively for women meets Firdaus the day before her execution and, enthralled by the account of her life, she introduces and concludes her story (El Saadawi ix). As Cooke states in the novel’s foreword, the narration is based on a true encounter between El Saadawi and Firdaus and subsequently consists of partly biographical, partly fictitious elements (vii). Yet, El Saadawi accentuates the novel’s biographical elements in stating that “[t]his is the story of a real woman” (1), therewith assuring the reader of Firdaus and her story’s reality. Its preface and metanarrative additionally add an air of truth to the story, since El Saadawi/ the psychiatrist introduces her research, informs the reader of her own political activism and finally
recounts her encounter with Firdaus. Woman at Point Zero hence provides the reader with a true and simultaneously devastating account of a woman’s suffering and ensuing downfall in Egyptian patriarchal society. In delineating her story Firdaus and the psychiatrist engage in a psychoanalytical reworking of traumas – an anamnesis – operating on two levels: on an individual level diagnosing Firdaus’ personal trauma, and on a metaphorical level, attaining a collective dimension via political interpretation, diagnosing society’s ills, thus unveiling
women’s collective condition under patriarchy (Faulkner 71). Accordingly, Firdaus’ story, in expounding on her individual plights, functions as a model case elaborating on society’s patriarchal failings. The insurmountable impediments women have to face if seeking self-realisation and autonomy are imposed by society’s bifold oppressive system, i.e. patriarchy and capitalism generating “sexual and economic exploitation” (Saliba 136). Woman at Point
Zero depicts “patriarchy [as] an all-inclusive system that informs social, political and
religious structures” rendering women’s liberation without avail as exemplified by Firdaus’ incarceration (Malti-Douglas “Introduction”). Firdaus’ “novelistic testimony” as challenging state authority in identifying its flaws inevitably results in her destruction (Harlow 507). As Firdaus elucidates “truth is like death in that it kills. When [she] killed [she] did it with truth not with a knife. That is why they are afraid . . . It is [her] truth which frightens them” (El Saadawi 112). Woman at Point Zero as a subversive version of traditional national allegory generally occluding women exposes society’s dysfunctional state as pertaining to women’s condition (Faulkner 77). Accordingly, Nawal El Saadawi’s novel Woman at Point Zero as part of the Western canon vividly portrays an all-encompassing patriarchy generating numerous oppressive societal levels, specifically economic and political oppression, resulting in a pronounced gender dichotomy and women’s victimisation imprinted and played out on the female body. Attempts at subversion as realised in role reversal appropriating men’s
oppressive mechanisms and reclaiming ownership over the body are without avail, wherefore true rebellion can only be realised in death.
3.2 WOMAN AT POINT ZERO ANALYSIS
3.2.1 Nawal El Saadawi’s Controversial Positionality. Nawal El Saadawi as the most
feminist hegemonic discourse stemming from her secularism, political activism and her radical condemnation of an overarching patriarchal system imbuing all societal structures, denounced in her most popular and highly provocative novel Woman at Point Zero.
El Saadawi as an intellectual Egyptian woman writing about women’s subjection and its ramifications in Muslim society enters a highly controversial ideological discourse, specifically in the context of Islamic patriarchy triggering her recognition in the West. Pat Lancaster denominates her “darling of the European media” in the 1980s coinciding with the publication of Woman at Point Zero (74). Her fierceness with which she opposes injustices concerning women generates interest and popularity, but while she is highly revered in the West, she produces greater controversy in the Arab world, provoking
polemical debates on her status as a politically active feminist (Malti-Douglas “Iconoclast”). Her controversial position affirmed in the censorship of her books and her having been blacklisted by Islamic fundamentalists resulting in stigmatisation augments her Western popularity (“Iconoclast”). Moreover, Woman at Point Zero’s publication as concurrent with the UN international decade for women and El Saadawi’s speech at its opening conference in Copenhagen not only spawned an international interest in feminism beyond the Western hemisphere, but also drew attention to El Saadawi and her literary works (Amireh “Framing” 220). To the present-day, she has attained canonised status in the West deduceable from her ubiquity in hegemonic discourses and mass media, her translations, interviews, inclusion in anthologies and her guest lectures at US universities (218-9). Her inclusion in
international discourses on feminism provides El Saadawi with the possibility to appeal to a wide spectrum of readers all over the world.
Paramount to Saadawi’s popularity is her secularism playing into Western
prevalent confusion with Islamic fundamentalism aggravated by the events of 9/11. El Saadawi’s opinion on religion serves as an interesting vantage point for Westerners to explore the purportedly greater oppression of Muslim women. Despite only being discussed marginally in Woman at Point Zero, the novel transmits distrust in religion shaped by
patriarchal interests. In an interview featured in the Guardian, El Saadawi explicates her conviction of a strict separation of politics and religion, thus opposing a theocratic state (Fouda). This conviction comes to the fore in the novel’s exposure of religious and political leaders’ hypocrisy indicting them to “draw a feeling of supremacy from their power over others . . . [hiding] how essentially hollow they are inside, despite the impression of greatness they try to spread . . . , which is all they really care for” (El Saadawi 98). This polemical contempt manifested in her literary works also spawns her political involvement.
El Saadawi’s intensive political activism augmenting her literary works’ repute was especially pronounced in the 1980s as well as recently during the Arab Spring, triggering a renewed Western interest in the Arab world and concurrently Islam. Especially her
imprisonment in 1981 due to her opposition of the Camp David Agreement5 and,
symbolically, Western imperialism, alongside with many other Arab intellectuals under Sadat provoked international disbelief, paving the way for the publication of Woman at
Point Zero two years later. Furthermore, Mubarak’s shutdown of her non-governmental
organisation, the Arab Women’s Society Association (AWSA), in 1991 due to her opposition
5 The Camp David Agreement is a peace contract between Israel and Egypt, initiated by the
of the Gulf War6 is exemplary of her far-reaching political convictions generating global
attention (Amireh “Framing” 228).
El Saadawi’s political engagement substantiates her denunciation of an overarching patriarchal system. Woman at Point Zero in its depiction of patriarchal hypocrisy permeating all societal structures paints a highly dysfunctional society predominantly baneful for
women. As Saliba puts it Woman at Point Zero “relentlessly condemns gender oppression and offers no excuse for patriarchal oppression, although it finds greatest fault with corrupt rulers. Firdaus . . . cannot escape the material limitations of her class position. Thus the hope for her freedom lies only in the fact that she is willing to die for what she believes in” (143). As indicated above patriarchy influences class and political structures, heightening women’s oppression and foregoing any possibility for alleviation apart from death. Yet, El Saadawi emphasises in interviews that men are likewise victims of patriarchy,
notwithstanding victimisation admittedly entailing disparate consequences (“Arab Women” 178). Despite her insistence on patriarchy’s general harmfulness, Woman at Point Zero clearly expounds solely on women’s disadvantaged position starkly contrasting with men’s ascribed superiority constituted in patriarchal society’s innate double standard.
3.2.2 Gender dichotomy: Vilification and Victimisation. Consequently, Woman at Point Zero’s portrayal of a biased gender dichotomy sustained by capitalism and patriarchy as a
dual oppressive force decries an ensuing uneven power distribution resulting in women’s victimisation and men’s vilification as starkly divergent poles, induced by men’s
unmistakeable power abuse.
6 The Gulf War as initiated by a UN force led by the United States was waged against Iraq in
While men and women are both victims of societal structures, the combinative force of patriarchy and capitalism by virtue of society’s rigid separation ensures women’s
dependency in their traditional exclusion from the working world (Sidani 506). Firdaus as a lower-class peasant is thus highly financially dependent on men. The conspicuous class hierarchy as visible in Firdaus’ uncle’s upward mobility, signified by his marriage to a woman from a higher class entails that “he never beat her, or spoke to her in a loud voice” (El Saadawi 22). In spite of this privilege granted to women from the upper classes Firdaus notices that despite “[being] extremely polite, . . . [he] treated her with the peculiar kind of courtesy devoid of true respect which men preserve for women” (22-3). Accordingly, patriarchal behaviour superimposes class-based behaviour generating women to eternally be inferior irrespective of their background, resulting in a general subjection to men. As Malti-Douglas rightly observes Firdaus’ and the narrator’s encounter “lays out a relationship between two women from opposite social classes, a Saadawian duo that eloquently
articulates the dilemma of women in a class-based society” (“Introduction”). Despite their collective patriarchal suppression, the narrator as a psychiatrist is granted financial
independence, whereas Firdaus as a peasant is executed in response to her desire for independence.
The interrelation of capitalism and patriarchy thus distribute ensuing power positions, rendering lower-class women as doubly oppressed and utterly dependent on men. As a symbol for capitalist power predominantly in the hands of men, money functions simultaneously as a symbol for patriarchal power. Money as unattainable for women evokes Firdaus’ observation that “[i]t was as though money was a shameful thing, . . . an object of sin which was forbidden to [her] and yet permissible for others, as though it had been made legitimate only for them” (El Saadawi 73). Women are rendered powerless in their
prevention of economic success accounting for Firdaus’ astonishment and subsequent musings when possessing money of her own for the first time. This inaccessibility of money to women is ensured by society’s strict division into disparate domains, confining women to the private sphere. In rendering women financially dependent, men ensure their need for male protection (Sazzad 819). A woman without a man cannot survive.
Due to this pervasive gender dichotomy infiltrating the economic domain, women are reduced to victims incapable of surviving without men’s patronage. Women’s lack of ownership and victimisation contrasting with men’s position of power strongly comes to the fore in Firdaus’ arranged marriage with Sheikh Mahmoud. Despite Mahmoud’s physical abuse, Firdaus’ uncle and his wife persuade her to remain with him, since “[a] virtuous woman was not supposed to complain about her husband. Her duty was perfect obedience” (El Saadawi 46-7). Accordingly, women’s victimisation relies on moral precepts prescribing subservient behaviour for women. Moreover, internalisation of conventions manifested in women’s prevalent complicity is deduceable from Firdaus’ uncle’s wife enforcement of her marriage to the deformed and violent Sheikh. Albeit some women transgressing their confinement and entering the public sphere, gender relations are eternally maintained (Sidani 507). Firdaus’ employment in an unspecified company elicits her realisation of
women’s perpetuated victimisation, since they “were guileless enough to offer their bodies . . . every night in return for a meal, or a good yearly report, or just to ensure that they would not be . . . discriminated against, or transferred” (El Saadawi 82). Accordingly, women’s inferiority is an inevitable reality in all societal spheres.
Men in the novel are depicted as villains exploiting their power position yielding their vilification. Every man without exception treats Firdaus badly – be it verbal or physical abuse, surveillance, rape or humiliation. As Edward Said rightly asserts, despite authority
being commonly based on filial ties, affiliation can reproduce this authority (qtd. In Harlow 508). Accordingly, men’s hegemony is not only valid within the traditional core of Islamic society – the family – but is appropriated by the entire male gender. Firdaus is subjected to numerous men’s debasement ensuring her inferiority based on the assumption of an inherent male superiority, despite a lack of filial relation. Sharifa as Firdaus’ patron explains that “[t]hey’re all the same, all sons of dogs, running around under various names.
Mahmoud, Hassanein, . . . ” (El Saadawi 55). Furthermore, Firdaus’ encounters exemplify political and religious hypocrisy rooted in patriarchal structures and she learns that even “men well versed in their religion . . . beat their wives. The precepts of religion [permit] such punishment” (46). Men in their invariable malignancy as violently abusive towards women are shown to detract their feeling of superiority from women’s imposed victimisation.
Accordingly, Firdaus’ sweeping generalisations on women’s victimisation and men’s vilification occluding heterogeneity stem from her exclusively abusive treatment by men. She states that “[a]ll women are victims of deception. Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows” (El Saadawi 94).
3.2.3 The Female Body as the Bearer of Male Power Abuse. Reciprocal workings of
patriarchy and capitalism allow for men’s uncompromised abuse of their allotted power implemented via pervasive control mechanisms played out on the female body, thus hindering love or sexual pleasure and precipitating a seemingly natural denial of women’s independence.
Men’s abuse of their power inscribed on the female body as the vessel of a distorted hegemony is frequently realised in a performance of male violence. Traditional ideology as
anchored on the female body constructs it as a metaphor for society, prompting its confinement to the home ensured by men’s surveillance and castigation in case of
transgression so as to secure society’s well-being. Mernissi, a Moroccan feminist, discerns that the female body denotes dangerous sexuality in need of regulation in order to avoid societal pandemonium (Sidani 506). This immense sovereignty men have over women, specifically their bodies, results in power abuse, frequently in the form of rape (Ouyang 458). Firdaus is constantly subjected to sexual molestation and rape. Not only rape, but also female circumcision is employed as a tool to restrain female sexuality, generally performed by women. This compliance exposes cultural conditioning as ingraining the deep-seated superstition of women’s indispensable restriction to safeguard their purity. As Nkealah observes, Firdaus’ mother subjects her to circumcision following her enquiry about her father’s paternity, therewith curbing sexual curiosity and implicit assumptions concerning her mother’s fidelity (34). This experience traumatises Firdaus and eliminates her capacity for sexual gratification in that she “no longer felt the strong sensation of pleasure that radiated from an unknown and yet familiar part of [her] body . . . It was . . . as though a part of . . . [her] being, was gone and would never return” (El Saadawi 13). Her failure to locate sexual pleasure functions as a pervasive theme, again and again elicited in many of her sexual encounters. Men’s power abuse is thus a violent performance directed towards the female body as a male possession (Sazzad 818).
Accordingly, men’s exploitation of their power generates specific control
mechanisms played out on the female body resulting in its construction as man’s economic possession. This equation of the female body with an economic good is not only sanctioned in marriage, but also if women manage to transgress their confinement and enter the public sphere. Firdaus’ arranged marriage is handled like an economic transaction, since her uncle
and aunt are not willing to support her anymore, but rather they “intend to ask [her future husband] for a big dowry” (El Saadawi 38). Furthermore, they “won’t have to worry about the bride’s outfit, or furniture and utensils. Sheik Mahmoud’s house has everything in it” (39). Accordingly, the marriage is considered of financial merit for Firdaus’ aunt and uncle as well as for Firdaus herself. Since women are dispossessed of their own bodies, Firdaus is not implicated in the decision. Men’s appropriated ownership of women’s bodies not only prevails in the home, but also in the male-dominated sphere, the public. Women are physically subjected to men, be they prostitutes or employees. As a prostitute Firdaus queries the number of men frequenting her services, asseverating that “[she] did not understand where they could possibly have come from. For they were all married, all educated, all carrying swollen leather bags” (61). The normalcy of men visiting prostitutes suggests that men are regarded as active sexual beings possessing the right to deploy women’s bodies to their own gratification. This self-evident power distribution hinges on the “‘physico-moral discourse’ of ‘awra” meaning shame pertaining to female genitals (Sazzad 816). In imposing shame on female sexuality men succeed in usurping women’s ownership of their bodies, transforming them into a shared male possession. This shame associated with sexual desire incipient with circumcision circumvents the possibility of sexual pleasure and instigates women’s confinement to invisibility or, as in the public sphere, their disparagement to prostitutes. El Saadawi elucidates women’s physical existence as either commercialised in their construction as sex objects or as subject to demands of chastity and fidelity in their existence as mothers and wives (“Arab Women” 180). This double-bind placed on women by the contradictory forces of patriarchy and capitalism and the equation of the female body with an economic good strain women’s ability to retain their honour, whereas men’s honour seems to remain intact no matter
what. One of Firdaus’ clients attacks her honour in accusing her of “not [being] respectable” (El Saadawi 76). Despite Firdaus’ awareness of his contradiction deduceable from her question, “My work is not worthy of respect. Why then do you join in it with me?” (77), she eventually attempts to retrieve her honour in seeking employment in an official company. Yet, she ultimately realises that the double-bind placed on women realised in their sexual and economic exploitation permeates all spheres of society – marriage, work, prostitution. Firdaus conceives “[t]hat men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another” (99). Consequently, while women’s honour is always in question and needs to be ensured by male intervention, men’s honour as compromised by their treatment of women is nevertheless never in question, as exemplified in Firdaus’ encounter with a policeman forcing her into sexual intercourse, not only revealing his own moral laxity, but also political corruption (Sazzad 819).
Since men’s power is increasingly hinged on the notions of a shameful and dangerous female sexuality and their economic superiority, women are denied
independence and subjected to exploitation resulting in the loss of ownership over their own physical existence and the denial of honour.
3.2.4 Subversive Role Reversal as Death Sentence. Despite women’s integral dependency,
Firdaus as an already marginalised character seeks for subversion in passivity and paradoxically strives for (fruitless) rebellion in appropriating men’s control mechanisms, generating her final uproar materialising as role reversal, which ultimately prompts her imprisonment and death sentence.
Firdaus’ marginalisation is initiated at an early age in her complete alienation from her family. In “[finding herself] in a place where [she] did not belong, in a home which was
not [hers], born from a father who was not [her] father, and from a mother who was not [her] mother” Firdaus’ estrangement culminates in her denial of familial ties (El Saadawi 15). Due to being orphaned Firdaus resides with her uncle’s family, but is treated as a financial burden, perpetuating her estrangement and isolation. Continuous disappointments, abuse and displacements conducive to her alienation elicit her rebellion initially materialised in her escape from the confined sphere of the home to seeking refuge on similarly hostile streets. As an unprotected woman in public she continues to experience alienation and oppression provoked by men’s usurpation. Endless abuse and rape ultimately force Firdaus into prostitution. Therewith she answers patriarchal demands in complying with men’s purported right to the female body as a means of selfish gratification (Sazzad 819).
Defying men’s insolent pre-emption on her body, Firdaus appropriates women’s traditional passivity imposed by patriarchy in her pursuance of self-protection. When her abusive husband Sheikh Mahmoud demands his marital rights Firdaus would “[surrender her] face to his face and [her] body to his body, passively, without any resistance . . . as though life had been drained out of it” (El Saadawi 47). Accordingly, Firdaus’ passivity provokes estrangement from her own physical existence so as to distance herself from her heinous sexual experiences. Her passivity serves as a means for transforming into a void shell as protection. Later on, evoked by perpetual disappointments, especially in her ultimately unrequited love relationship with Ibrahim, Firdaus learns to translate her passivity into a form of resistance. As a prostitute
[she] protected [herself], fought back every moment, was never off guard. To protect [her] deeper, inner self from men, [she] offered them only an outer shell. [She] kept her heart and soul, and let her body play its role, its passive,
inert, unfeeling role. [She] learnt to resist by being passive, to keep [herself] whole offering nothing, to live by withdrawing to a world of [her] own. (93) Hence, passivity functions as resistance allowing Firdaus’ mind to serve as an autonomous space for female subjectivity severed from her physical experiences.
On her discovery of men’s patriarchal and capitalist motivations (money and sex), Firdaus adopts other mechanisms than passivity for revolt. In what Malti-Douglas terms a “bisociation”, i.e. Firdaus discovery of the interconnectedness of money and sex, she learns how to liberate herself within the unescapable patriarchal and capitalist system (“The Physician”). Her patron Sharifa instructs her that “[a] man does not know a woman’s value…The higher you price yourself, the more he will [realise] what you are really worth, and be prepared to pay” (El Saadawi 58). Sharifa teaches Firdaus self-esteem. Yet, she only realises the subversive potential of money abetting the ensuing ownership of her body as a means of liberation on possessing money for the first time. She ponders on “[h]ow many were the years of [her] life that went by before [her] body, and [her] self became really [hers]” (74). Ergo, Firdaus paradoxically finds liberation in her life as a prostitute, since her passive body forecloses affliction and her self-determined wage secures her at the least financial independence.
On Firdaus’ discovery that prostitution forecloses honour, she seeks to resist stigmatisation in transferring to a respectable position. Yet, as Sazzad states a woman’s honour does not correspond to her reality in patriarchal Egyptian society (818). Women’s simultaneous wish for independence and fear of stigmatisation is hopeless in that “honour [requires] large sums of money to protect it, but . . . large sums of money [cannot] be obtained without losing one’s honour” (El Saadawi 99). Hence, honour is only ascribed to married women precluding independence, whereas independent women are inevitably
