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Women and Choice: Marriage in Islamic Society
He wakes up in the morning—
Does his teeth, bite to eat, and he’s rolling—
Never change a thing, the week ends, and week begins—
And all the little ants are marching, red and black antennas waving—
They all do it the same, they all do it the same way.
The philosopher Kempis noted, “Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.” Throughout history and throughout the world socially constructed variables have substantially impacted how both men and women formulate their individual identity. Group influences such as family, religion, region, culture, race and socio-economic class, impact and often dictate the life-long decisions we choose make to as individuals even within the most free of societies. Frequently through these pressures we see trends over time and across the globe that specifically affect the choices that women make for ‘themselves’. Decisions regarding how and to what extent they might be educated, how many child they might have and at what point in their lives they might have them, when, how, and to whom they will be married, are often decisions decided for them before they can even speak. One might argue that this is not necessarily the case globally, but the contention can be made that regardless of religion, country of origin, race, ethnic background, level of “freeness”, or opportunity women’s lives are still very much determined by gender based socialization limiting their ability to truly make choices of their own independent will. The argument will be made that above culture, race, and religion, the relationship between the genders impacts the choices women make, and more importantly that positions within social institutions such as marriage and romantic relationships are the root causes of gender differential. This socialization forces women to “find” themselves amongst what they have been told to become. In the book, In the Eye of the Sun, Ahdaf Soueif, tells the story of a wealthy, educated, free, Egyptian woman, Asya, who, by constant self-evaluation tries to determine exactly how much of herself is in ‘her’ life, ‘her’ marriage, ‘her’ sexual identity, ‘her’ career, and ‘her’ home. Through her personal journey we will come to understand how gender identity is shaped cross-culturally and globally. Additionally, we will examine Asya’s marriage and its collapse, as well as her other relationships to men as a case study in evaluating how dramatically even independent decisions might be affected by over-arching social constructions.
Impossible Individual Identity
We live in a political world—
Everything is hers and his—
Climb into the frame and shout God’s name—
But you’re never sure what it is—
We live in a political world—
Humans operate for their own self-interest, regardless of what that might mean in the relation to other individuals. The world in its basic form is separated into political entities called nation-states. Nations because of lingual, religious, cultural, or political formulas affecting the majority of individuals within a certain undefined boundary and states because of judicial and governmental legitimacy over a certain defined geographical territory. Because of our hierarchical structuring of our international system, based largely on stratified philosophical ideals, the ‘East’, the ‘West’, etc., is it not an appropriate assumption that our smaller communities, racial, cultural, or religious might interact in a similar, discriminatory fashion? To naturally place expectations and classify distinct groups of individuals based on race, culture, or gender? And once we have an answer to the aforementioned, why once these groups exist must one predictably be weaker and one stronger?
From birth certain social, religious, and cultural influences inevitably impact the ‘individual’ we ultimately become. The essence of what makes the democratic, Western world what it is is an emphasis on human beings as independent individuals. But, arguably, even in the West truly operating as an individual free from social influences, is impossible. It may, in fact, be specifically that emphasis placed on individual identity that coerces people into associating or disassociating themselves from certain social or cultural groups. Often the liberal map of thinking trains an individual to base identity on what they have ‘chosen’ not to be influenced by. The liberal idea is that if you formulate your identity by making sure you are not influenced by certain socially defined identities, those socially defined identities will disappear. On the contrary, everyone convinced they are ‘not the typical woman’, ‘not the typical daughter’, ‘not the typical mother’ simply reinforces the fact that those social constraints exist. That is to say that you could be a ‘typical woman’, ‘typical daughter’, or ‘typical mother’. The question lies in why certain types of individuals exist in the first place, by whom are they created and how are they reinforced?
Physically quantifiable differences are the most likely to influence human interaction, as evident in our history of racial and gender based discrimination. But it is the inherent power that one group tries to take over another related to these physical or biological differences that promotes the ‘need’ for the differences to be linked directly to personal, intellectual, or behavioral patterns that might be the ‘weaker’ groups limiting factor. The more powerful group, then, as a means of maintaining legitimacy reinforces this pattern. For example, attributing traits of laziness as stereotypical to African Americans. Something that seems somewhat insignificant and harmless, therefore not reprimanded, has very strong social and even economic implications for the entire community. These small characteristic based stereotypes are created and implemented by the power group in order to gain and maintain political and economic advantage over the subordinate group. It can also be argued that members of the subordinate community have a greater tendency to make excuses for these ‘given’ behaviors because they are expected to have them. For woman excuses for leaving their own dreams behind to fulfill what is ‘expected’ of them as women is what makes them believe those things that women ‘are supposed to do’ were their dreams in the first place. This is why institutions such as marriage are important tools in ‘deciding’ how women might look to the world.
Gender and Power
What good am I, then to others and me—
If I had every chance and still fail to see—
If my hands are tied, must I not wonder within—
Who tied them and why and where must I have been?—
As previously mentioned, many of the stereotypes used to promulgate discrimination and ‘create’ specific types of people are rooted in physiological truths. Because women are physically different than men, there are natural conclusions drawn extending those differences beyond biology. Some of these roles in which women have been seated extend far beyond culture, race, religion, and socio-economic boundaries. It will be argued that women offered more opportunity might be affected more directly by institutional boundaries, than women with less opportunity. Feminism and liberation must be viewed relative to circumstance. Regardless, women the world over have been socialized to believe in and desire certain things for themselves and their families. Many of these desires are dictated completely by the roles they play in the family, and in relation to men. As simplistic as it may seem, because women are biologically designated as child-bearers, they are born into the belief that they should and must bear children in order to ‘be’ women. Society tells us, as women, that we should have sex once we are married and to have children we must have sex. Therefore we as women must be married to fulfill our biological duty. What roles women ultimately must play within that marriage, something believed by many to be inevitable, determine the choices women might make prior to that point in their lives. The role as a wife and the role as a mother are nearly universal. That being the case, those designations impact other life choices, whether you are provided with opportunity or not. The more opportunity, the more those roles may limit any ability to take advantage of freedom and opportunity. This is the case because women have been trained to believe the roles of wife and mother require the vast majority of a woman’s time and energy, because the duties therein are duties only for a woman to handle. Therefore, often, a woman with opportunity might have to put a career or goal on hold to be able to have children and raise a family. It may be possible in some cases for this not to occur, but because the vast majority of society still abides by these social roles for both men and women, the child-bearer (woman), and provider (man), places of employment, and other social institutions do not support women who desire to have both a career and a family. If women were truly able to live freely, they would not have to make a choice between having children and having a career, but today this is still the case for most women, especially in the West. Take the most powerful women political officials into consideration, Condileeza Rice, the US National Security Advisor is unmarried, has no children and is often asked if she feels unfulfilled because she could not possibly have had those things and her career at the same time. The reason why this is so important is that it creates a situation wherein men naturally hold the power role. Since they are designated by society to be the providers for the families, and they economically sustain them within a capitalist system they are inherently more competitive and thusly powerful. They have families, run by women, and careers simultaneously. Women’s ‘careers’, raising children, home teaching, housework, are labor-intensive jobs completely unaccounted for in the capitalist system. This is the natural edge given to men, impossible for women to overcome until their human resource is adequately valued and considered as part of GDP. How can we expect individuals to give their work value if the country as a whole does not?
For most women, because so few ever even have the opportunities to be educated or dream of developing a career, the most dramatic effects of gender socialization comes in the form of institutions such as marriage and how they affect the men within them. Society has built into marriage a set of social norms that govern the roles within it, which is why we choose to call it an ‘institution’. In many cultures these roles are governed by religious customs. And in countries and regions where religion is built into all aspects of life, for instance, Islamic countries in the Arab world, whether or not individuals strictly practice religious tradition, the culture itself infused by religion manipulates marital gender roles.
Asya Did Not Choose
Oh I’m choking; I’m choking on the smoke from this burning house—
I claw and I scrape, but I can’t seem to get out—
But who then, who is this scratching from the ground?—
Oh, it’s my world too – but whose gold is this I’m digging out?—
Ahdaf Soueif, in her novel In the Eye of The Sun speaks very poignantly about freedom, opportunity, gender, sexual politics and womanhood and the role they play in the life of a wealthy, educated, Egyptian woman trying to find herself amongst them. In her story of Asya she displays how little wealth, education, and opportunity truly impact the position women have in society as long as they choose to ‘fit’ certain roles in relation to men. It is evident that despite her feeling as if she is making her own choices, they are decidedly manipulated by family, society, and ultimately her most intimate male relationships. We will examine how Asya’s ‘choices’ are shaped by the world around her and particularly how her sexual identity, relationships, and marriage are negatively correlated.
A woman left lonely will soon grow tired of waiting—
She’ll do crazy things, yeah, on lonely occasions—
A simple conversation for the new men now and again—
Makes a touchy situation when a good face come into your head—
And when she gets lonely, she’s thinking about her man—
She knows he taking her for granted, yeah, yeah—
Honey, she doesn’t understand, no, no, no—
Asya has everything she could ever desire, educated parents, a happy family, opportunity, so why is she not happy on the path she has chosen for herself? Opportunity and a designated ‘place’ within society often make it more difficult to feel comfortable making independent decisions that might disrupt the course of the family or social order. Asya is in this position. In the late 1960’s, in the Middle East she finds herself with both a mother and father educated with PhD’s and very respectable careers. This places her in a very unique situation not only within the Middle East, but within the rest of the developed world as well. How many mothers even within the US at this time were educated with lucrative careers and PhD’s? The situation this places Asya within is one of extremely high expectation and responsibility that even from a young age dramatically affect her choices. This status affected her everyday within the University in Cairo, and abroad “It’s also the business of being our parents’ daughter all the time: ‘You’re Professor Ulama’s daughter? And Dr. Lateefa’s daughter too? How wonderful!’”… “and in the University—well, they don’t even need to say it” (Soueif 477). These ‘expectations’ she creates completely for herself, not at all inflicted by her parents, are the beginning of her pattern in modeling her life, not as her own but as everyone else’s around her. She feels as if every aspect of her life must be a ‘show’ and must appear to be perfect, put-together, and successful to anyone who might observe it. This is evident in how she rationalizes every single choice she ever makes, regardless of how simple it might be. From every piece of clothing she wears, to every item she sets at her table, these decisions are dictated by how they appear to other people, and how those other people might read things about her because of those decisions. Imagine how this might affect the decisions that already do not fit within social and cultural norms. Feelings and thoughts designated inappropriate for women all over the world. The propensity to think in this manner is only reinforced by her relationships to men.
From the first moments of their relationship, more than anything else in her life, Asya’s marriage to her husband Saif impacts the decisions she chooses to make in her life. The onset of their marriage appears to be a decision that Asya chose to make completely on her own. She wants to marry Saif, even though she has not finished school, something her parents are advising her against, yet still marries him before attaining her PhD. It seems though that this illustrates better than anything else exactly how important women, even women destined to have careers, value the institution of marriage itself in their lives and feel it overwhelmingly important to secure themselves within it before they have even begun their ‘own’ lives. Asya values this even above her parent’s advice. These expectations for marriage are not necessarily imposed by family, or ever culture, although they do have an impact, more influential are the social expectations on women to be married by a specific time in their lives, and be happy within that marriage ready to bear children.
This expectation of childbearing alters the way sex is viewed for women, and by them, especially within a marriage. Making the outcome of sex what their livelihood depends on, being able to have children, completely alters the way sex is treated by them within their lives, not to mention how men view women as sexual beings. Cultural stereotypes about ‘loose’ women, and the contrary ‘innocent’, ‘virginal’ woman are linked directly to men’s ideas about the ideal spouse and mother for their children. These expectations very much affect Asya’s sexual identity and relationship to Saif. From the beginning of their marriage they have problems developing a sexual relationship. Saif had established an image of what a wife should be. He refused to sleep with Asya before they were married, even though she had encouraged it, they had been together for a number of years, and they were most certainly going to be married. This might have changed the course of their entire relationship, but Asya’s sexual voice was not heard. Saif maintained this ‘virginal’ ideal for Asya throughout their entire marriage. This pure, innocent ideal of Saif’s, contributed to his apprehensions in ‘forcing’ a sexual relationship on Asya. Since they had not been able to consummate their relationship, he felt he should protect that part of her. In maintaining that ideal, Saif never questioned the fact that Asya might not have been sexually fulfilled by the marriage. It was only after Saif knew Asya had a sexual relationship with another man that he was capable of sleeping with her. Women all over the world are taught to deny their sexual selves and within relationships to never speak up about what their sexual feelings are. If they do express their sexual desires and feelings, they are titled, ‘sluts’ or ‘tramps’ words for which there are absolutely no male equivalents in the English language. In the book, when Asya must comfort Mahrous regarding his incident with the young girl who did nothing but smile at him, he becomes very upset because Mrs. Heatherington told him, “all women are like that” (Soueif 552). It is obvious that Mahrous is upset because he feels that if ‘all’ women are going to entice men with their smiles, all his honor and dignity will be lost, and he could never trust his wife to be at home in Egypt. This displays very vividly that women in no way are encouraged in expressing anything that might be even close to a sexual desire. The institution of marriage reinforces this idea, because of its implications of childbearing and monogamy. Monogamy should be a desired ideal within a marriage, but when a woman’s sexual feelings cannot accurately be understood, women often struggle painfully within a relationship unable to develop this important side of themselves. Sexual expression within a marriage or intense relationship is not only an outlet for couples to communicate with one another, but one critical to completely understanding one another. This is obviously a serious issue if women are denied by society the opportunity to understand their own sexual selves. Asya’s discomfort in her sexual relationship with Saif, which dramatically affected their emotional closeness contributed to Asya’s affair with Gerald Stone. Of course, since Asya’s difficulties in being her own person and succumbing to societies expectations of her laid much deeper than Saif, her relationship with Gerald was equally as difficult. This difficultly was very much evident through their sexual relationship, which because of Asya and Saif’s inability to ever communicate their emotions sexually, lack of emotional communication between Gerald and Asya was dealt with by having a sexual encounter rather than verbally communicating. This is typical of women’s reaction to miscommunications within relationships, and demonstrates how this sexual concern dramatically impacts other aspects of her marriage and relationships.
Asya lived in a marriage unstable and without both sex and resulting love for more than ten years before she sought guidance and other forms of fulfillment. Asya, a wealthy, upper class, educated, successful, beautiful, and intelligent woman, denied herself through her marriage to Saif, because of the enormous amounts of social expectations therein. She had a miscarriage, without ever even having sex with her husband, exactly contrary to those social expectations. She was emotionally deadlocked, by being what she believed, by societies standards to be completely unsuccessful. She modeled her entire life, not on her own desires and wants but on those, which she felt were expected of her. Social expectation derived through her immense opportunities and social status is what forces Asya to lose her freedom; her freedom within her career, family, everyday life, and relationships to men.
The effects gender socialization has on women all over the world are remarkable and seep into every aspect of their lives. It may seem cynical, but men and ‘their’ language, ‘their’ economy, ‘their’ politics and ‘their’ world, force women into specific roles and decisions at every moment of their lives. In the end, Asya may not have even been able to free herself from the influence of others and society in her daily life and own decision making. Most often women in this world do not even know that they live within these social constraints or worse reinforce them by their own behaviors. Until this is universally understood little progress will be achieved in the true liberation of women. Janis Joplin, a liberal, feminist musician singing in the times of Asya, wrote:
Try, try, try just a little bit harder—
So I can love, love, love him, I tell myself—
Well, I’m gonna try, yeah, just a little bit harder—
So I won’t lose, lose, lose him to nobody else—
Won’t lose him to myself—