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Beth Robertson
Arab Woman Novelists
Prof. M. Jiyad
January 5, 2004
The Bounded and Unbounded Frontiers of an Arab Woman
“When you spend a whole day among the trees, waking up with walls as horizons becomes unbearable
(Mernissi, 59).”
One would assume that in the face of woman’s liberation-access to an equal and
higher education, choice of a husband and access to a prosperous/independent future-that
a woman would be positioned to escape gender oppression. However, this is not the case
for the Arab women of Fatima Mernissi’s Dreams of Trespass and Ahdaf Soueif’s In the
Eye of the Sun. The two main characters of these novels-Asya and Mernissi herself-enable
the reader to understand how gender inequality is rooted in the frontiers and accepted
social norms that are defined by the community and adhered to by the individual.
Although these woman have access to an equal education with the hopes of
becoming an enlightened, liberated women, education does not guarantee that they will
ever become truly liberated. This paper will discuss the differences between the educated
and seemingly liberated women of Dreams of Trespass, and In the Eye of the Sun, in
hopes to understand whether cultural and educational frontiers are the only characteristics
which govern a woman's right to escape the gendered Arab hierarchy. Why do some
women, with access to westernization and an equal education still fall victim to the
subservient expectations of an unliberated and uneducated female in the Arab world?
Why are these women maintaining such domination when they are surrounded by tools of
liberation? What are the causes of such oppression? The maintained traditional frontiers
that continue to define gender roles in these stories, Islamic traditional values, familial
expectations? Using the frontiers that guide the lives of Fatima Mernissi and Asya, we
will seek to understand the causes of the differences between the two characters--one
woman is liberated, the other, for most of her life, remains oppressed-- when both are
from progressive, wealthy and educated families.
Although both Fatima and Asya grew up in privileged families, these two women
evolve into very different characters--one oppressed the other liberated. Asya and Fatima
were surrounded by very different frontiers (see pg 2), which ultimately led to the
development of two very different women. Fatima was raised within the rigid confines of
a walled city harem, but emerges a strong woman that is left unscathed by her oppressive
childhood. As a child she was surrounded by strong feminist role models, who lived in
the harem with her, that taught her to maintain dreams of trespass because they eventually
would set her free. Conversely, Asya was brought up in an Egyptian household where her
movements, thoughts and self expression were not limited or restricted, as was Fatima.
Asya’s frontiers were consumed by the expectations of those around her--achieving the
best education, attending college/grad school, marrying, and portraying the characteristics
of a traditional ‘good’ Arab wife. These rigid frontiers and expectations enabled Asya to
become a subservient Arab woman. Although she had the freedom to move and express
her self, Asya chose to maintain certain behaviors because they were expected of her and
thus she would never convey her inner most thoughts to her husband because they
‘annoyed’ him. The development of these frontiers, and their effects of these two women
lead the reader to believe that oppression is a matter of the frontiers that surround and
consume a persons thoughts both physically and mentally.
Gender, education and cultural frontiers governed Fatima Mernissi’s childhood at
her families harem in Fez, Morocco. Throughout her years in the Harem, she was
repeatedly reminded that she is a woman and as such, that frontiers will continuously
govern her movement throughout the world. Whether it be gendered frontiers, educational
frontiers, familial frontiers, or cultural frontiers, Mernissi is confined by both visible and
invisible frontiers which prevent her freedom of movement and thought.
“Cousin Samir, who sometimes accompanied uncle and father on their
trips, said that to create a frontier, all you need is soldiers to force others to
believe in it (the frontiers)....the frontier is in the mind of the powerful. I
could not go and see for myself because uncle and father said a girl does
not travel (Mernissi, 3).”
This was a gendered frontier that Mernissi frequently bumped up against in her Moroccan
harem. Both the elder men and women of the harem adhered to these traditional,
gendered frontiers in this city harem, making it difficult for Mernissi to escape the
clutches of this socialized familial norm.
The women of the city harem were bounded by both physical and mental frontiers
which restricted freedom of movement, self-expression and thought. Within the harems
walls, the women of the family were assigned to ‘female’ areas of the house and could
not transcend these boundaries with out authorized permission. The women could not
leave the confines of the harem without permission from either the guard or the head of
the house, a man, which was very infrequent. However, if allowed, the woman had to be
accompanied by a man through the Moroccan streets. There was a hierarchy within the
female inhabitants--married women, then widows, then children-, there were forbidden
terraces with in the harem, there were daily regimens as well, such as family meals, where
there was a set menu that had to be consumed regardless of likes or dislikes, and there
were family meetings called to democratically decide the goings on in the family--i.e.
when Fatima changed schools from Koranic school to Nationalist school--nothing was
private. With the exception of a bi-annual pilgrimage to the farm harem, education was
the only ritualized escape from the walled harem that young girls were allotted. . The
frontiers at the Mernissi city harem were vast, thus restricting women to certain socialized
behaviors that were acceptable at the harem.
Fatima was consumed by these spoken and unspoken frontiers. Throughout her
childhood, her frontiers which bounded her behavior and freedom were clearly defined by
the walled harem.
“My childhood was happy because the frontiers were crystal clear. The
first frontier was the threshold separating out family’s salon from the main
courtyard. I was not allowed to step out into that courtyard in the morning
until my Mother woke up, which meant that I had to amuse myself from
6am to 8am without making noise. I could sit on the cold white marble
threshold if I wanted to, but I had to refrain from joining in with my older
cousins already at play (Mernissi, 3).”
Fatima knew the limits of her movement, speech and activity. However as she grew older
Fatima began to challenge these frontiers which increasingly became more mirky as time
passed. “Looking for the frontier has become my life’s occupation. Anxiety eats at me
whenever I cannot situate the geometric line organizing my powerlessness (Mernissi, 3).”
Throughout her childhood years, Fatima came to know a walled building that
restricted a woman’s freedom of movement to be a harem. These were her defined
frontiers which served as her reality from which she grew.
“A harem had t do with men and women--that was a fact. It also had to do
with a house walls and the streets--that was another fact. All this was quite
simple and easy to visualize: put four walls in the midst of the streets and
you have a house. Then put the women in the house and let the men go
out: you have a harem(Mernissi, 47) .”
Although the frontiers of the city harem were rigid, they lucidly defined the boundaries
between the powerful and the powerless, by placing physical boundaries around the
compound. These frontiers made it very easy for Fatima to define her freedom to move,
speak, think and act. It was not until Fatima and her cousin Samir went to the farm harem
that the formerly clear boundaries, frontiers and the understanding of mundane harem life
became unclear and questionable. The restrictions that the women of the two harems
faced were very different from each other which caused Fatima great anxiety.
“What exactly is a harem? Yasmina’s harem was an open farm with no
visible high walls. Ours in Fez was like a fortress. Yasmina and her
co-wives rode horses, swam in the river, caught fish, and cooked it on
open fires. Mother could not even step out of the gate without asking
multiple permissions, and even then all she could do was visit the shrine..
or her brother who lived down the street. So it did not make sense to me to
use the same word for both Yasmina’s and Mother’s situations (Mernissi,
39).”
It is at this point in the novel that Fatima Mernissi begins to question her frontiers that
previously were crystal clear to her. Thus catalyzing her growth from a naive child into a
suspicious woman, questing for truth and understanding at the behest of her unliberated
female elders--Yasmina (grandmother) and her mother --who yearned for a future of
liberation, education and freedom for Fatima.
The aforementioned women prepared Fatima to question the unquestionable, to
see a future of freedoms and empowerment inside the captivity of the harems walls and
not to accept anything short of achieving her dreams and aspirations. It is from these
women that we can see frontiers as a socially constructed reality which structures the
behavior and placement of women in society. Thus, although Fatima is in a harem, she
becomes very much liberated because she is filled with ideas of success and freedom.
Nothing has the ability to tame her future because she sees that women are and should be
treated as a mans equal. Fatima learned these lessons of equality and freedom from her
female elders and harem co-habitators.
From the day Fatima was born, her mother sought a life of equality and freedom
for Fatima, the life that she was not able to pursue for herself.
“Samir and I were born on the same day, with hardly one hours difference.
Although Mother was exhausted, she insisted that my Aunts and relatives
hold the same celebration rituals for me as Samir. She had always rejected
male superiority as nonsense and totally anti-Muslim ‘Allah made us all
equal,’ she would say (Mernissi, 8-9).”
Throughout Fatima’s childhood her mother made sure that she was seen as an equal in
every aspect of her life: education, gender, dress and love. Mrs. Mernissi believed that the
combination of education, poise, dress and love were the keys to a future filled with
freedoms. Thus as a young child Fatima was dressed in western dresses (short and white
with colored ribbons), like Morocco’s French inhibitors, regardless of what the others in
the harem thought or were wearing. Mrs. Mernissi believed that to act western was to be
placed on a road toward freedom.
“ ‘Dress says so much about a woman’s designs,’ she said, ‘If you plan to
be modern, express it through what you wear, otherwise the will shove you
behind the gates. Caftans may be of unparalleled beauty, but western dress
is about salaried work (Mernissi, 85).’ ”
Thus, Fatima grew up wearing uncomfortable western gowns rather than the traditional
sarwal pants of the Moroccan harem. She was destined to be anything but traditional in
her harem. Although small, the act of dressing ‘modern’ enabled Fatima to transcend the
traditional harem frontiers, situating her as a modern woman with a future void of
captivity and filled with choices.
An equal education for Fatima and her siblings was also pursued at the behest of
Fatima’s mother. ‘Mother’ grew up uneducated, in captivity with no access to tools of
liberation, and surrounded by intoxicatingly strict harem rules. While Turkish women
were being promoted into high level office positions, pursuing higher education, learning
foreign languages, and fighting for liberation, Fatimas mother sat languid encapsulated by
walls, gates and rigid frontiers that prevented her from pursuing an education and
participating in liberation movements. “She had asked to go to literacy classes...but her
demand had been turned down by the family council (Mernissi, 200).” Thus she felt a
desperate need to provide her female children with access to everything that she was not
allowed. By providing them with endless horizons Mrs. Mernissi felt that her daughters
could some day escape to rigid confines of the walled harem, no longer remaining
captives of rigid, predetermined frontiers. Education was the key to escaping the iron
gates of the harem. Thus, Fatima’s mother ceaselessly encouraged Fatima and her sister to
vigorously pursue and education, regardless of the cost.
“ ‘At least my daughters will have a better life, full of opportunitites..they
will get an education and travel. They will discover the world, understand
it and eventually participate in transforming it.’ she would say ‘You are
going to transform this world, aren’t you? You are going to create a planet
without walls and without frontiers, where the gatekeepers have off every
day of the year’ (Mernissi, 200-201).”
The support and sense of freedom that Fatima’s mother instilled in her through such
conversations of dress, education, change and her future empowered Fatmia, teaching her
to never allow her gender to prevent her from accomplishing her dreams. As Fatima grew
older and wiser, she no longer saw the harem’s frontiers as limiting but as mere hurdles
on her way to liberation. Thus, although oppressive social constructs, such as ascribed
gender roles and expectations, are perpetuated by society itself, Fatima was taught that a
woman can overcome such rigid frontiers if she dares to be educated and pursue a dream.
“The main thing is for the powerless to have a dream. Only one person can
change that situation and make the planet go around the other way, and
that is you. If you stand up against scorn, and dream of a different world,
the planets direction will be altered. It is not enough to reject this court
yard--you need to have a vision of the meadows with which you want to
replace it(Mernissi, 214-215).”
Fatima was surrounded by women who sought to liberate her from oppressive harem life.
Her mother was just one of these women. Fatima’s grandmother Yasmina was another
such woman. Yasmina lived at the farm harem and squeezed all the pleasures out of her
harem life that she could, no one could influence her otherwise. Although Yasmina was
uneducated, she had a dream of freedom which enabled her to bestow her principals of
equality, education, liberation and love on Fatima, during their frequent visits with
eachother.
“ ‘Are we Muslim or not? If we are, everyone is equal. Allah said so. His
prophet preached the same.’ Yasmina said that I should never accept
inequality, for it was not logical (Mernissi, 26).”
Yasmina believed that inequality was illogical and unjust. Thus she spent much of her
adult life filling Fatima with ideas of liberation, education and equality that were
achievable if Fatima dared to defy tradition.
Yasmina helped Fatima to look beyond defined frontiers because she felt that they
would only hold Fatima back. She taught Fatima about the qa’ida, the invisible rules, and
visible rules that governed the lives of all people. The qu’ida were often worse than the
harems rules because with walls and gates, expectations were clearly defined but with
qa’ida, they were not. Yasmina encouraged Fatima to not worry about or fixate on finding
frontiers to bump up against. Because an ambitious, free thinking woman is not to be
bounded by such rigid barriers. “Stop worrying about walls, rules, constraints and the
meaning of hurriya (freedom). You’ll miss out on happiness if you think too much about
walls and rules. The ultimate goal of a woman’s life is happiness (Mernissi, 64).” Thus
Yasmina urged Fatima to become educated and to challenge defined boundaries.
Yasmina filled Fatima with ideas and dreams of a successful future. When Fatima
asked whether she would have a successful future her grandmother replied:
“ ‘Of course you will be happy!’ she would exclaim. ‘ You will be a
modern, educated lady. You will realize the nationalists’ dream. You will
learn foreign languages, have a passport, devour books, and speak like a
religious authority. Remember that even I, as illiterate and bound by
tradition as I am, have managed to squeeze some happiness out of this
damned life. That is why I don’t want you to focus on the frontiers and the
barriers all the time. I want you to concentrate on fun and laughter and
happiness. That is a good project for an ambitious young lady (Mernissi,
64).”
Fatima’s once rigid frontiers were greatly broadened and influenced by her mother and
her grandmother, as well as other women of her harem that had dreams of trespass and
freedom. Had Fatima not connected with the females of her family she could have run the
risk of remaining oppressed, caged and bounded by the strict and unforgiving walls of the
city harem.
From the beginning of the novel, In the Eye of the Sun, Asya suffered from the
frontiers and expectations of her, that were created by both her family and her larger
community. Although Asya was an educated woman, she was unable to escape these
expectations that were her defined frontiers. Thus she never evolved into a truly liberated
women, as one would expect a woman who received a Ph.D. and grew up in an upper
class family to do, because she was constantly confronted by these defined perimeters of
her family and community, which she felt the necessity to conform to . Consequently,
Asya’s life, behavior, goals and actions were largely governed by these frontiers which
she was not strong enough to escape, until she was much older.
Although education is widely known as a tool of liberation, as in Fatima’s story,
education for Asya was a barrier that often restricted her freedom of choice and thus
hindered her liberation. Both Asya’s mother and father were top professors at the
University of Cairo. Thus, both as a child and an adult, Asya was expected to be a stellar
student, to achieve her masters and Ph.D. and to eventually become a successful
university professor. Much of Asya’s childhood was consumed with preparing for her
university exams--the General Certificate of Secondary Education--because, as her
parents often said “ Your performance in this exam, taken at the age of seventeen,
determines which college and which university you get into. And therefore, it is very
likely to determine the whole course of your future life and status in the world (Soueif,
33).” Consequently, Lateefa, Asya’s mother, spent many days preparing her daughter for
the exam, pursuing topics such as philosophy and history. Asya spent days and hours in
her home study in preparation for the exam, as to not disappoint the expectations of her
parents with poor scores. Asya eventually got into college and then went on to pursue her
Ph.D. and her parents were overjoyed because their daughter was following along the
expected path.
In Asya’s struggle to continue on the expected path of success, she lost sight of
what she wanted: thus she succumbs to the pressure of her frontiers. It was expected that
Asya would go to college to get her masters, then move on to her Ph.D., run a family and
receive good grade reports, as her mother had when she was in school. This was added
pressure that Asya felt. Although Asya was going to school in London, away from the
gender socialized Cairo community that she grew up in, Asya did not explore her
freedom. Instead she worried about her family, about her oppressive husband Saif and her
studies, because that was expected of her. It was not until Asya’s friend Mina challenged
her seemingly predetermined future that Asya began to question her path and her
happiness.
- “But you don’t make choices, Asya-”
- “This is ridiculous-”
- “Well, what choices have you made?”
- “I have made whatever choices I had to-”
- “Like what?”
- “Well, to go to N. England for example.”
- “But that’s not a choice. Because it’s in line with your whole life It isn’t
as though you decided to join Greenpeace, or go to an ashram-”
- “Oh. So for a decision to count in your book it has to be completely
disruptive of whatever one happens to be doing up to then?”
- “It’s interesting that you use ‘disruptive.’ You see, you place such a high
value on order that you unconsciously only take decisions which allow
your life to continue along a particular path.”
- “ You don’t have to live with your choices forever, you could still quit
(the university).”
- “And then what? I’d have two options: to start looking around for
another University--and then think of all the explaining I’d have to do, to
my supervisor, to the council, to the university at home-
Asya had no option to change the path that she was on because she did not want to upset
the expectations of her family. It would have been unheard of for the daughter of two
prominent professors to drop out of college.
‘”It would be said that the daughter of two eminent professors had dropped
out-- had failed. And things would never be the same for them in the
university again, between some people feeling happy they’d been taken
down a peg, and other feeling sorry for them....(Soueif, 453).”
Deviance from or change in Asya’s path to achievement was not an choice. Thus
liberation and her freedom to engage in making decisions that pleased Asya, dispite what
others felt, was not a recognized option. So, consequently Asya adhered to a rigid path of
higher education that pleased everyone around her, but herself.
Education was not the only frontier that plagued Asya’s life and prevented her
actualized liberation from occurring. Asya’s marriage to Saif was extremely oppressive
and limited her, more so than her fated education, to a life of subservience and discontent.
In the beginning of their courtship, Asya and Saif were in love with eachother. However,
as time wore on Asya and Saif lost touch with each other both physically, mentally and
intellectually. This left a large void between Saif and Asya which became an oppressive
and limiting frontier that prevented Asya from making decisions that pleased her for fear
she would displease her husband.
Throughout Asya’s relationship with Saif her family continuously told Asya how
wonderful Saif was and how lucky and how lucky she was to be married to a man like
Saif. “He loves you very much, my dear. He’s leaving a good job (for you). And, as I say,
he loves you (Soueif, 373).” Such conversations occurred whenever Asya openly
discussed and questioned her marriage to Saif with her family. Regardless of her feelings,
she was always encouraged to be a good wife and return home to her husband. Her
feelings were often minimized by those she loved, including her mother.
--“ Asya, if everybody behaved like you, every home in the world would
be ruined.”
--“Yes, that’s always been your policy: minimize, appease, avoid
confrontation, peace at any price-why shouldn’t homes be ruined f they’re
ripe for ruining?( Soueif, 299)”
She was also told that if she continued to display displeasure with her husband that she
would ruin her perfect marriage. However, this supposed ‘perfect marriage’ was rotten
with expectation, unspoken arguments, absent love and frusteration. Acceptance of her
husband’s disregard for Asya’s wishes was a learned behavior. Although she challenged
her mother behind closed doors, she never was able to confront Saif in the same way
because he too avoided confrontation at all costs.
As an educated woman, continuing on a path of higher education than most Arab
women could ever dream of receiving, Asya enjoyed discussing theories, philosophies
and events that were occurring in the world. Contrary to Asya, Saif did not enjoy such
conversations and theorizing, thus he forbade Asya to discuss such topics in his presence.
“If it’s not Sartre or the Spanish Civil War or Camus or someone he
already knows then it’s worth nothing. I know he knows about plenty but
he makes fun of things he doesn’t know anything about. I thought he was
adventurous, I thought he was-- he was-- available to-- to life. But he’s got
a closed mind. We were having this argument--or rather I was--and he
stood up and said, ‘Right, we’re going.’ I was supposed to shut up and go?
I didn’t even want to be with him--( Soueif, 298).”
The lack of discussion between Asya and Saif created an unpenatratable barrier between
them, which in turn created a frontier for Asya. Although this bothered Asya she
remained with Saif because her family expected it of her an because she was unable to
deviate from her assumed ‘predestined’ future.
Asya was a very strong woman confined to a weak woman’s rigid frontiers, which
she did not dare to penetrate. Asya recognized the problems with her relationship to Saif.
“Chrissy he won’t fight. He won’t argue. He won’t talk if it gets heavy. He’ll put on a
record, light a cigarette and open a book(Soueif, 297).” Saif refused to discuss topics that
were of importance to Asya. She felt that marriage was not only about physical anf
emotional love, but also about holding intellectually challenging conversations with each
other, neither of which she shared with Saif. Asya was able to pin point the things that
Saif did not like about her, they were all the things that mattered to her--her abstract
discussions, her enthusiasm, her story telling, when she points things out to him, her
judgments, and her love of adventure. These were the frontiers that Asya was restricted
by: If she continued to penetrate the barriers by asking questions and being herself, her
husband would no longer love her, but if she adhered to them, pleasing Saif, she could
never be herself. Disregarding her needs and wishes, Asya absolved herself to respecting
the wises of her husband in hopes that he would love her again.
“And she had resolved not to do the things he didn’t like and to try to be
the way he wanted her to be. It was no use thinking, But he used to ask me
to talk to him, I believed he wanted to know what I thought about things
and would tell me what he thought too, I believed he wanted us to do lots
of things--to explore everything--together. No use at all. The only thing to
be done now was to adapt, to be the person he wants her to be; the person
he probably believes she is--apart from the odd aberration. And if she does
that, and gives him what he want he’ll love her again (Soueif, 358).”
By making this decision, Asya chose to forfit her freedoms to be herself, and the
liberation that she could have acheived by discussing theories and philosophies,
expanding her intellectual horizons. Asya was a strong woman. However dispite her
strength she, like many uneducated women, chose to become a subservient wife catering
to the needs of her husband and thus taking the path of least resistance.
Both Fatima and Asya were strong women surrounded by frontiers--some that
limited their liberation and others that provided liberation. Fatima came from a city harem
where high walls were her physical frontiers separating her from the liberated world.
However, these walls were unable to prevent her access to liberation because she was
surrounded by women who took the road less traveled and dared to educate, liberated and
fill Fatima’s head with ideas of Freedom. Conversely, Asya grew up surrounded by tools
of liberation. She had access to free movement, education, and self-expression. However,
Asya did not use these tools to her benefit because she was overcome by the expectations
of those around her and, like her mother and Saif, in the end did not want to displease
those that she loved. Although Asya eventually did liberate her self, the majority of her
life was spent catering to the frontiers that hindered her access to true liberation. “There’s
a road to safety. There’s a road to regret and there’s a road that permits no return (Soueif,
348).” These roads were ever-present in both Fatima and Asya’s lives. However, it is was
theses women chose to do with such roads and frontiers that predicted their path to
liberation.