An Analysis Of God Die By The Nile

876 Words2 Pages

Nawal El Saadawi is an activist, a physician, a psychiatrist, and most importantly she is an Egyptian feminist writer. She has written many books about the women of Islam, all of them focusing on the mistreatment and abuse of women. God Die by the Nile is one of her works originally published in 1985. Women in God dies by the Nile are victims to a patriarchal society and class system, that is controlled though religion, politics, and social customs. Saadawi dismantles the system by showing the crooked side; where the women are raped and beaten for being a women and men are put to death because they fail to support the ones in charge and the system itself. When reading into the title God Dies by the Nile it can almost be considered a metaphor Sex is used as an instrument of power, a way to gain things, physical and religious from women. The Mayor’s affair with the daughters of Kafrawi, Nefissa and Zeinab. His hold on them reflects the material power of the ruling class, it serves as a source of the sexual exploitation of women. When considering the Mayor’s sexual exploitations of women, “He’s got strange tastes where women are concerned, and if he likes a woman he can’t forget her. You know he’s pretty obstinate of himself. Once he gets his eyes set on a woman he must have her, come what may” (88-89). When Nefissa is in the Mayor’s eye, Sheikh Zaharan tries to persuade her to accept the Mayor’s offer. “Our Mayor is a generous man… You will be paid twenty piasters a day. You’re a stupid girl with no brains. How can you throw away all the good that is coming to you? Do you prefer hunger and poverty rather than doing a bit of work?” (37). Nefissa doesn’t want to work for the Mayor because his reputation with females is well known. She is forced against her will to work in the Mayor’s house by her father. Later the Mayor rapes Nefissa. She becomes pregnant, births the child, throws it away, and

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