The female body is simply a vessel that a patriarchal society makes use of or suppresses for their own agenda in the race to obtaining power. Unlike a man, a woman occupies her appropriate place in a patriarchal society with the predetermined notion that her sexual services are appropriately reserved in obedience to the patriarchal prerogative. Her virtue lies in what she does and does not do. In the two novels, Woman at Point Zero and Pillars of Salt, the female characters seek to expose and condemn the ideological trappings which pacify patriarchal societies.
In Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero, Firdaus illustrates how the female body is exploited to maintain patriarchal power and on the other hand how the same body destabilizes male
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Firdaus finally feels that she exerts control over herself; she reclaims her anatomy and flips the inevitable event of her exploitation to turn a profit for her own benefit. Bodily sovereignty once significantly undermined has a causal effect of the body and its uses seeming to be not of great importance as it once was. One may then sell off her body with a capitalist ideology in mind: that marketplace participation is the ultimate display of freedom and personal sovereignty. However, when Firdaus or any other female counterpart not contained in the literary world attempts to claim control over her body, more often than not, male resentment is inspired. Precisely because the denial of such sovereignty is the central dynamic or patriarchy itself. Firdaus’s personal sovereignty becomes once more under attack, when her success attracts the attention of a pimp. Firdaus seeks rejection of patriarchal control yet again by reclaiming her body as hers by killing her pimp. It is not until Firdaus is on death row that she truly feels liberated; she would prefer to die in order to escape the control that others have over her. Only when dead will Firdaus be free.
In Fadia Faqir’s Pillars of Salt, in the face of physical oppression, Faqir’s characters demonstrate the reciprocal relationship of the female mind and body in challenging gendered power structures. In doing so, the characters are punished by imprisonment thereby upholding the female body as a site for oppression as well as resistance. Although the female characters in Faqir’s novel are subjected to unyielding defeat, both demonstrate a fighting resistance using their bodies as vessels to defy patriarchal
The author's views on women may never be fully revealed, but it is clear that he believes in male superiority and that insurgent females ought to be suppressed. Like Wealhtheow, females should only exert minimal power and influence, but they should always keep the drinks coming.
“Women are not only associated with and defined by the ‘inferior’ realm of flesh (while men represent ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’) but they also are told they must rise above their carnal appetites,” ...
Nothing has more of an effect to the controversial conversation of women’s liberation than literature. The subtle cues from Cosmopolitan emphasizing femininity: beauty, sensuality, appreciating the female body… Self-help guidebooks persisting the woman to let go and just be free for once. It is liberating for the woman to see such medias to act upon what they were thinking and to even go beyond that. Talks of
...e, women are the weaker of the two sexes. Women are slaves and spoils of war, if they are valued for sex they are used for sex. The universal portrayal of women causes a reevaluation of modern day gender balances by the reader.
In a nation brimming with discrimination, violence and fear, a multitudinous number of hearts will become malevolent and unemotional. However, people will rebel. In the eye-opening novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini, the country of Afghanistan is exposed to possess cruel, treacherous and sexist law and people. The women are classified as something lower than human, and men have the jurisdiction over the women. At the same time, the most horrible treatment can bring out some of the best traits in victims, such as consideration, boldness, and protectiveness. Although, living in an inconsiderate world, women can still carry aspiration and benevolence. Mariam and Laila (the main characters of A Thousand Splendid Suns) are able to retain their consideration, boldness and protectiveness, as sufferers in their atrocious world.
...choice. These females ably fulfilled the biological gender role purely by their own volition. Therefore, a woman's struggle isn't with the biological gender role, but its patriarchal limits. All in all, the three texts describe the patriarchal tendency to posit the female in a gender role, the female's struggle with it.
In the novel She and in the stories of The Arabian Nights, both Haggard and Haddawy explore the expanding gender roles of women within the nineteenth century. At a time that focused on the New Woman Question, traditional gender roles were shifted to produce greater rights and responsibilities for women. Both Ayesha, from Haggard’s novel She, and Shahrazad, from Haddawy’s translation of The Arabian Nights, transgress the traditional roles of women as they are being portrayed as strong and educated females, unwilling to yield to men’s commands. While She (Ayesha) takes her power to the extreme (i.e. embodying the femme fatale), Shahrazad offers a counterpart to She (i.e. she is strong yet selfless and concerned with the welfare of others). Thus, from the two characters emerge the idea of a woman who does not abide by the constraints of nineteenth century gender roles and, instead, symbolizes the New Woman.
Both el Saadawi and Al-Shaykh both show how perception and expression are both affected within the confines of politics, social opportunities, and male privilege depicted in their stories. Whether the reader is a follower of the feminist movement or not, it is very clear and easy to see that these women are not being treated with the respect that any human being deserves. The misogynistic stranglehold on society, especially in this part of the world, is excessive and avoidable in today’s world but it is very likely that the traditional, conservative ways of the past will continue to control and inhibit women from being able to be fully treated as equals for many years to come, perhaps even after this generation has
...t of Firdaus and also allows better understanding of her motives and desperation to be free, having been surveilled and captive all her life. The theme of captivity is significant in making readers question their own lifestyles as Firdaus does, either making us count our blessings or query as to if we are all captive in some smaller way. By repeating the theme of captivity in a variety of ways throughout, El Saadawi furthermore ensures it is brought to the readers full attention, provoking us either into action to ensure less captivity for women like Firdaus or into guilt over our assumedly freer lives. The continually captive and oppressed Firdaus is symbolic of any woman today subject to captivity and injustices from their societies, and in a world where this continually occurs this theme is both universally significant and relevant in the modern societies today.
Throughout Woman at Point Zero, Nawal El Saadawi presents Firdaus to be on the ongoing search to increase and justify her self-worth. Firdaus learns how to attain her self-worth in different ways from different people, however each contributor of self-worth was dependent on money. Firdaus discovers the value of education from her uncle, appearance from Sharifa and her most profound moment on her own. Throughout Firdaus’ life her uncle’s money allows for education, her solicited money affords an upper class disguise but the ultimate distinction of her self-worth occurs when she finally overcomes that value of money.
explores not only the way in which patriarchal society, through its concepts of gender , its objectification of women in gender roles, and its institutionalization of marriage, constrains and oppresses women, but also the way in which it, ultimately, erases women and feminine desires. Because women are only secondary and other, they become the invisible counterparts to their husbands, with no desires, no voice, no identity. (Wohlpart 3).
Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber,” is a visually intricate and feminist text; this feminism is portrayed through gender roles. The narrator is a young child who transitions into a woman searching for identity, and her husband’s masculine power defines it. In other words, this short story depicts gender roles and personal identity through the use of objectification of women. The deeper meaning behind the roles the men and women have may reflect Carter’s deconstruction of gender norms. The narrator enables the deconstruction by acting as a link; she conjoins two opposing ideas, like masculinity and femininity. These two opposing ideas create the deconstruction of gender norms that Carter elaborates on throughout her short story.
The oppression of women in the Middle East and North Africa was commonplace, with women often beaten and deprived of fundamental rights. Entrapped by social constraints, there was little hope for opposition, as the patriarchal perspectives of society were enforced by everyone, even women themselves. One of the most prevalent ways was through the use of hypocrisy and double standards to cast an illusion of justice and equality, when in reality, women were disadvantaged in nearly every aspect. The hypocrisy of society is demonstrated in Nawal El Saadawi’s novel Woman at Point Zero, where women such as Firdaus are dominated by double standards. She finds both initial hope and consequent
In recent literature we frequently see a negative view of women from male characters. These writings are a direct reflection of society’s views today; but what needs to be recognized is since the dawn of the world’s first authors the negative view of women has consistently been prominent in literature. The view of women as undesirable lovers was an extremely important view in ancient Greece. In Plato’s Symposium the idea that male-male relations were much more beloved and genuine than female relations, and that a woman’s existence was important solely for the element of reproduction, which would allow for humanity to continue on. In Plato’s book, the characters spend ...
In the novel Woman at Point Zero the author, Nawal El Saadawi, retells the life story of Firdaus, the main character, a tragic hero who rebels against the social norms within her oppressive culture seeking the same respect and prestige that is bestowed upon her male oppressors, only to be executed for her attempt to obtain the same privileges as men. This essay will demonstrate how the aspects and expectations of Egyptian culture influence Firdaus’s decisions as she struggles to be her own woman in a society controlled by dictatorial political and patriarchal structures all while exposing the evident discontentment she has with the way Egyptian society views women, and the glorification of things that go against ideal societal structures.