You are Beautiful :: Middle East Culture Feminism Essays

Standing up for oneself is always a challenge, no social occasion who you ar. In some Arab societies certain traditions and customs seem built to constrain women on a lower level than men. The truth, as demonstrated by many books written by Arab women, is that every society has outdated customs, or rules, and those rules are what tend to keep oppressed people in check. If its not a gender issue then it is a track down issue. If its not a race issue then it becomes governmental or intellectual. Sadly, there have always been rules that oppress one root or another, but time are changing and with them people change. The women in two Arab novels, written by Arab women, express their personal experiences in Arab society. though the novels are fiction they are based on the real disembodied spirit experiences of the authors and can be taken as f roleplays of what events transpired during the lives of the authors. The changes demonstrated by the of import characters in Fatima Mernissi s Dreams of Trespass and Ahdaf Soueifs In the Eye of the sun exhibit the Arab womans ability to become an unconditional and psychologically powerful member of society. Mernissis Fatima grows up in a hareem which would seem to imply a lack of independence, however the women surrounding her act as liberal educators, teaching her never to settle for less than she deserves. Soueifs Asya on the other hand develops into a woman while world raised in an upper class household, with liberal ideas on plainly certain subjects. The two women evolve, throughout the course of each novel, into stronger and more independent entities, both physically and psychologically.Fatima Mernissi preserves the feeling of an autobiography by safekeeping the main character named after herself. For the sake of clarity when referring to the author I will use only her last name. Mernissis novel begins with Fatima as a child. Throughout the novel she grows to the age of nine, but that is where the story ends. Th e initial few years of Fatimas demeanor seem to have been the closely crucial in determining what kind of person she was destined to become. Fatimas experiences in her childhood are dramatic and influence her enough that her life changes drastically. Early in the novel Mernissi states, when you hurt a woman you are violating Allahs sacred frontier (3). This statement helps to set the tone for the novel.