Naguib Mahfouz: A Western and Eastern Cage of Female Entrapment ...

The validity of researching works in translation derives from the argument that the translated works of Mahfouz are cultural artifacts themselves and thus worthy of analysis in their own right. One who assimilates into the culture and actually breathes the environment can, with some degree of accuracy, relate essential points ignored or missed by others who have not lived in the culture. This has enabled some research to succeed thanks to a knowledge of the region on the part of the researcher and the accessible background of the author.

Naguib Mahfouz’s attitude and philosophy toward life permeate the pages of his fiction; Matti Moosa sums it up in al-Majalla al-Jadida (The New Periodical): “Mahfouz points out that life is subject to constant change and evolution, which man must accept as the inevitable result of civilization. Yet man is also by nature a believer who needs religious faith or an acceptable substitute to achieve tranquility and happiness” (225). The talent of Mahfouz accompanying his creative experience penetrates “to the universal root that resides deep within the essence of the local,” according to Gaber Asfour who, in “Revealing Conflicts,” sums up the value of Mahfouz in his doctor’s response to the question of why he liked to read Mahfouz’s books: “[T]he reason was that they provided him with knowledge about Egypt and Arabs, while at the same time deepening his knowledge of himself” (2). Mahfouz’s books do speak to all readers as much as they speak to Arabs.

Western Feminism

The term feminism has circulated in the Western world for over a century. In an interview with Alice Schwarzer, Simone de Beauvoir defines a feminist as one who is “fighting on specifically feminine issues independently of the class struggle” and adds that “feminists are women—or even men—who are fighting to change women’s condition, in association with the class struggle, but independently of it as well”(32). Many critics agree that “feminism and feminist literary criticism are often defined as a matter of what is absent rather than what is present,” observe Guerin, Labor, Morgan, Reesman, and Willingham in A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (196).