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

When considering the numerous works of fiction written both in the Western world and on other continents, one gets an overwhelming sense that patriarchy has been the controlling factor in many of those publications. Even in the Middle East, where the predominant Islamic culture has conveyed images of patriarchal dominion, men have written many of the published works of fiction. The readership has often had to depend on male vision and male perspective of the culture of womanhood to try to understand the religion and culture of the Middle East and women’s place in it.

Because of the dominance of male authorship, women eventually found that they had to start addressing their rights and equality in society and in literature. Whenever the word feminism surfaces, the question about how family fits into the philosophy rears its head and requires consideration. In a discussion with Alice Schwarzer about the value of family, Simone de Beauvoir asserts that “the family must be abolished” and replaced “with communes or with other forms which have yet to be invented” (40). Her bold remarks about the structure of the family parallel her belief that capitalism must also be overturned: This “does not mean overturning the patriarchal tradition so long as the family remains intact” (40). This radical view is not shared by all feminists and is especially opposed by Islamic feminism. De Beauvoir suggests that “the exploitation of women” may be eliminated along with the “overthrow of capitalism” and possibly “create better conditions for the emancipation of women” (39). As far back as the seventeenth century, Mary Wollstonecraft “warned that there would be neither freedom nor peace as long as women were barred from free and rational thought by domestic domination, because submission to a singular command in marriage…obstructs ambition, creating instead extravagance, vice, and uselessness” (qtd. in Goodman, 21). Domestic servitude has historically subjected women to patriarchal obedience rather than to a cooperative effort to build family. Wendy McElroy considers family as that which “breeds patriarchy” and that “both result from capitalism” (101). In an attempt to combat some of the antifamily rhetoric, Betty Friedan “asked for a reconsideration of marriage” and for feminists to move into a “dialogue addressing the needs of most women, who were wives and mothers,” calling for “a humanistic evolution that would enrich the institution of the family by including the needs and desires of men in the picture” (qtd. in McElroy, 103).