Frontiers of an Arab Woman :: Culture Cultural Marriage Essays

Frontiers of an Arab WomanWhen you fell a whole day among the trees, waking up with walls as horizons becomes intolerable (Mernissi, 59).One would assume that in the face of womans liberation-access to an able andhigher education, choice of a husband and access to a comfortable/independent future-that a woman would be positioned to escape sexuality oppression. However, this is non the case for the Arab women of Fatima Mernissis Dreams of Trespass and Ahdaf Soueifs In the Eye of the Sun. The both main characters of these novels-Asya and Mernissi herself-enable the reader to understand how gender inequality is rooted in the frontiers and accepted social norms that be defined by the community and adhered to by the individual. Although these woman have access to an equal education with the hopes of becoming an enlightened, emancipated women, education does not guarantee that they go out ever become sincerely turn. This paper will discuss the differences between the educated an d seemingly liberated women of Dreams of Trespass, and In the Eye of the Sun, in hopes to understand whether cultural and educational frontiers argon the only characteristics which govern a womans right to escape the gendered Arab hierarchy. Why do some women, with access to westernization and an equal education still fall dupe to the subservient expectations of an unliberated and uneducated female in the Arab world? Why be these women obligateing such domination when they are skirt by tools ofliberation? What are the causes of such oppression? The maintained traditional frontiers that continue to define gender roles in these stories, Islamic traditional values, familial expectations? Using the frontiers that guide the lives of Fatima Mernissi and Asya, we will seek to understand the causes of the differences between the two characters--one woman is liberated, the new(prenominal), for most of her life, form oppressed-- when both are from progressive, wealthy and educated famil ies.Although both Fatima and Asya grew up in privileged families, these two womenevolve into very different characters--one oppressed the other liberated. Asya and Fatima were surrounded by very different frontiers (see pg 2), which ultimately led to the ripening of two very different women. Fatima was raised within the rigid control of a walled city harem, but emerges a strong woman that is left over(p) unscathed by her oppressive childhood. As a child she was surrounded by strong feminist role models, who lived in the harem with her, that taught her to maintain dreams of trespass because they eventually would set her free.