Representations of North African women and African Islamic religion in El Saadawi's Zeina

Abstract

Negative representations of Arab women abound in literature written by men in Egypt. El Saadawi identifies Arab patriarchy and a fundamentalist version of the Islamic religion as the main enemy of Arab women. In Zeina, El Saadawi depicts Arab subaltern women from different class backgrounds fighting the values promoted by Arab patriarchy. In the novel, fictional characters appear to not possess extraordinary powers to confront and defeat all the political dimensions of their oppression. This ambiguity at the core of women's agency shows that reimagining the new and inclusive cultural aspects of a nation are asserted through cultural affiliation as well as disavowal of social oppression in the nation. Female identities can shift from a singular mode of affiliation to occupying sites of plural belonging into the nation (Krishnan, Ariel 44:73-97, 2013). A close reading of Zeina suggests that female characters appear to be unevenly committed to a version of the postcolonial nation that values freedom of speech and social inclusivity based on a vision of gender equality in which the social aspirations to be free is considered legitimate.