May Her Likes Be Multiplied

Abstract

Marilyn Booth's remarkable study blends literary criticism with historicalresearch to better understand the construction of modem Egyptian womanhood.Booth analyzes hundreds of women's biographies that were writtenin the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and published in thepopular women's press. She situates this activity within the context ofEgypt's nationalist struggle and burgeoning feminist movement at a time offoreign economic, military, and cultural domination. With the publicationof biographies of women as diverse as the Prophet's wives, Jeanne d'Arc,Hatshepsut, Jane Austin, and Safiyya Zaghlul, Booth uncovers the diversi tyof the Egyptian women's press in its scope and vision of what Egyptshould expect of its women.Booth complicates our understandings of women's participation in thepublic sphere by illuminating the ethnic and religious diversity of theEgyptian women's press. She also delves deeply into the class issues motivatingthe construction of the ideal Egyptian woman as a selfless member ofher family - both nuclear and national - conforming her domestic sphere tothe mold of communal, nationalist needs. Revealing women authors as bothshaping and being shaped by contemporary ideas of successful femininity,Booth's study is perhaps the most potent analysis of Egyptian feminism publishedin quite some time. It is an indispensable guide to a literature steepedin the Arabic literary past as well as modem Egyptian society.In a complex prologue, Booth argues that any examination of authorshipcan only vaguely determine how audiences react to published texts.Thus, although she sets out to analyze the messages inherent in women'sbiographies, she cannot relay the manner in which the women's press wasreceived by its audience. Her book is an analysis of prescription throughexample, but only can hint at the resulting impact. Booth focuses on howthese biographies became part of a larger social project to define women asnational symbols situating the nation as the ultimate community, all thewhile maintaining patriarchal constructs in the home and other socialspheres. She declares the biographies she examines to be ultimately "feminist,"for, although they often maintain crucial elements of the status ...