Courage & Influence

Throughout reading Palace Walk, I always saw the unfair way in which the women were treated. Finally towards the end of the book, we encounter a woman that has the courage to stand up against a man and his actions. After Yasin cheats on Zaynab with her maid, Zaynab is so angry that she decides to not put up with what Yasin has done. Zaynab thinks, “ It seemed she would prefer death to staying under the same roof with him, even for a single day, after what had happened.”(386) Perhaps what has made Zaynab even more mad is that Yasin cheats on her in their own house. Ahmad at least has the sense to not disrespect his family’s house by having sexual intercourse with another women in his home, but Yasin doesn’t care. Amina also knows that Ahmad has other women and that he gets drunk, but she doesn’t mind because to her the only thing that matters is that he always goes back home. To Zaynab it doesn’t just matter whether Yasin comes home every day, she also cares about the conditions in which he comes home in and what he does inside and outside his house. Zaynab is not like every other woman in the book, she doesn’t believe in complete submission to a husband. Instead she is more modern and actually believes that there should be mutual compromise in order to have a good relationship. Yasin of course doesn’t believe in women’s rights and therefore has no respect for his wife or his house. Yasin believes that Zaynab will be like Amina and will just go along with whatever he says. As Daniela mentions in Foreshadowing, Yasin is influenced by his dad and the things that he sees at home and therefore thinks his situation will be like Ahmad and Amina’s. Yasin cheats on Zaynab because he is influenced by his father’s actions. In an article about Adultery, it says, “ There is psychological evidence that adulterous behavior in parents dramatically affect children when they reach adulthood.” This means that Yasin could have been influenced by his father’s actions but that unlike father’s wife, Zaynab is not going to put up with his immoralities.





Works Cited



Anderson, Kerby. Adultery. Web. March 7, 2010
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/adultery.html

Barajas, Daniela. Foreshadowing. March 7, 2010
http://diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com/2010/03/foreshadowing.html

Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk. New York: Anchor, 1990