From the introduction of Khadija in Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace Walk, she has proven an interesting character. From the start of the plot we could see how negative her attitude is towards her family. Initially, I thought the reason that she came off as so upset was because she was jealous of her sister and the life she is given because she’s more attractive than Khadija. As I continued reading, I began to see that what Khadija felt was a little more than jealousy towards her sister despite the fact that Mahfouz continuously refers to it as such. Khadija is not jealous of her sister. Khadija is envious of Aisha’s looks, happiness, and ability to evade responsibilities. Khadija’s envy of her sister comes in many different forms and targets many different goods (The thing that the envier wants. It can be anything from a state of being to an object.) that Aisha has that Khadija wants.
Khadija is openly envious, not jealous. Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy says the distinguishing factor between jealousy and envy is the number of people involved; jealousy involves three people, in the example of a relationship, the jealous person (wife), the victim of the jealous person (husband), and the person that’s in the middle taking what the jealous person wants (the mistress), and envy involves two, the envier and the person being envied. Sometimes the way she feels towards her sister is described as jealousy, but I feel that her true feelings are a deeper than that. Khadija is experiencing what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls, “a symptom or instance of the human tendency to evaluate one's well-being comparatively, by assessing how well one is doing in comparison with others.” Khadija makes this a clear habit when she compares herself to other people’s standard of beauty, particularly her family’s, “Khadija laughed to hide her uneasiness. She went to the mirror and looked carefully at herself. She covered her nose with her hand and said ironically, ‘There’s nothing wrong with my face now.’ Removing her hand from her face, she commented, ‘Now, like this, only God can save me’” (144). We see this again when the matchmakers come to visit her house for her sister and she thought it was for her, “Khadija on the other hand, was disposed to suspect the woman, since it was her nature to be suspicious of everyone” (28). Khadija’s fluctuating emotions toward her sister are another example of how she compares herself to other people allowing her to become envious. The times that she feels defeated and that someone is better than her because of the good1 they have she makes it really obvious that she’s envious. The quote that Lauren F. uses in her blog All Daughters are Made Equal, "Khadijah did not enjoy affectionate words of comfort when defeated. She received Aisha's statement with unconcealed annoyance" (237), shows Khadija’s deeply rooted envy of her sister and her happiness.
Khadija does not only limit her envy to her sister’s beauty, she also shows envy of her sister’s happiness. Any time her sister seems to find a piece of happiness in something, Khadija comes along to say something negative to her to try and ruin it. We can see this when Aisha is singing at the window to the guy she likes and Khadija comes in and reprimands her for doing it. Anytime Khadija sees Aisha feeling happy and enjoying something she comes over and ruins it for her. Aisha recognizes that her sister is envious of her voice at that time and calls her out on it saying, “If your voice were beautiful like mine you wouldn’t say that” (26).
Lastly, Khadija is jealous of Aisha’s ability to evade responsibility. On the same page, Khadija says, “You loll about, off by yourself, while I prepare everything. We’ve had enough singing.” This shows her intense despising of the Aisha’s ability to drift off and look out the window at her boyfriend while Khadijas has to do all the housework and take care of things when Amina needs help or can’t do the job. Another example is when Amina was run over by the car and couldn’t work for their father. Even though neither one of them wanted to do it Amina says to Khadija, “You’re better able to serve him. Don’t waste time young lady. He may be needing you this very moment” (186). Although Khadija kinda wanted the job, she felt that Aisha should’ve have at least been brought up in the decision of who would take on Amina’s responsibility so she did it herself. Khadija thinks of her self as “second-in-command” to her mother and, although she wishes her sister had more responsibilities, liked the title. In Dominique Hackett’s comment on Lauren F.’s blog, All Sister are Created Equal, I agree with him when he says Khadija wants to be the example for Aisha even though Khadija doesn’t change the way she treats her to get her to follow.
Though Khadija’s feelings of envy are detrimental to their relationship and their later marriages, Khaduja never allows her envy to reach the point of resentment which is where I disagree with Dominique Hackett’s statement in his comment that Khadija becomes resentful of Aisha’s getting married. Even the narrator says, “Regardless of how long her jealousy lasted, it did not warp her disposition to become hatred or loathing” (27). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says also,
“Although much of the psychological literature on envy supposes that envy is concerned with matters of perceived injustice, most philosophers reject this suggestion.[9] The received view is that envy is to be distinguished from resentment. The latter is held to be a moral emotion, whereas the former is not. What makes a given emotion a moral emotion has been glossed in various ways. Roughly, the idea is that moral emotions are ones that somehow embody moral principles or appraisals. Resentment is a moral emotion because a given emotional episode does not qualify as a state of resentment unless the subject holds some moral complaint against the object of the state. The claim that envy is not a moral emotion may be understood strongly, as the claim that it never involves a moral complaint per se, or weakly, as the claim that it need not embody such a complaint.”
Khadija was envious of her sister in many aspects but, she never allowed her feelings to reach the point of utter resentment of her sister even though the way she treats her can be mistaken as such.
D'Arms, Justin, "Envy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
Hackett, Dominique. "Re: All Daughters Are Made Equal." Web log comment. Blogger.com. 24 Feb. 2010. 29 March 2010.
Lauren F., “All Daughters are Made Equal.” Digging Even Deeper. Feb. 24, 2010. (http://diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com/2010/02/all-daughters-are-made-equal.html#comments)Mar. 29, 2010.
Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk. New York: Anchor /Doubleday, 1991.
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