The Good Woman That Came From France

From reading this short story something that I really liked was how Babbette is portrayed in the short story as being different. Everything from Babbette seemed to scare the people of Berlevaag. Since the beginning it seemed like Babbette was always on trial. The sisters kept a watchful eye on here since she was catholic and French. I really like how Dinesen creates Babbette to go into a community where people are so close-minded and only think about god. She is really different she has lost her family and doesn’t really mention god. To me she is the black sheep of the town. Through the story we start to see how much the two sisters start to think that Babbette is a good woman who just wants to earn her money honestly. But it isn’t towards the end of the novel that I really do believe that Babbette is an honest woman. As we know she won ten thousand francs in the lottery. “A dinner for twelve at the Café Anglais would cost ten thousand francs” (57). After I read this I knew Babbette was a good person. She has so much care for these people that she has spend an entire fortune on making them a special dinner. The two sisters were so shocked at the fact that she had made this meal with no regrets that they said, “you ought not to have given away all you had for our sake” (57) but Babbette didn’t care. She is the model for everyone around to be a true artist one must make sacrifices. Even thought Babbette comes from a broken family she saw that the two ladies needed love and care just like she did and she gave it to them by working hard and being there for them. The two sister didn’t have a significant other and Babbette gave them the love that they deserved. In the end we see how much they appreciate Babbette for all that she has done that they even say she will “enchant the angels.”

A Sudden Change of Heart

In the second part of The Good Woman of Setzuan, Yang Sun becomes more attentive to Shan Te towards the end of the play. Before as we had seen he did not care about her at all. All he cared about was the money that he would obtain from Shan Te once they were married. When Shi Ta wonder on why Shan Te is devoted to Sun he says, “Because I have my hand on her breasts. Give me a cigar” (56). Evidently he does not care about Shan Te enough to say something wordy of the Good Woman of Setzuan. A bit later Sun also makes it clear that, “Ill marry her, then bring me the three hundred. Or let her bring it. One or the other” (56). His cruelty is further demonstrated when it is said that Yang Su tears Shan Te’s weeding dress after they fail to get married due to Shui Ta’s absence. Although some people might not think that this character is not important but I think it is. I think that the author is portraying a very ugly side of men that we like to hide. Yang Su behaves in the most atrocious way the only person that loves him, Shan Te. Instead of waiting or postponing the weeding to another day he simply leaves and drags Shan Te out of the cheap restaurant. After Yang Sun wastes the money that Shan Te gave him she has to find a way to replay it. After Shan Te finds a way of expanding her tobacco industry. She begins to do well for herself but in the mean time her other self, Shui Ta files a police report against Yang Sun against failed marriage and the fact that he obtained two-hundred silver dollars illegally. I really started to notice the change in heart of Yang Sun when he goes back to Shan Te’s tobacco shop dragging his feet in defeat. All he says is that, “the money is gone” (83). Shui Ta offers him a job as a test of his goodwill and he accepts. He even asks to speak to Shan Te, which he had never just thought of her before. He works in the tobacco shop long enough for Shui Ta to promote him due to his effort and hard work. After this it seems like Yang Sun is more interested in the well being of Shan Te than before. It seems like he has suddenly been struck by good will and wants to be with Shan Te. I think this is important because it shows that some people are willing to change if some hope is put on them.

Deep Value

“The World can stay as it is if enough people are found living lives worthy of human beings” (7).

The world in, The Good Woman of Setzuan, is a very complicated place where all types of people live under the rule of the almighty gods. I can totally see how much it does relate to our own world. One thing that I found interesting was how three gods appeared in the play right from the start. Now this made me wonder if it has to do something with the divine trinity of the Catholic Church. The gods from the start seem to be on a mission. They want to either keep or destroy the world. They go to Setzuan where they believe they might find a good person. They come across the water seller and they immediately notice that he really isn’t a good fellow. What I like about the gods is that they don’t loose hope in finding a good person, but they leave it up to the measly water seller to be in charge of finding some descent person they can rest with. After many tries they come across Shan Te, a town prostitute, who gets rid of her nights entertainment to fulfill the gods needs. I had been missing out on the irony but when I came across the fact that the gods where going to stay with a prostitute I understood a bit more of the play. What I don’t understand is how the gods allowed for the water seller to give them a place to stay? If they knew he was a crook why would they ever trust him to find them a place to stay? What was more ironic was how much they really liked and enjoyed Shan Te’s company. Even though she was a prostitute they still stayed the night with her and in the morning had good conversation. This made me wonder if the three gods were looking for a good person that wasn’t defined by their occupation. Eventually the gods found out that she was a prostitute they reply with, “That’s not in our sphere. We never meddle with economics” (11). I really liked how the third god accepted that Shan Te was a prostitute. He might not have officially accepted that it was okay to earn your living by selling yourself but he didn’t criticize. He made it seem like it was just something you did for money and your morals had nothing to do with it. I do agree by what the gods had to say about jobs and how they don’t have to reflect on your persona. They even decided to give her money because she needed it. It seemed to me that they thought money was something trivial which is a good thing.

He's Just Insecure

From the start of Palace Walk, a novel by the late Naguib Mahfouz, Ahmad Abd al-Jawad unconsciously makes himself noticed. From the beginning we see that he portrays himself as a strong confident man when in reality he is as insecure as a seventeen-year-old girl with acne. Ahmad does not handle some of the most important decisions that he faces in the novel in the best way possible. His search for security and confidence in his life causes a lot of suffering and discomfort in his family.
Amina, Ahmad’s wife, has always been one of the few people to love Ahmad and to respect his wishes unconditionally. Early on the their marriage Ahmad always made his wishes be the ones that had to be served. Amina, confronts Ahmad for going out and partying with his friends into late hours of the night and Ahmad reacts in the most horrific way. Amina had only wanted to venture a polite objection to the lifestyle that Ahmad was living. “I am a man. I’m the one who commands and forbids. I will not accept any criticism of my behavior. All I ask of you is to obey me. Don’t force me to discipline you” (4). This is a great example of how insecure Ahmad is towards his manhood and his ability to take care of his family. He has to go out with his friends and be with women to satisfy his needs of being a man. He uses sexuality to secure himself of his manhood. He is so insecure that he cant even accept that his wife is right, and that the lifestyle that he is living is one no true man lives. According to Dr. Albert Mohler, “Manhood is demonstrated in a man's fulfillment of responsibility and leadership” (Mohler). Ahmad should not have to prove that he is a man because he goes out with his friends and has sexual relations with women. He should take a look at his insecurities and see that he has to be a better father and husband. That itself will prove that he is an honorable man that cares for his family. Doctor Mohler also explains in his article that, “men have to aspire to be the kind of man women would want to marry and children will trust and respect and obey” (Mohler). Ahmad instead of being honored as a father and respected acts like a tyrant and makes his children respect him out of fear instead out of their own will. The whole household transforms just to make Ahmad happy. Like Johnathan Vela said in his blog, “Ahmad disapproves with lying and catches a temper rage when he finds out somebody is lying, but then he turns around and lies.” I couldn’t agree more, when Ahmad does all of this he causes for the household to be disrupted and things to fall apart more than they would in the first place. By him trying to cover his insecurities as a man, he has lost the true essence of fatherhood. He is not giving his children good advice or love, he is making them fear him in order for that to back up his ego.
To come back to Amina, his lovely wife, who has always been submissive to his will and desires. Towards the middle of the novel while Ahmad is away attending other business, she encounters a decision and she goes out of the house to go visit al-Husayn’s shrine. She accidentally gets run over by a car, which caused a fracture that would take three weeks to heal. At first Ahmad realizes that his wife is hurt and being mad at her won’t help her recuperate. After the narrator describes that Ahmad started to really analyze what had happened and realized that if he didn’t take matters into account he would “loose control of his family, and the bonds holding it together would dissolve” (194). This shows how Ahmad is so weak and insecure that he can’t even forgive his wife for the mistake that she made. It seems Ahmad feels he will become weak if he forgives Amina, but instead he will only be seen as a merciful husband who is willing to forgive his poor wife. Instead Mahfouz makes us see the true side of most men in Egypt at the time and makes him say, “I don’t want to find you here when I come back this noon” (195). Such harsh words he is telling the best wife we have seen in this whole book. Amina is an amazing woman who is essentially the glue that the family needs to stay together. Ahmad is acting like the Goo Gone and taking the glue apart. She is the go to person and his caretaker. She is that perfect woman behind her husband and he is loosing her on pride. Ahmad should instead take this small incident to see that his methods of caring for his family aren’t working out right. Instead of trying to be a tyrant he should be a real father and make his children and wife respect him and do his wishes because it’s the best things they can do. Daniela Barajas made a very precise observations when she said, “The anger, strictness, and sternness with the family is simply a shield to prevent the family from seeing his sensitivity.” He is so insecure to let his family know that he is sensitive that he will not stop at anything to make himself seem as manly and mean as possible. I am not saying that Ahmad isn’t a man because he makes himself be respected, he just wants to be respected for the wrong reasons. He should open his heart and see that being respected for being an honest No on the other hand like Dr. Mohler said, “To be a man is to make decisions.” But the thing is that Ahmad doesn’t make stable decisions his indecisiveness is what keeps him from being more insecure and a stronger father figure. Ahmad’s attempt into making it seem like he didn’t need Amina ended up causing more trouble. Almost all of his children thought he was wrong by doing so, and didn’t agree with the decision he had made. Now, if he wasn’t so worried about what people would think of him he would see that his insecurities are caused by the desire to be a tyrant. He should just be a father who acknowledges that he makes mistakes and that mistakes are things needed in life to make people stronger. If he wasn’t such a tyrant he would more approachable.
Speaking of mistakes Yasin, Ahmad’s eldest son, has married and the father of his current wife has no desire of them being together anymore. Iffat wants something better for his daughter and believes that their marriage needs to be over. Ahmad becomes irritated and furious at his son and confronts him for what he had done. Ahmad tells him, “You have disappointed my hopes in you so much that only God and his blessings can ever repay me.” Ahmad has no sense of self-judgment and it seems like he continues to ignore his own actions when he talks to his son, Yasin about the disappointment he has caused. In the quote above Ahmad is making it clear that God is the only one that can forgive him for committing this barbaric action. Now, if Ahmad didn’t truly think this was a bad offense he wouldn’t tell this to Yasin because we all know that Ahmad has intimate relations with other women during his nights out. I still don’t believe that he doesn’t think that he has been a bad influence on Yasin. Ahmad says, “I raised and disciplined you” yes he did but he also left a little trail for Yasin to follow his footsteps and commit the same stupid mistakes like sleeping with other women and being an unfit husband. Ahmad needs to realize that he is responsible for his family’s disgraces. Since Ahmad is insecure and goes out to find women he had led his son to do the same thing for the wrong reasons. Yasin is doing it because he had seen it all his life. And the sooner he accepts that he is wrong the better it will be. He will have a chance to mend his errors and try and save his family from committing more mistakes.
Ahmad has always been a man who hides himself due to a lack of security in his personality. He never really transitioned into letting his family see who he truly was. He was someone who was always a bit insecure of how he was taking care of his family. Honesty was something that was missing from the equation that he was solving. Who knows if he would have been honest and accepting of his errors he could have saved his family from undergoing some real hardships. That is why one has to always be honest, and say when we are caring something that’s more than we can handle.


Works Cited

Barajas, Daniela. "Hiding Behind the Wall." Web log post. Digging Even Deeper.
Blogger, 23 Feb. 2010. Web. 3 Apr. 2010. .

Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy). New York: Anchor, 1990. Print.


Mohler, Albert. "For Guys Only: The Marks of Manhood." (2005). Pure Intimacy. Web.
Mar.-Apr. 2010.
.


Vela, Jonathan. "Father's and Children's Relationships." Web log post. Digging Even
Deeper. Blogger, 23 Mar. 2010. Web. 2 Apr. 2010. .

Not A God, But A Human

Throughout the first part of Palace Walk, Naguib Mahfouz portrays Ahmad as a powerful, and feared man that thinks highly of himself and whose family views him as a god. Ahmad controls every move his family makes. But through his death and rebellion, Fahmy helps his father to realize that he is nothing but a human. Towards the end of the book, Ahmad loses control of his son Fahmy, who dares to disobey him. Fahmy’s behavior strip Ahmad of his power, driving him closer to admitting his humanity. Later faced with Fahmy’s death, Ahmad feels extreme sadness, which leads him to realize and accept that he is not to a god, allowing himself to break down. With this break down, Ahmad appears to be a new man that accepts his powerlessness and that gives into his human emotions.

Throughout the first part of the book, Ahmad has power, and control over everything that happens to his family because his ego has been aggrandized by the way everyone in the family fears, loves, and respects him as if he were a god. As TheJavi says in his blog, Ahmad Never Changes, that “ [Ahmad] thinks really highly of himself” so he never questions his behavior. He always wants things to be his way. He always has the power over everything and always uses that power to manipulate things, so that he can be at the center of them. For example when the officer wanted to marry Aisha, he said that “no daughter of mine would marry a man until I am satisfied that his primary motive for marrying her is a sincere desire to be related to me…me…me…me” (157). Here one can see how egotistical Ahmad is. Another time when we see that Ahmad thinks so highly of himself is when he tells Fahmy, “The only word that counts here is mine. Mine, mine, mine…” (425). Once again, Ahmad shows that he wants things to be centered around him as if he were god. Through these examples, one can see his power to control the family.

But it is the way the family behaves with Ahmad and the way they feel about him that allow Ahmad to have the power to control everything. The family adores Ahmad in a very extreme way. I feel like everyone in the family blindly follows his lead, even when he is wrong. One really gets a sense of this affection, loyalty and fear for Ahmad when the author describes the feelings Aisha had when her father decided that she wouldn’t get married before Khadija, thus denying Aisha from the opportunity of marrying the officer she had fallen for. The author writes:

Although she was hurt, angry, and resentful, these emotions could not touch her father. They fell back impotently like a wild animal stopped by its trainer, whom it loves and fears. Aisha was not able to attack her father, not even in the depths of her heart. She continued in her love and devotion for him. She felt sincerely dutiful to him, as though he were a god whose decree could only be received with submission, love and loyalty. (160-161)

Here we see that the love and fear she felt towards her father was much too strong to allow Aisha to let any of the negative emotions be against her father. The fear and the love she had wouldn’t even let her think of feeling the hurt, anger, and resentment against her father even in the secrecy of her heart. Not even the other strong emotions she felt could erase the deep love and great fear her father incited in her.

No one dares to speak against Ahmad because the fear incited by his power is intimidating. Even more than the intimidation, the affection they feel for Ahmad makes the family look at him as something close to a god. Here one can instantly see a cycle. The family’s veneration causes Ahmad to be powerful and Ahmad’s power causes the family to venerate him. Seeing not only Aisha, but everyone else comply to his wishes, simply makes Ahmad feel more powerful, even as powerful as a god. Aisha obeys him because she feels “dutiful to him, as though he were a god whose decree could only be received with submission, love and loyalty” (161). This last sentence proves that Aisha, and even the rest of the family see Ahmad as a god. They obey him because to them he is like a god; in their eyes, he has power to control everything.

Since Ahmad’s is empowered by his family’s submissiveness, when one of them, Fahmy, goes against his will, Ahmad starts doubting his power and seeing that he’s weak. Fahmy always venerated his father like the rest of the family; thus, he never dared to disobey his commands. But things change with the war because Fahmy has really strong feelings about the war, even stronger feelings than the fear for his father. When Fahmy has to confess to his father that he has been distributing handbills to promote Egypt’s independence, Ahmad is alarmed and angry, and tells Fahmy to stop. Fahmy, ultimately, refuses to swear on the Qur'an that he will stop, and instead, he continues his behavior, going against his father’s will. He does this even though in the Qur'an it says, "Three persons shall not enter the Garden: the one who is disobedient to his parents,” meaning that his offense is a great one. But despite the divine law, Fahmy disobeys his father. His son’s rebellion causes Ahmad to be stripped of his power. Ahmad says, “He said no to me for the first time in his life…should I reveal my lack of power to [Amina]? Should I seek help from her weakness after my power has failed” (449). By opposing him, Fahmy takes away the power that Ahmad was so sure he possessed, and makes him feel weak, showing that Ahmad’s power was in the hands of those that feared it. Here we see clearly that the submissiveness of the family built Ahmad’s power; thus, without everyone’s submissiveness, he lost the power to control. Here Fahmy has taken Ahmad closer to seeing his humanity.

But it isn’t until Ahmad’s death that Ahmad realizes and accepts that he is not god, and allows himself be human and break down. When Ahmad finds out his son had died, one can see how human, how sensitive Ahmad truly is because he finally lets us see it. He thinks when he gets the bad news, “How can I have a home without him? How can I be a father if he’s gone?” (495). Here Ahmad is saying that he can’t have life without his son; he can’t be a father without him. Before getting to this part, one would have never thought that Ahmad would think this way because one always perceived Ahmad as egotistical man and as one who never needed anyone. But with Fahmy’s death, he’s humbled. As Mauricio discusses in his blog, Sensitive Soul-dier, Fahmy makes Ahmad change his ways. Ahmad finally touches the ground and sees that he can feel pain too. Mahfouz says, “ a time would come when [Ahmad] would be all alone and could devote himself to his sorrow with all his soul…giving free rein to tears so he could totally exhaust them” (497). Ahmad sees that he can suffer too because he’s just human.

A cycle can always be broken; it just takes a small change in one of the elements involved. Fahmy broke the cycle going on with the family and Ahmad. He changed his behavior when he went against his father’s will, stopping the source of his father’s power. By dying, Fahmy places his father in a situation that Ahmad has never been in, making him feel new strong emotions such as sorrow. By making Ahmad feel powerless after disobeying him and sad and hopeless after dying, Fahmy lets Ahmad see that he can be human, and that he doesn’t always have to act like he can control everything because he can’t. Death comes when it wants to come, and Ahmad has no control over that.

Works Cited

1. Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk. New York: Anchor Books, 1991.
2. Mvazquez. "Sensitive Soul-dier." Weblog post. Digging Even Deeper. Web. 06 April 2010. <http://diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com/2010/04/sensitive-soul-dier.html>
3. TheJavi. “Ahmad Never Changes.” Web log post. Digging Even Deeper. Web. 24 March 2010. < http://diggingevendeeper.blogspot.com/2010/03/ahmad-never-changes.html.>
4. The Holy Quran. Maulana Muhammad Ali, 2002. Web. 6 Apr. 2010. <http://aaiil.org/text/hq/trans/ma_list.shtml>

Ahmad never changes

“You have disappointed my hopes in you so much that only God and His blessings can ever repay me. I raised and disciplines you. I watched over you….Then ll my efforts lead to what?... An alcoholic wretch who talks himself into raping the most humble servant in his families home. “ (408).


The more I read the book the more Ahmad ceases to amaze me. Since she start of the novel it has seemed that he thinks really highly of himself and only comments on everybody else’s errors. Like Johnathan said on a previous blog, he hates when people lie and when they act in bad ways but he goes around doing the same thing to other people. When Muhammad Iffat goes and visits his shop to request that Yasin and Zaynab be divorced he acts as if it were an impossible request. Muhammad feels that Yasin is unfit to be with his daughter because he goes out partying at night and has intimate relations with the maid of the house. In the entire conversation Ahmad it does not seem that Ahmad agrees with anything that Iffat is talking about. He simply said, “Don’t you see we’re all made of the same stuff, even if the details differ” in other words he pretty much made it okay for all the men in Egypt to behave this way due to their gender. Ahmad has no sense of self-judgment and it seems like he continues to ignore his own actions when he talks to his son, Yasin about the disappointment he has caused. In the quote above Ahmad is making it clear that God is the only one that can forgive him for committing this barbaric action. Now, if Ahmad didn’t truly think this was a bad offense he wouldn’t tell this to Yasin because we all know that Ahmad has intimate relations with other women during his nights out. I still don’t believe that he doesn’t think that he has been a bad influence on Yasin. Ahmad says, “I raised and disciplined you” yes he did but he also left a little trail for Yasin to follow his footsteps and commit the same stupid mistakes like sleeping with other women and being an unfit husband. Ahmad needs to realize that he is responsible for his family’s disgraces. And the sooner he accepts that the better it will be. He will have a chance to mend his errors and try and save his family from committing more mistakes.

Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy). New York: Anchor, 1990. Print.

Verbal Abuse

“What more does any woman want than a home of her own and sexual gratification? Nothing! Women are just another kind of domestic animal, and must be treated like one” (338).



The treatment of women has been a very big topic since we started reading the book a few weeks ago. The more I read the more disappointed I find myself getting because I have only see men look at women as the role of the wife and the sexual providers. Women are disrespected a lot in the novel and as my fellow classmates said, “women are submissive and sometimes are degraded by men, but we missed to see really how important women are.” Exactly, I am very disappointed in how men have treated most of the women in their lives. They have treated all the women like dogs and have verbally abused them. In the quote before this it shows how Yasin expresses his views of women to him. Its as if all of the women in his life are just meant to have sex lives and be submissive and be treated like dogs. This to me is no justification for treating women as if they were second-class citizens. One should really learn how to treat things that are important in our lives with care. Apparently, Yasin isn’t the only one who thinks that women are pretty much second-class citizens with special privileges. In this website that I found it shows how woman's rights in Islam are a bit controlled. I know we say that we shouldn't say that they get treated with less respect because of how their culture is set up, but how do we know if things are just? How can we say if women are treated with respect and equal rights when our culture and the Muslim culture is so different?






Work Cited:

"Women in Islam." Islam For Today. Web. 08 Mar. 2010. .



Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy). New York: Anchor, 1990. Print.

Marriage is Lost

The topic of marriage in the book Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz has been quite a controversy in our class discussions. I didn’t really look into it until chapter 33 where Amina finds herself kicked out of her own home after Ahmad puts her out because she disobeyed him and went to the shrine of her master al-Husayn when he was gone. Curiosity struck me and I decided to research the statistics of marriages in the 1930’s. One thing I see if that Ahmad has a very unfair marriage with Amina. Her companion for life does not treat her with the respect that she should get after raising three children and one-step child. Ahmad should treat her with all of the respect that a women of her caliber needs.
As I researched I came upon some information on the decline of marriages during the 1930s. It read, “Evidence of this crisis existed in the registers of the religious courts for that and the previous year. These registers demonstrated that the number of marriages was gradually declining” (Al-Ahram Weekly). This made me realize that almost all of the marriages in Egypt during the 1930s were arranged marriages. Amina, like most girls in Egypt was married at a young age without knowing how to love. After Amina gets put out of her house for going out without permission her husband puts her out and sends her to her mothers house. Amina’s mother says, “ But your husband? … An intelligent man going on fifty… can he find no other way to express his anger than by throwing out the companion of a lifetime and separating her from her children? (202). Exactly. Amina’s mother said it loud and clear the “companion of a lifetime” this is something you don’t just give up on. My reasoning is that marriage that are arranged tend to be treated more as a treaty not something you do because you are in love and you want to make a family. This is because Ahmad and every other male take marriage as being something that you do when you are an adult. They don’t take proper care of it, and just throw people out of their homes when things stop running smoothly. Its like both the men and the women care more about their children than their own marriage and relationship with their husband or wife. Amina tells her mother, “The only thing bothering me is that I’m anxious about my children, Mother” (203). Amina makes that comment as if Ahmad was slowly being erased from the family portrait and she had lost complete affection towards him. To me this shouldn’t be like this. Marriages are being broken apart due to the lack of love that the partners feel for each other. Marriage should be something sacred that we want to experience not something we have to do when we reach adulthood.

Work Cited:
1. "Al-Ahram Weekly | Chronicles | Wedding woes." Al-Ahram Weekly | Front Page. Web. 25 Feb. 2010. .

2. Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy). New York: Anchor, 1990. Print.

He's Weak

Reading Palace Walk has resulted in being more pleasant than I thought. Since I finished reading the second part I continued to read after the designated page and I found a passage relating to Ahmad that really stood out to me. The passage on page 194 talks about how Ahmad feels about forgiveness towards his wife, Amina, after a car had hit her. Prior to this passage I felt like we had started to see a new Ahmad because didn’t let his anger get the best of him and said, “Stay in bed till God heals you” (184). Soon I learned that this was just because she was hurt and he didn’t want to impose more suffering on her. In the passage the narrator describes that Ahmad started to really analyze what had happened and realized that if he didn’t take matters into account he would “loose control of his family, and the bonds holding it together would dissolve.” To me the author is trying to make us see how Ahmad is so weak that he cant even forgive his wife for the mistake that she made. It seems Ahmad feels he will become weak but to me he would only be seen as a merciful husband who is willing to forgive his poor wife. Instead Mahfouz makes us see the true side of most men in Egypt at the time and makes him say, “I don’t want to find you here when I come back this noon” (195). Such harsh words he is telling the best wife we have seen in this whole book. Amina is an amazing woman who is essentially the glue that the family needs to stay together. She is the go to person and his caretaker. She is that perfect woman behind her husband and he is loosing her on pride. My question is could he be that ignorant to not see what he has is good enough to fight and forgive for?

Women

“Then, the children arrived, one after the other. In their early days in the world, though, they were tender sprouts unable to dispel her fears or reassure her. On the contrary, her fears were multiplied by her troubled soul’s concern for them and her anxiety that they might be harmed. She would hold them tight, lavish affection on them, and surround them, weather awake or asleep, with a protective shield of Qu’rans suras, amulets, charms, and incantations. True pace of mind she would not achieve until her husband returned from his evening’s entertainment” (3).

This passage really impacted me because its found on the third page of this novel. The author was able to include a lot of things in these few sentences that are fundamental to the whole understanding of the Egyptian culture and this book. Mahfuouz, makes it seem as if women are married young and find themselves serving no purpose until their children are born. He makes me feel that their only purpose in the Egyptian culture is to be a care giver and provide comfort to the family. I believe this was okay back then because times weren’t this different like they are now, and women were only married to procreate and take care of their husbands. I don’t think that women should be treated this way. They need to have their own rights. They need to be free to make their own decisions and not be submissive to their men and wait for them until they “return from their evenings entertainment.” They need to want to be more than just wives. The problem that I see is that Amina doesn’t really know what to do with herself aside from being a mother and a wife and that’s a problem. Women think so little of themselves because the men are much more dominate but don’t realize that they are the ones that do the work. They take care of the entire family and always make sure that the men are ready for whatever they have to do. They should be the ones taking the credit for being the best caretakers. They make things possible they make things happen. I think that he portrayed the women to be so submissive to make us think and debate weather we agree with how this society works. I believe that it must let us explore how we see women as being equal to us now.

Do you think its fair for women to be treated this way during this period?

To have no real authority or rights? To just be mothers and wives?