The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World is a chef-d’oeuvre book by Nawal El Saadawi, which incorporates the elements of critical analysis and a memoir of Arab culture and Islam, specifically on matters concerning women. The author is a medical doctor and a feminist, who has had firsthand experience with the various atrocities meted against women in the Arab world, especially in Egypt where she worked in villages, cities, and various institutions.
Her resolute stand against perception and treatment of Muslim women led to her sacking from the Ministry of Health in Egypt in 1972 and eventual imprisonment and she remains one of the famous and consistently outspoken Arab feminists. She writes this book with all the directness that characterizes new feminism by highlighting all the horrors that Arab women undergo including the most heinous ones, without yielding to the usual patriarchal arguments seeking to justify such atrocities.
The value of this book lies in its ability to reveal the kind of suffering that Islamic women undergo openly, cogently, and uncompromisingly. This paper is a review of this informative and revelatory book by Nawal El Saadawi.
Summary
This book is divided into four major sections – The Mutilated Half, Women in History, The Arab Woman, and Breaking Through. The first section, “The Mutilated Half” is mainly an elaborate definition of women in the majority of Arab cultures and societies. The first chapter gives a gripping and horrific account, in the first person, of a six-year-old girl who underwent clitoridectomy (also known as women circumcision), which is a bizarre custom geared towards taming the allegedly uncontrollable sexual passion among women. Additionally, this practice is meant to make women passive and subjective by conforming to the norms of the society around them.
El Saadawi (2015) writes that once a woman’s clitoris is removed, she “will have a bright and happy face, and is more welcome to her husband, if her pleasure is complete” (p. 81). In other words, female circumcision prepares a woman for her husband – it is never about her and how she feels or what she wants. This section vividly describes the lifelong trauma of circumcision on women, which is so widespread in Egypt that it occurs in 97.5 percent and 66.2 percent of girls from uneducated and educated families respectively.
The second and third sections, “Women in History” and “The Arab Woman” are an in-depth analysis of women’s roles in society, specifically with reference to the ancient Middle Eastern culture. According to El Saadawi (2015), women mainly acted as goddesses, matriarchs, and political leaders. Women in ancient times were treated fairly, and they occupied positions on merit, just as their male counterparts before patriarchy took over and changed how society defined women.
She posits that the important “positions occupied by some goddesses were symbolic of the relatively higher prestige enjoyed by women in Arab tribal society, and a reflection of the vestiges of matriarchal society that still lived on and were prominent in some of the tribes” (El Saadawi, 2015, p. 259). However, women started losing their independence and positive personality traits gradually through systemic socio-economic conditions set deliberately to silence them.
Even though they fought for what was rightfully theirs and succeeded in some cases, El Saadawi (2015) argues that it “was mostly a losing battle, ending in the complete predominance of the patriarchal system” (p. 263). The author points to the rise of private property and other exploitative systems as the main contributors to the decline of women’s social status in the Arab world.
In the last section, “Breaking Through” the author presents the social and intellectual environment that created space for the unprecedented women’s liberation efforts in the 20th century. She highlights several books and literal works by Arab women that played and continue to play a central role in the liberation movement of women.
As part of breaking through, women started engaging in activities that were hitherto not acceptable to the patriarchal system. For instance, by 1914, 5 percent of Egyptian women had entered the wage-earning labor force and with the foundation of the Women’s Federation in 1923, the legal marriage age for girls was raised to 16 years. In other words, women continued to become part of the larger society by being visible to policymakers and other players at large.
According to El Saadawi (2015), these apparently “small and trivial happenings of everyday life such as eating, urinating, having sexual intercourse, going out to work each morning and riding a bus or a train, are the things that constitute society, a system, and a state” (p. 372). The author notes that while Arab women have not been fully liberated from the claws of retrogressive practices backed by patriarchy, there is significant progress in this area.
Critique
The book’s general aims were to inform the audience about the Arab culture, specifically how women are treated coupled with giving possible explanations as to why certain practices are perpetuated. The author wanted to use her experience and voice to talk about female genital mutilation and highlight the culture that surrounds it.
The book is generally written well for a large audience, especially those interested in knowing the underlying culture in the Arab world that feeds the atrocious practices towards women in this culture. The author divides the book into four distinct sections, which allows the reader to follow what is being said under the different chapters. Additionally, the first-person voice used throughout the book allows the reader to see the Arab world through the eyes of the author by having numerous personal details and accounts concerning the subject matter.
The lucid descriptions and analyses of Arab women’s experiences are compelling to the audience to continue reading the book. However, the book has some weaknesses. First, it lacks continuity from chapter to chapter in some cases, and this aspect could potentially have the reader lost. The book is more of a collection of essays, as opposed to a well-researched and objective analysis of women’s experiences in the Arab world.
Conclusion
The book The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World is an interesting piece by El Saadawi seeking to highlight the plight of women in the Arab world. The author extensively discusses the culture that men use to justify the various atrocities towards their female counterparts. The aim of this paper was to review the book objectively to give it a thorough assessment, and this goal has been achieved.
This book is significant to students of women’s history as it gives a firsthand account of the experiences of Arab women through the eyes of the reader. Even though in some cases the book lacks continuity, the author gives details on “what” “how” and “why” Arab women undergo certain experiences. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in women’s history, specifically within the context of the Arab world.
Reference
El Saadawi, N. (2015). The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World (3rd ed.). Zed Books.