Imagination: The Forbidden Fruit

Abstract

This paper is a comparative study of the Egyptian short story ‘Worms inthe Rose Garden” by Saiwa Bakr, published in 1992, and the American story “TheYellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Oilman published in 1892. Although thetwo stories are separated by a hundred years, both writers address the same issue;that of women driven to madness because of their refusal and/or inability to fitinto the “model” of woman created by their respective societies.The two heroines are characterized by an imagination that renders themincapable of accepting the superficial, contrived rules of social conformity, and,consequently sets them apart from their socio-cultural environment. This isolationforces them to take a long introspective journey into the reality of theft liveswhich, eventually drives them to the borders of insanity. Imagination also placesthem at odds with their social milieu as the two writers posit their protagonistsagainst their families; the microcosm of society.Despite the temporal, geographical and cultural differences, both textsillustrate women’s quest for independer~ce and individuality. The texts also discussimagination as a hindrance and a liability. As a hindrance, imagination is largelyresponsible for the two women’s failure to integrate in theft societies and beaccepted by those around them, and, similarly, imagination becomes a liabilitywhen it leads the two heroines into a state of insanity. Thus, a pivotal questionposes itself here: Is female nonconformity synonymous with madness? Or is itsynonymous with madness only when it threatens the violation of the rigid rulesof a long standing patriarchal social establishment where “the dynamics” of “thesocial structure.., are based on a power relationship in which women’s interests aresubordinated to those of men”? (Hafez)