Men's Contradictory Experiences of Power in Nada Awar Jarrar's <em>Dreams of Water</em>

Abstract

Nada Awar Jarrar was born in Beirut in 1958, and left Lebanon to go and live in Australia when the war broke out in Lebanon (1975-1990) She eventually came back to Lebanon in 1995 and has been living there ever since. She writes in English and belongs to both the Lebanese women's writing tradition on the subject of war and to the literary corpus of Anglo-Lebanese women's literature in exile. So far the critics have focused on themes of exile, repatriation, memory, belonging, home, and homesickness (Mirapuri, 2009; Hout 2005, 2012). This paper analyses her novel Dreams of Water, which is set during the civil war in Lebanon, and attempts to look at this text from another perspective. novel revolves around a young man who gets kidnapped and goes missing. Anissa, leaves Lebanon for London because of the civil war and seeks a new life. Her mother, Waddad, stays alone and finds Ramzi who she believes is Bassam's reincarnated spirit drawing on her religious beliefs. Anissa befriends Salah, who is an older Lebanese man who reminds her of her homeland. Anissa cannot forget her brother, so she goes back to Lebanon to look for him. She falls in love with Samir, Salah's son, who works and lives in London, but Samir is not willing to sacrifice his work for her sake. Ramzi's mother claims her son back from Wadad's family and the novel ends. Though Jarrar focuses on women in her novels, it is crucial to examine how and masculine identities are represented in women's writing to understand the role play in women's lives. This paper draws on Kaufman's theory of men's contradictory experiences of power (1994) in his article Men, Feminism, and Men's Contradictory Experiences of Power to analyze masculine identity in Jarrar's novel. It argues that in Dreams of Water show signs of contradictory experiences of power because they cannot live up to the hegemonic definitions of masculine identities of the Arab world. When cannot conform to the masculine ideals, they blame themselves and are shown as insecure, anxious, weak, afraid to be emasculated, afraid to show their emotions, alienated, feel self-hatred, and suffer from an identity crisis. Nevertheless, to a certain extent they have a choice to reject the subject positions offered to them.MEN'S CONTRADICTORY EXPERIENCES OF POWERWhen analysing masculine identity it is important to note that masculine identity is not permanent and masculinities vary from one person to another. Kaufman supports the theory of learning that we become or women. Gender is a product and influenced by many socializing factors. The importance of the sex-gender distinction in this context is that it is a basic conceptual tool that suggests how integral parts of our individual identity, behavior, activities, and beliefs can be a product, varying from one group to another and often at odds with other human needs and possibilities (Kaufman, 144). Kaufman does not see gender as static and that acquiring gender is not a linear process, but he argues that the gender work process is ongoing and is created and recreated constantly. Masculine identities are influenced by endless factors such as religion, sexual orientation, class, patriarchy, and powers. Kaufman contends that, normally, is associated with power, even though not all might have it and they learn to exercise control. Although most cannot possibly measure up to the dominant ideals of manhood, these maintain a powerful and often unconscious presence in [their] lives. They have power because they describe and embody read relations of power between and women and among men (144-5). Men grow to bank on this power and their masculinities are glued to the patriarchal world. They feel their sense of self-worth when they have this power; however, he claims that this power is tainted because of the strange combination of power and powerless ness, privilege and pain (142). To illustrate, in every society have to behave according to specific social definitions of manhood or codes of masculine behavior; if they do not follow, they would be labeled as unmanly. …