Resistance/Complicity in Women’s Subordination to Patriarchal Powers in The Sand Fish

Abstract

One of the objectives of feminism in the academia is to expose, in creative and critical resistance literature, various facets of men’s justification for the subordination of women. Resistance literature is growing as a massive body of work in the Arab region too, especially the creative and critical works by Arab women writers, and Maha Gargash’s contribution to it is commendable. The present paper examines the nature of struggle the protagonist, Noora, in Gargash’s novel The Sand Fish launches against patriarchal forces to combat her oppression. An analysis of the fictional character Noora reveals a clear-cut demarcation in the development of her philosophy of life before and after her marriage. She strongly resists patriarchal domination before her marriage, but becomes complicit in her subjugation after marriage. The issue of her complicity has been investigated with insights from Simone de Beauvoir’s analysis of the subject in The Second Sex (1949). Noora’s complicity primarily owes to her material and social situation, but existential angst is also found to be at play influencing her decisions.