Women’s Pathos across Cultures: Imprisonment and Death in Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero and Sylvia Plath’s Ariel

A Feminist Ethos of Point Zero

This paper focuses on the presentation of women oppression and emancipation in Nawal El Saadawi’s novel, Woman at Point Zero. The novel is specifically a call and an appeal to the women in her Egyptian society and the world at large on the need to revisit their activities and contribution toward the oppression, suppression, molestation, and brutality of their fellow women. Nawal El Saadawi presents with unique clarity, the unpleasant experience women are subjected to in her male-dominated society (Egypt). The novel aesthetically captures the oppression, sexual harassment, domestic aggression, and intimidation that the Egyptian women are subjected to in her patriarchal social milieu. Through a Masculinist study of the text, this paper not only submits that women create sa conducive atmosphere for the unhappiness of their own kinds but also subverts the author’s proposition of the way forward for the Egyptian women who are disenchanted under the atmosphere that is besieged with unfair treatment of the women. This essay unambiguously argues that El Saadawi’s understanding of women emancipation from the persistent violence on the women is outrageously momentary and unsatisfactory. Indeed, the novel has succeeded in subverting the stereotypical representation of the women as weak, passive, and physically helpless yet, the cherished long-lasting emancipation expected from her oppressed women could not be fully achieved. The novelist portrays a resilient and revolutionary heroine whose understanding of women liberation leaves every reader disconcerted. The paper examines the oppression that the heroine, Firdaus suffers from men and her fellow women and how she eventually achieved a momentary emancipation.

Women all over the world, and Egypt specifically, have been looked upon as second-class citizens for a long time in comparison to men. However, this paper argues that it is unethical for feminists, specifically here Nawal El Saadawi, to discuss this issue in an extreme way where the truth is lost. Hating men and holding them wholly at fault for the plight of women while giving alibis to and even praising women for their selfdestructive decisions is not a solution. The paper critically reads El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero, discussing the very methods and elements that El Saadawi uses in the novel. Such methods and elements reveal El Saadawi to be a person who states one thing publicly and does another on the personal level. She misrepresents her protagonist. She commits misandry, and she gives life to a character who deals with choice as an obstacle. Above all, she uses literary stylistic devices through which she attempts to enforce her point of view on her readers. Keywords: El Saadawi, feminism, blame, choice, misandry, misrepresentation.

Literature has been a work of imagination with little attention paid to Mannerpunk as a sub-genre in prose fiction that suggests status, conversation, ethics, aesthetics and adherence to moral standards that are otherwise known as etiquette or principle of decorum which are the set rules for any society to live peacefully which Africans are inclusive, loving to live life devoid of dystopia. Previous scholarly interests in Nawal El-Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero have viewed the novel from the prism of different variants of feminism, ranging from pure feminism, womanism, and radical African feminism. Therefore, this paper views it as mannerpunk or as a novel that challenges lack of manners and standards in the family and society in Africa with the aim to correcting people to live their life with little or less problems. This paper benefits from psychoanalysis theory of Sigmund Freud explored by Stephane Michaud, and Mambrol Nasrullah who posit that the actions of man are controlled by id, ego, superego and defense mechanism. Hence, this paper considered Nawal El- Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero, discussing the plight of Firdraus, the protagonist and El-Saadawi as an author-narrator. It re-defines manner, and discusses lack of manners in the family and among the religious leaders such as Firdaus' uncle who always have sex with his niece, Firdaus. This paper suggests solutions that Africans should charge themselves reminding African society the core Africans’ wits and standards for family, society, and Africans to live peacefully.

Remembering Nawal El Saadawi

Cultural factors that cause differences in language characteristics between men and women are an interesting thing to study. The country that is still very thick with its patriarchal culture is the State of Egypt, which causes differences in language characteristics between men and women. The novel Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi is based on a true story of a woman who fought against patriarchal culture in Egypt and was about to be executed for killing someone. The purpose of this writing is to find out the characteristics of women's language in Nawal El Saadawi's women's novel at zero point based on Robinn Lakoff's theory of women's language. The analytical method used in this research is descriptive analysis method. With this method, the researcher analyzes the choice of each word used by the main female character in the novel Woman at Point Zero, so that the language characteristics of the main female character in the film can be revealed. While the method used to collect data in this study is the technique of reading and noting on primary data sources. . In this study, 4 characteristics of women's language were found in the novel Woman at Point Zero by Nawaal El Saadawi based on Robin Lakoff's theory, namely: empty adjectives, hedge, intensifier, avoidance of strong swear words. The use of these linguistic characteristics cannot be separated from the existing patriarchal culture in Egypt. and experienced by the main character in the novel, causing women to be very careful in their speech and often use intensifiers to emphasize their utterances so that their interlocutors understand the meaning of their speech. This novel clearly explains the condition of women who are still second in the country.

In Memory of a Woman Doctor

Chronotopic adaptation in Nawal El Saadawi’s isis

This study offers a postcolonial feminist reading of Nawal El Saadawi’s novel Woman at Point Zero (1975), examining how the novel addresses essentialist and reductionist narratives of female genital mutilation (FGM), kinship structures and religion in the context of Egypt. The paper argues that through her protagonist, Firdaus, El Saadawi depicts FGM not only as a form of violence against women but also as a symptom of deeper structural oppression rooted in patriarchy, capitalism and the misrepresentation and misinterpretation of religion. The idea is to read the novel as a female Bildungsroman, drawing attention to the specific experiences of Firdaus within a particular historical and socio-cultural background. Drawing on the concepts of intersectionality, power and resistance, the paper examines how Firdaus’s story highlights the multifaceted and context-specific nature of these forces, demonstrating that they do not function autonomously but instead intersect and interrelate in intricate ways, culminating in a distinctive set of conditions that profoundly influence her desires, relationships, identity and experience.

What I Will Never Forget

The prism of female writing has expanded itself in the current scenario. Contemporary writers have broken all the shackles of the feudal society and have come forward to make people aware of the ubiquitous and distressing condition of women. The unapologetic and unabashedly realistic portrayal of women bound in the shackles of caste and gender in Tehmina Durrani’s Blasphemy and Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero brings to surface some of the major issues concerning women’s plight. The issues of captivity, matrimony, violence, subjugation and sexism are delineated with prowess. Blasphemy and Woman at Point Zero through the narratives of their protagonists Heer and Firdaus disclose religious and patriarchal norms as a tool to subjugate and oppress women in an orthodox society. Tehmina Durrani’s Blasphemy depicts how distorted Islamic family code of conduct is thrust upon women compelling them to cohere to fundamental values of wedlock, motherhood, servitude and domesticity. Heer becomes a prisoner in her own haveli after her marriage to Pir Sain. Whereas Nawal El Saadawi in Woman at Point Zero portrays the captive life of Firdaus who is a female prisoner, waiting for her execution. The female characters demonstrate how the social, cultural and political structures are responsible for their captivity, degradation and violation.
 The present paper attempts to critically study and draw comparison between the two female protagonists. Heer and Firdaus turn captives in the haveli and prison respectively, but eventually they rip off the fake mask of the society which claims to protect women behind the veil of hypocrisy, strangulating even their basic right to be treated as a human.

This is a study of the Arab world's leading femininst and most controversial woman writer, Nawal El Saadawi. Her outspoken feminism and critique of patriarchy have won her much admiration, but also many enemies. Imprisoned in Egypt under Sadat, El Saadawi is now among those on the death lists of Islamic religious conservatives. The book contends that El Saadawi's work cannot be read in isolation from its Islamic and Arabic heritage. Drawing upon knowledge of classical and modern Arabic textual traditions, and on extensive conversations with El Saadawi, this book places the writer within her cultural and historical context.

The gender issue has long been a matter of great interest when it comes to deal with African Literature, the question of sex is a topical issue in the African cultural mainstream, born out of Man’s crooked rib”, Women are generally portrayed as weak, sensitive and dependent beings. That worldwide depiction of women is based on manifold aspects deeply rooted on cultural, traditional, societal and religious conceptions and beliefs which aspire to weaken women’s status and promote men’s authoritarian position. As a result, the growth of Patriarchy which represents a last straw which breaks the camel’s, women suffered physically and psychologically at once in an environment where their being are still wretched due to cruel practices: rape, female genital mutilation, child abuse, forced marriage to name but a few which they were liable to undergo from childhood to adulthood. In The Hidden Face of Eve as well as in Woman at Point Zero El Saadawi comes to unveil women’s burden to the entire audience where she portrays the African Arab World and the patriarchal dynamic as the fence leading out of opulence and subjugation. In her capacity as a Psychiatrist, Nawal, in her works analyses and spotlights women’s lives. However, as a feminist, Nawal undertakes significant canvas, paving the way for the real essence of the African Arab woman through education, dislocation and prostitution which constitutes a double-edged sword. This paper aims at spotlighting the phallocentric blooming process with its norms and how the power of the female body can lead to empowerment in foiling men’s strategies. Through that aesthetic woman can move from dependency to independency from unconsciousness to consciousness, from no one to someone then production creativity and intellection gather around their real being in the one oriented society that impede their essence

Woman at Point Zero, by Nawal El Saadawi, has been neglected by African feminist commentary, probably because of its radicalism. 20th-century African feminisms, under different names and descriptions, generally advocated a moderate approach to gender relations, refusing to exclude or stigmatize men. However, a change is underway in the attitudes of younger African feminists, especially in South Africa, as the recent #MenAreTrash and #AmINext hashtags and protests about rape culture have demonstrated. The protagonist of Saadawi’s novel, Firdaus, who discovers her true vocation in the action of killing a man, matches and outstrips the anger of these younger feminists. So radical is Woman at Point Zero that it appears to advocate androcide as a response to patriarchy, which, to Firdaus, represents multiple types of abuse and injustice, including capitalism. This paper explores degrees of feminist radicalism as well as developments in African feminist thought, before considering Woman at Point Zero as an example of the radical extreme whose time may have come. The novel exists, if not as a provocation to direct action, at least as a terrible warning to men – and members of other genders – and hence as a trigger of radical change.

This study aims to describe the representation of female characters in the novel Woman at Zero Point by Nawal El Saadawi in terms of the subject-object position and in terms of the reader's position using the Sara Mills perspective approach. This research is qualitative with a qualitative descriptive method. The data source is the novel Woman at Zero Point by Nawal El Saadawi. The research results are as follows. First, the position of the female character as the subject describes the female character who is considered to have committed a rebellion in the form of resistance against men through physical violence. Second, in the position of the character as an object, the female character suffers injustice throughout her life from childhood to adulthood, causing her to fall into the valley of humiliation. Third, in the reader's position, female characters are described as experiencing injustice in the form of stereotypes, prostitution, and violence.