The Writing of Arab Female Novelists

The Writing of Arab Female Novelists

The Story of Arab women novelists reflects, in many ways, the story of

most women in different disciplines: it is the story of abundant

creativity with very few rights or sometimes no rights at all. It is the

story of a group of women who were absented from the literary scene simply

because their creativity and attitudes proved to be different from men's,

who were and still are, the "mainstream" and the only arbiters who decide

what is literally valuable and what is not. It is a story that went on

unnoticed for a hundred years because, as men related it, there was only

one version of the official history of Arabic literature.'

In the recent half-century, Arab woman writers have acquired a distinctive

position in the field of literature, with an impressive richness,

diversity and creativity in their writing. Woman novelists lead the reign

of storytelling now just as they did right at the beginning. 'The first

Arab novel was written by a woman, fifteen years before any Arab man tried

his hand at this literary genre. Hush al Awaqib, by Zaynab Fawaz, was

published in 1899.' For them, storytelling was a way of self-expression,

and individualism. The intention is not to imply that it is gender

difference itself that determines the nature of literary creation, on the

contrary, it underscores differences in experience, differences that are

manifested in literature. But it is often viewed that "individualistic"

works by many woman writers can be read as feminist in the context of Arab

culture. This culture denotes that values such as collective ethnic and

religious identity conformity behaviors are caught up in the power

structure. Therefore, feminism is also institutionalized in these values.

Other criticisms in regard to women's novels are that they their works

were merely an extension of their bodies, that the heroines in the text

are representatives of themselves. Another criticism was that the subjects

and issues the women writers dealt with could not possibly be of any

public interest due to the fact that the majority of the works were about

love, family and children and reflected the restricted world they lived

in. Even other women critics dissociated themselves with women's works

and concentrated on the works of men instead.

But the truth is that not only were women the first to write novels in

Arabic, they were also the first to deal with major issues, even before

men addressed them. Also, evidence from works such as Liyana Badr's A

Balcony of the Fakhani demonstrate beyond any doubt that Arab women

novelists were intensely involved in the social and political concerns of