Fatima Mernissi Analysis

Fatima Mernissi is a young woman who learns so much about herself from her culture, her society, and politics. She puts the same level of thought into understanding all aspects of life and especially wants to understand and explore the ideas of a frontier, or boundary, between the harem and the outside world. Fatima dreamed of trespassing and seeing new things (2). The Frontier is a symbolic division between life in the harem and life outside the harem, Fatima says that in some cases the frontier is tangible, such as in the example of the gate at her house.

The women of the harem are like caged animals who run on demand and are there to be petted and admired and fed delicacies, but not left to run free. Although they might be allowed out for a visit here and there, but then brought back home and locked up again. For example, when Fatima's cousin Chama, tries to go out to the movies with the boys of the family, she is told no by force with the doorkeeper sometimes chasing her down and physically taking her back to the harem. Still, the women of the harem find small ways to rebel against this and to create small escapes for themselves. One of these methods is through acting and the women often

In America, women are allowed to have an education poor or rich. In Fatima’s society women are not always educated and a lot of the times not able to attend schools. Yasmina says that Fatima will be educated and the first step toward that occurs when nationalists create schools that accept young women and encourage girls to attend. Fatima's mother immediately petitions her husband to allow Fatima to transfer to that school and the family council permits all the girls to go. In Fatima’s society, women are forced to do things they don’t want to do and they don’t have a choice to do it or they could be killed. They also have public baths Sidi Slimane Krishna took members of Yasmina's harem to this location to