Nawal El Saadawi and the Female Predicament: A Study of Woman at Point Zero

Woman At Point Zero, by the Egyptian Nawal El Saadawi, fully deserves its reputation as one of the most forceful presentations in African literature of the oppression of womanhood by an unfair patriarchal society. Of course, this novel, like those of Naguib Mafouz, raises the tiresome question of what constitutes African literature. There are those who would say that the North African writers belong to an Arabic tradition, especially since their works were originally written in Arabic. The fact that these writers write in Arabic might give them some affinity with Middle Eastern writers, but this does not preclude a similar affinity with the African world, especially since a number of scholars would be prepared to postulate that Arabic should be accepted as an African language that is now spoken in the Islamic parts of Africa, both in the Mahgreb and in sub-Saharan Africa. The language question apart, there is that other vexed issue of geography, another of the issues usually taken into consideration in discussion of what constitutes African literature. Though many people have sub-Saharan Africa in mind when they talk about African literature, we must accept that the North African countries have always been and still are a very important and substantial part of the continent of Africa and any concept of African literature that excludes them must surely be incomplete. If we accept Nadine Gordimer as an African writer since she lives and writes in a country within the African continent, we should surely accept writers from North Africa as such. However, much more important than the issues of geography and language is the issue of spirit or attitudes. What unquestionably sets apart a writer as African is that that writer's work is resonant with a spirit, an atmosphere, energy and attitudes and aspirations that are distinctly African. And one cannot say that a writer whose work shares the same concerns and breathes the same atmosphere and spirit as those of Mariama Ba, Buchi Emecheta, and Tsitsi Dangarembga is not African.Born in 1931, Nawal El Saadawi is an activist and relentless fighter for women's liberation who because of her uncompromising stance against an oppressive male hegemony was herself imprisoned by the regime of former President Anwar Sadat in 1980. A medical doctor and one time Director of Public Health in Egypt, she was interested in and concerned with areas of the woman's experience that were considered quite bold and unconventional at the time in Egypt. Her concerns and researches led to the publication of such works as Women and Sex in 1972, and The Hidden Face of Eve in 1977, while Woman at point Zero of 1975 was the direct result of research she conducted in a prison on women and neurosis between 1973 and 1976. This deceptively slim novel is certainly about the oppression of women in an Islamic society, but it is also about class, about poverty, about the causes of prostitution, about religious hypocrisy and above all it is, in spite of its bizarre conclusion, about the triumph of women over all those forces that would oppress them and try to deprive them of their humanity, their freedom, and their right to choose. It is ultimately about women gaining agency and ownership over their lives and destiny. This novel, in particular, and Saadawi's work in general, has not been without its severe critics, particularly from within the Arab world, where some might well see her as pandering to a Western audience and betraying the Arab and Islamic cause. George Tarabishi, for instance, claims that Saadawi creates one dimensional characters, reduces her men and women to abstractions, and fails to present their complex relationships. One can only say that such a judgment can only stem from a failure to respond to the persuasive techniques the novelist uses to establish her characters on the minds of her audience and that for this reader at least she does, in Woman at Point Zero, create quite compelling characters, presents the relationships between them, and, far from being elitist in her attitude, as Tarabashi claims, is very much concerned about the fate of the ordinary, even the lower class, woman in her society. …