Thoughts on Woman At Point Zero

"I came to realize that a female employee is more afraid of losing her job than a prostitute is of losing her life. An employee is scared of losing her job and becoming a prostitute because she does not understand that the prostitute's life is in fact better than hers. And so she pays the price of her illusory fears with her life, her health, her body, and her mind. She pays the highest price for things of the lowest value. I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was was better than a cheap one. I also knew that if I lost my job, all I would lose with it was the miserable salary, the contempt I could read every day in the eyes of the higher level executives when they looked at the lesser female officials, the humiliating pressure of male bodies on mine when I rode in the bus, and the long morning queue in front of a perpetually overflowing toilet."

            Nawal El Saadawi’s novel, Woman at Point Zero, is an interesting look at sexism in Egyptian society. Though not a very strong novel in terms of literary merit, since it’s an endless list of terrible experiences with sexism and exploitation of women that hammers its nail on sexism repeatedly. Saadawi, famous Egyptian novelist, feminist, and doctor, criticizes female genital mutilation, the imprisonment of women through the institution of marriage, capitalist exploitation, and male pimps in the sex industry, nevertheless is lacking in style. A frame story, the novel consists of what seems to be Saadawi herself interviewing the prisoner, Firdaus, a former prostitute who murdered her violent pimp and resisted the imprisonment of women through Egyptian culture and society. There are numerous patterns and some attempts at literary merit, as well as several instances of righteous indignation on the part of Firdaus against her sexist employers, lovers, pimps, police, an Arab prince, and abusive parents and relatives.

Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel that the novel’s main function is to relay several instances of sexism in Egyptian society. Believe me, I have no problem with reading about these often gruesome depictions of violence and patriarchy, but, the plot does not actually seem to have any artistic merit beyond depicting and shouting to the world that sexism is widespread in Egypt. However, it may also perpetuate the notion of Arab or Islamic exceptionalism in extreme patriarchal societies. That is unfair, racist, and also hypocritical when one considers widespread sexism in “Western” societies. But perhaps I am being unfair myself in a critique of the novel as lacking any substance beyond unveiling the oppression of women in 20^th century Egypt. That alone is revolutionary and worth supporting, especially in conjunction with the activism of Saadawi in her personal life.