Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz is a novel about a street full of colorful Egyptians coping with life towards the end of World War II. The role of women in marriage and Egyptian society is clearly shown in the novel. The traditional gender roles in Egypt began to shift during the novel. Due to the war, women started to go work, for example Hamida's factory girl friends in Midaq Alley. Additionally, many of the women in Midaq Alley hold power over men. Husniya is strong and fierce, and reverses the common trope of domestic abuse because she beats her cowering husband.
Hamida exercises power over all the men she attracts, but refuses to become servile and pregnant and thinks she deserves better than getting married and having children. Mrs. Saniya Afify is a self-s
...ufficient woman who only wants a husband for companionship. As Egypt was throwing off the shackles of British rule, so these characters are emerging from beneath gender roles that have stood for centuries. Most of the marriages in Midaq Alley are marriages of opportunity. Hamida is looking for such a marriage, first with Salim Alwan and then with Ibrahim Faraj.
She wants to gain wealth through a union. Kirsha doesn't love his wife, but tolerates her because she keeps his home for him. Radwan Hussainy treats his wife poorly too, and she doesn't have motherhood to take solace in anymore since all of her children are dead. Mrs. Saniya Afify wants a companion but has to settle for covering her own dowry. Abbas hopes for a real, love-filled marriage with Hamida, and that desire leads to his death
In this way, Midaq Alley offers a critique of the social construct of marriage.
One relationship which demonstrates the role of women in marriage is Salim Alwan, wealthy businessman, pursues Hamida, a young beautiful woman in Midaq Alley. However, Mr. Alwan does not love Hamida but because he fears that his 'youth and virility' are vanishing, and wishes to prove to himself that he is still virile. Mr. Alwan has a wife, who has always disapproved of his special food, is increasingly reluctant to indulge him in the active sex-life he wants. Mr. Alwan accuses her “of frigidity and of being sexually exhausted”.
However, Salim Alwan shows no sympathy for her “obvious weakness” and does not “alter his passionate habits”. This demonstrates how the husband is the dominant one in a traditional marriage within the Egyptian culture, and that the wife is required to meet his needs, no matter how she feels about them. He considers his wife's complaining as “rebelliousness” which means he considers himself to be the master in their relationship and decides to obtain himself and new wife. This proposed wife is Hamida, and he believes that marrying a young wife will prove his virility and allow him to fulfill his needs.
However Hamida is already engaged to marry Abbas, a neighborhood barber who she really doesn't care for but who might be a ticket out of her mother's household. When he initially becomes her suitor, she is disgusted by what ordinarily constitutes the most important element of any marriage, his undying love. Mahfouz describes Hamida as realizing "this humble young man and her own greedy ambitions” were not
compatible and would “ignite her natural aggressiveness and turn it into uncontrollable savagery and violence”, which foreshadows the death of Abbas.
Hamida only decides to consider his marriage offer after discovering his own plans for escaping Midaq Alley; as she tries to fend off his advances, he finally utters the magic words that open up, if not her heart, at least her coldly calculating brain. "I am going to work for the British Army and I might be as successful as your brother Hussain! " Abbas departs Midaq Alley to join the war and Hamida becomes a prostitute servicing the needs of the British and American troops in the waning months of WWII.
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