Feminist Themes in the Works of Miral al-Tahawi: A Study of the Novels The Tent, Blue Aubergine, and Brooklyn Heights

Miral al-Tahawi is an Egyptian immigrant who has been instrumental in bringing feminism to the forefront of Arabic literature through her novels. She has drawn the attention of her readers to the discourse of active heroic women and has advanced the feminist view of women. Choosing female heroes and numerous female characters for her novels — who all live under similar circumstances — she has sought to address the troubled lives of the women of her homeland who have been trapped by past traditions. The world of al-Tahawi’s novels is a mixture of Arab traditions, the failed aspirations of Arab women, and the undeniable identity conflict of women in the modern world. Thus, to elicit an understanding from her novels, one can examine them from the perspective of feminism. The question is to what extent the author devotes her work to women, and, given the dominance of past legacies in the novels, which spectrum of women’s classes in society receives more attention. To understand this, the present article adopts feminist criticism to study motifs such as the implications of women’s despair, poverty, deprivation, and lack of social status in the novels The Tent, Blue Aubergine, and Brooklyn Heights. Employing a descriptive-analytical approach, the article scrutinizes the role of the female body in the condition of the women. It also studies marriage and lovemaking in patriarchal and misogynistic societies and the rebellious efforts of women to achieve better conditions. The results of the study indicate that al-Tahawi does not have an optimistic view of women and that she always links their frustration and despair with their dissatisfaction with their bodies. The protagonists of these novels, who are usually reflections of the author herself, in confronting their patriarchal societies, become rebellious and iconoclastic and demand attention and the right to have high social status.