the hidden face of eve by nawal el saadawi

Manifestly influenced by the Iranian revolution, Saadawi alleges that Islam has sometimes been used by imperialism and the CIA: But the content of her analysis cedes too facilely to nationalist reflexes, the effect of which is to concoct a contradictory mix of modernism and allegiance to Arab-Islamic ideals. Saadawi considers herself a socialist, and her class terminology reflects this. The effects of her attempt to address this new audience are not only reflected in the positions taken by the author they actually offer us a new Nawal Saadawi: an Arab feminist who has fallen into the deep trap of nationalist justification and defensive reactions designed to prettify reality for the benefit of critical ‘foreigners’. When she did mention the subject, it was only to note that men had always interpreted religion in their own interest, or that religion should not be permitted to interfere with the sciences.įor her first work to appear in English, however, Saadawi has written an introduction for the English-speaking public. In her Arabic writings, Saadawi tried as far as possible to avoid any confrontation with Islam and religion. Not a few Arab women, and men too, were moved by her accounts and analyses of virginity, frigidity and clitorectomy, of machismo and the pressures it brings to bear on men. Saadawi portrayed the misery of Arab women frankly and without frills. In such works as Al-Mar’a wal-Jins, Al-Untha hiya al-Asl, and Al-Mar’a wal-Sira’ al-Nafsi, she courageously broached taboo problems she had come to know intimately through her experience as a physician and psychiatrist practising in the Egyptian countryside and cities. The books of Nawal Saadawi, which began to appear in Beirut in 1974, were a revelation to many Arab intellectuals, women and men, who were unacquainted with post-1968 feminist literature. Nawal Saadawi, The Hidden Face of Eve Women in the Arab World, Zed Press, London, 1980.

The hidden face of eve by nawal el saadawi