WST 250

Summer 2010: Final Exam

Lujein Farhat @ 20285

As per the course objectives and outcomes described in the syllabus, the
books and reviews which I have read have helped to expand my
understanding of the intersection of gender with other categories and the
strategies of coping that women have employed throughout their lives. The
books of note which particularly seemed to point at these intersections were
Maya Angelous I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which was a memoir
which focused on race, Fatima Mernissis Dreams of Trespass, which
delineated the intersection of gender with class and history, and Camelia
Entekhabifards Camelia; save yourself by telling the truth, a memoir that
combines sexuality and historically politicized struggle with the circumstance
of being a woman. Some other books which were noteworthy in the ways
that women attempted to cope with their struggles was one entitled Call Girl,
whose author, Jenny, took a radical path in trying to understand herself and
her place in society, and Helen Kellers autobiography, which stresses the
meaning of both physical and mental adversity in shaping womens lives.
The importance of establishing the framework of feminism in each of these
books is crucial to understanding their place in illuminating or helping to
understand the predicament of each of these women in different cultures.
For the idea that women in all places and times understand the meaning of
feminism and what it entails on a conscious level, naming the root and
source of discontent in their lives, and calling for equality in a very vocal and
specific manner, is nave and wishful thinking. And of feminist leanings and
self-prescribed activism, only Fatima Mernissi would fit the definition. The
rest of the women mentioned were much more focused on what their lives
presented as adversity, encompassing the gender issue, but not specifying
the root of the evil to stem from this problem. Rather, they spoke of how they
lived their lives with sometimes little influence from the ideology which is
feminism, and this isolated context still can teach much about how do actual
women deal with their issues and how and where do they apply certain
feminist ideas to their lives.
The autobiography of Maya Angelou, a testament to the issue of racism in a
turbulent time during American history, speaks to both the intersection of

gender and race and to the ways in which women have become creators and
shapers of culture. To take her typified childhood, filled with abuse and
secondary-status, even as a young woman later who aspired to become
successful not in sports but academia, coming into her fully fledged potential
was both a struggle and a journey of the self. She fought back by becoming
the first female railroad worker, attempting and succeeding at entering into
academia, and even going out and having a baby when she doubted her
sexuality was in question. Her dream of equality was a doubly hard one,
because she was discriminated against not only on the basis of her race, but
also on the basis of her gender. She is today one of the most strident voices
in American consciousness, and her challenge to the world is her
autobiography and her success where other women of her race couldnt.
Fatima Mernissis childhood memoir of life in Algeria with overtones of
feminist consciousness and strong women models is set in an atmosphere
that could be assumed to be the antithesis of what she is today. Life in a
harem is neither the decadent sensual experience that some might assume
who are unfamiliar with the truth of such an existence, nor a vapid life with
few entertainments and little work. It was for her a preoccupation, for her
and all its inhabitants, with the line that demarked the harem from the rest of
the world, the hudud or frontier. The frustration of the women in her life at
being cooped up and shielded from experiencing the rest of the world drove
her to question the harem as an establishment, to journey in her childhood
years along her quest for answers. Though we learn that she knows this
boundary first as a physical wall, it becomes apparent that it is also
psychological, a kind of limitation of thought and behavior. The harem which
she lived in is of the upper middle class of her society, a representation of
the wealthy landowner class that her family was a part of. And though it may
seem to outsiders that the inhabitants were content with the life that they
led, they were in fact split into two camps, one that opposed the harem life
and the other that supported it and other forms of traditional life. Fatima
relates how the farm harem of her maternal grandmother with all of its
activities and outdoor freedoms still had the harem engraved upon their
consciousness. The coping there was just a little bit easier. For the harem in
the city of Fez, their physical and youthful exuberance was translated into
plays of great drama and storytelling and beauty treatments of elaborate
ritual. The camp which dreamt of a life outside the walls was staunchly
supporting the nationalist movement and spoke of equality in work and
movement, education and occupation. It was her mother and maternal
grandmother Yasmina, Aunt Habiba the storyteller and Chama the dramatist

which advocated so strongly for womens equality. And though they were not
allowed many freedoms, their minds were unfettered, and it was this spirit
which Mernissi strove to capture and show the outside world. It was her
mothers insistence upon allowing her daughter to attend the new French
school systems that transformed her daughters dreams from hopes to
reality. The vocal resistance which they exhibited was their only tool until
education. Taught to believe in the power of words and choosing them
carefully, they became her most successful tool later in life when her
feminist seeds took root in adulthood.
The memoir of Camelia Entekhabifard which I reviewed for this course was
an example of the struggle of women in post-revolutionary Iran to gain their
independence and freedom. In this historic-political context the memoir was
different from the others which were presented in that the emphasis was on
the way which she dealt with her oppressive government. Most women can
claim that society and its traditions enforce upon them certain ways and
lifestyles that they either agree or disagree with. Laws do not limit what the
society can enforce within itself. But in Iran, that was exactly the case.
Rebelling against the government was what it took if the Iranian people
wanted to make certain choices that might be seen as anti-Islamic, like not
wearing a headscarf or listening to music. It is in this context that Camelia
must try to forge an identity that believes in its validity and has intrinsic
value because it is individual. It is the belief that her father imparts to her,
acknowledging that in our society, where its a sin to be a woman, I want
you and your sister to be powerful and respected, that steels her spine and
gives her the courage to resist and fight the oppression that was difficult
because of her political affiliation and her status as a woman. She tries to
find ways to cope with the oppression by resorting to poetry and writing,
becoming a journalist in a society that hedged the freedom of the press.
They took her into custody when her open-minded views and quest for truth
and genuine social ills brought her dangerously close to exposing
government corruption. She also showed rebellion and lack of patience with
the men in her life who tried to tie her down and restrict her both
professionally and emotionally. She broke off a relationship with a man who
expected her to be content just making her husbands dinner and cleaning
the house, a very limited role after being such an internationally involved
person. It was her constant push for a greater role in life and her dream of
freedom and political and religious emancipation that helped her break
through the difficulties of her life.

The other two memoirs were interesting insofar as they showed women who
were outside the norm of experience. The autobiography of Jenny in the Call
Girl depicts a life of the testing of social boundaries the likes of which most
highly educated women do not become involved in. Her story is one of
forthcoming and painfully honest details about her lowest point in life, when
she becomes a prostitute. The lack of success that she felt drove her to
devalue herself and become a receptacle of other mens fantasies and
unfulfilled desires. Her body became a refuse for sick men, and she used it
so without thought. She even goes so far as to absolve herself of the sin by
saying how she thought of it just as another job, and how another prostitute
taught her to think this way is beyond me. Though she had a job as a
professor in a university, she wanted to find meaning for her life in this
unconventional way. It was a recourse that she took in order to try to fight
against her feeling of failure, and it is a lesson to those who would take the
lower alternative just to lose themselves in another life. She recounts how
she pulled herself up by going back to her job and vowing never to return to
this profession, and how after cleaning up her act, she found a man who
loved her and married her. Im not sure about the lesson she was trying to
impart, but I do find myself questioning the wisdom of holding up her life as
a model for other people. As a woman who made many mistakes in her life,
in her society maybe it wouldnt be beyond the impossible to hope for
redemption, but in this society it would be.
The final memoir which I felt was a very important one to remark on was that
of Helen Keller. She is not a feminist, but she is a woman who is remarkable
simply because she can communicate at all, let alone march or ask for rights.
For all the woman who are possessed of sight and sound and speech, this is
a human lesson embedded in her life. Not only men should question
themselves, but women who think they are powerless and defenseless
against society. If a woman who can neither see or hear or speak properly
was able to find meaning in her life and wrote a book and spoke with many
people and loved to experience life to the fullest, what should women who
walk around every day with these gifts do? Though she was not explicitly
feminist, the fact that she strove so hard to achieve the effortless tasks of
reading and writing and communicating means that she did not rate herself
as secondary, that she did not feel that her mind, though trapped in her
skull, did not have something meaningful to say. It was the persistence of her
parents on communicating and educating her that allowed her a chance at
self-fulfillment. Her life is a lesson to every woman, to work hard and fight
against barriers that are not something that god ordained, not an irreparable

loss of sight or hearing or speech. She coped with adversity by dedication

and education and persistence. Why cannot all women do the same?
The intersection points of gender along with almost every category known to
people that were demonstrated in the autobiographies that we read in this
course helped to broaden my understanding of the issues that women of
diverse nationalities and backgrounds faced. Though not every woman coped
with their difficulties and problems from a feminist perspective, many had
strong beliefs that women and men were capable of doing and achieving the
same things in life. It is through reading these stories of strong and weak,
young and old, western or eastern women that has helped me to see the
common threads in them. For sure, women have voices, and they are using
them to describe what is personal, public, shameful and pure in their lives.
It is the image of themselves that they most want to present; a public
acknowledgment of the life that they felt would benefit others if they read.
The truth of their accounts was left to their discretion. I am of firm belief that
we recreate ourselves every day we wake, as long as we live. One event, one
shift in perception, one moment can become crucial, one person the fulcrum
of our existence, one interpretation the story we choose to believe about
ourselves. As complex and vocal, as powerful and as insistent as any
individual human being is, are these womens stories. I am grateful for the
opportunity to be introduced to, in so short a time, all these womens
memoirs and autobiographies, for they are and continue to be shining
beacons of experience and wisdom along our way.