People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria

Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research

Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou
Faculty of Letters and Languages
Department of English

Domain: Letters and Languages

Branch: English
Option: Comparative Literature

Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master
in English
Title:

Gender Oppression and Women’s Emancipation in Both Alice Walker’s the

Color purple (1982) and Miral Al-Tahawy’s Blue Aubergine (2002):

A Comparative Study

Presented by: Supervised by:

Ms. BOUGUERRAH Kahina Dr SEDDIKI Sadia

Board of Examiners:

 Mrs. Tafroukht Zouhra Chair

 Dr Sadia Seddiki Supervisor
 Mrs Matmer Dalila. Examiner

Academic Year: 2021-2022

Dedications

To my lovely parents and brothers

To my supporting friends

To my helpful teachers

I
Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Dr. SEDDIKI Sadia

for her consistent support and guidance during the running of this project.

Furthermore, I would like to thank the teachers of the department of English for their

useful remarks and comments. I would also like to acknowledge the members of the

panel examiners for having accepted to assess this research.

II
Abstract
The present research paper is a comparative study of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) and
Miral Al-Tahawy’s The Blue Aubergine (2002) in terms of a literary representation of women in
the light of patriarchy. In fact, the purpose of our thesis is to study the affinities between the two
novels or between the female characters in relation to the themes of oppression and emancipation.
To cover this study and ground the way to our thesis, we have selected two pivotal theories in the
field of feminism, which are Feminist Theory: from margin to center (1984) and Feminism is for
everybody (2000) of the Afro-American author and militant bell hooks. Relying on these two
major works, which sustains the coming findings, I have tried to bring out the two authors’ claims
and reflections about women subordination and oppression in male dominated societies, and their
demonstration of women’s journey towards emancipation and empowerment. To narrow down
and discuss the major ideas of the two novels, I have selected the most pertinent chapters from
hooks theories, which mainly embody related aspects to patriarchy such as identity, religion, love,
marriage and work. Furthermore, these related aspects or institutions seem to be both involved and
influenced by the gender-role attribution and gender stereotypes. Thus, in this paper I have tried
to incarnate hooks assumptions through the two novels and bring evidences from these case
studies.
Keywords: Alice Walker, affinities, Bell hooks, emancipation, empowerment, feminism, gender-
role, gender stereotypes, institutions, liberation, Miral Al-Tahawy, oppression.

III
Table of Content
Dedications……………………………………………………………………………..……......I
Acknowledgments………………………..…………………………………………….……….II
Abstract…………………………..…………………………………………………….…….....III
Contents……………………………………………………………………………….……......IV
I. Introduction……………………………………………….……………….…...1

Endnotes…...................................................................................................................................6

II. Methods and Materials…………………………………………………………….…..7

1. Methods………………………………………………..……………………..….....................7
a .bell hook’s Feminist Theory Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
(1984)……………………………………………………………………………………..……...8
b.bell hook’s Feminist Theory Feminism is for Everybody (2000)
………………………………..................................................................................................................... 8
2. Materials……………………………..……………………………………………………..... 9
a. Summary of Alice walker’s the colour purple (1982)……………………… …………….9
b. Summary of Miral Al-Tahawy’s Blue Aubergine
(2002)………….……………………………………………………………………………………….. ...10
III. Results and Discussion………………………………………………………………..11
Chapter One: The Indoctrination Patriarchal
Discourse……..........................................................................................................................…13
Endnotes…………………………………………………………………………………….…..28
Chapter Two: Women’s Awakening and Empowerment
……………………………………………………………………………………………...…....31
Endnotes………………………………………………………………………………………...46
IV. Conclusion……….…………………………………………………………………........48
V. Bibliography………………………………………..………………………………….....52

IV
 I. General Introduction:

Feminism and patriarchy are recurrent themes in the field of literature. They have intrigued many

writers and inspired them to produce many fictional and non-fictional works about them. Indeed,

several writers have addressed these themes both to denounce the patriarchal values and practices,

and to preach feminist thoughts like gender equality and women emancipation. Further, those

writers endeavor to portray and testify the discriminating practices towards women and the sexist

values that imply their subordination and deny them many basic rights. So, the core concern of the

feminist literature is to discuss this cause from different angles and different contexts, as influenced

by social and cultural motifs, and to ultimately contribute to the emancipation of women.

Historically, “the term feminism, was first used by the French dramatist Alexendre Dumas the

Younger, in 1782 in a pamphlet, L’Homme-femme to designate then the emerging movement for

women’s rights.1 According to the Cambridge dictionary feminism indicates “the belief that

women should be allowed the same rights, power and opportunities as men and be treated in the

same way.2

And according to the History magazine

Feminism as a movement has roots in the earliest eras of human civilization. It is typically separated into
three waves: first wave feminism, dealing with property rights and the right to vote; second wave feminism,
focusing on equality and anti-discrimination, and third wave feminism, which started in the 1990s as a
blacklash to the second wave’s perceived privileging of white, straight women.3
As a matter of fact, the feminist cause is not a recent one, but goes back to several

decades when the members of the first wave of this movement started to thoughtfully

reconsider the patterns of the patriarchal society, and rebel against those values, which granted

more rights and privileges to men, while marginalizing and depriving women from their basic

rights. In addition to being bound to social codes and stereotypes, women have been subjects

to a great deal of oppression, submission and violence. They went through and still undergo

different forms of social injustice whether inside or outside the home. As a result, many women

sought, in one way or another, to express their frustration and ultimately shed the light on their

1
 struggle. Some of these women, including Alice Walker and Miral Al-Tahawi, opted for

literature and writing. Indeed, these two writers are deemed as typical performers of feminism

and two effective contributors to this movement for they impressively tackled this theme in

their books respectively: The Color Purple (19984), Blue Aubergine (2002).

This research is more concerned with feminism in its social and literary contexts rather than

its political one. Thus, we intend to examine two prominent feminist novels of the two celebrated

authors namely Alice Walker’s and Miral Al-Tihawi’s Blue Aubergine (2002) in relation to women

representation.

Alice walker is a Black feminist writer she has written poetry, short stories novels and essays

.Walker is the first African American women to win Pulitzer prize for fiction for her novel The

color purple (1982) She also won the national book award in (1983) for the same novel , that

highlights the status of black women in the patriarchal American society . Walker emerged as a

leading voice against racism and systemic oppression

Just like Alice walker, Miral Al-Tahawy is an Egyptian emigrant, a novelist and a storyteller

who has been participated in bringing feminism in the forefront of Arabic literature. Miral Al-

Tahawy is considered as the first Egyptian woman to present Egyptian Bedouin life beyond

stereotypes through her novels as representative of the New Age feminist writing of Jil al-

Tisʾinaat. Which illustrates the quest for a new Egyptian female identity.

My choice of Alice walker’s The Color Purple (1982) and Miral Al-Tahawy’s Blue Aubergine

(2002) is based on the motif of different cultural backgrounds (eastern and western) in order to

study the representation of women from two different cultural contexts and to examine the

influence of social motifs and paradigms on the social hierarchy. Hence, our aim is to study the

two selected books from a feminist perspective and compare them, to show that there are

undeniable common factors which color the experience of women in different societies and bring

2
out the possible similarities, we relay on bell hook’s two complementing theories titled : Feminism

From Margin to Center (1984) and Feminism For Everybody (2000).

Review of the Literature

Alice Walker’s and Miral Al-Tahawy’s Blue Aubergine (2002) are two prominent books,

which have received a bulk of criticism for the outstanding literary features that they display both

at the formal and the thematic levels. Many scholars have carried out critical analysis separately

on them due to the varied subject matters and recurrent social issues that these two books tackle

and that largely intrigue and effect society. These scholars have approached the two novels from

different perspectives using different theoretical framework to put the light on a given aspect and

express a different point of view.

In “Gender, Class, and Identity in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Suzan-Lori Parks” (2019),

Manal Abdullah and Mohammad Saleem study The Color Purple in relation to gender, class and

identity as well as the status of black women in the American society. In other words, they examine

the intersection of gender and class to consequently demonstrate their impact on the identity of

these women. They argue that “black women have to cut through both racial and patriarchal

domination as they are marginalized by both their color and their sex.”4, Their study is more

concerned with color and sex as a double oppressor of women. In brief, they examine the sense of

belonging of black women who struggle to forge an identity regardless of skin color or social class

motifs. The writers maintain that “Walker asserts that black women can have agency and voice

against injustice and can master inner strength to fight oppression and exploitation.”5

“Predicament of Women in Color Purple” (2015) by Ravindra D. Hajare is a detailed study

of the novel where the author discusses several issues such as the slavery of black women, the

changes after the Second World War, Utopian Feminism, and the contribution of Afro-American

writers such as Alice Walker to the American literature as well as to the feminist movement. Hajare

studies the uses of symbols and literary techniques in Walker’s works including The Color Purple

3
and writes that “The black women walker has depicted have been taken as symbol, as

representative of all women striving to get out of the statement by starting a fight against their

fate.”6 In fact this analysis as whole examines the “predicament” or the hard condition of black

women as represented through the protagonist Celie and the other black women.

In its turn Blue Aubergine has been approached by many scholars both Arab and foreign,

who seem to be interested in Arad societies and Arab feminism. For instance, Valerie

Anishchenkova studies Al-Tahawy’s novel as an archetype of the 1990s feminist novels which

represent feminism in Egypt during 1990s including Al-Tahawy. Anishchenkova examines the

novel both at the thematic and formal levels and affirms that “The plurality of female identity in

Blue Aubergine is highlighted through various narrative devices, such as the structure of the text

that resembles the phases of Nada’s search for identity.” 7

In addition to the quest for identity and narrative devices, Anishchenkova tackles some

other points such as “the power of voice” which denotes the impact of the writer’s words, and “the

power of pen” which refers to the technique of intertextuality or the impact of external texts

incorporated by the author in her novel.

For his part, Richard Woffenden approaches Blue Aubergine from a linguistic angle to discuss the

popular jargon and the slang used by Al-Tahawy. The use of such language makes it difficult for

translators to carry the same meaning in another language. Indeed, Woffenden writes that “to

produce an accessible English translation was very difficult, for as well as the linguistic issues

there are also many cultural issues that have to be explained to the foreign reader.” 8.

Issue and Working Hypothesis

It is clear from the review of the literature that the two books have received a great deal of

criticism; they have been examined separately or have been compared to other pertinent novels

which display the same cultural background. To our best knowledge, these two works have never

been compared together. Our aim, then, is to compare the two novels from a feminist perspective

4
and bring out the similarities in terms of women’s representation. In fact, we have selected these

two books which are written from two authors from two different societies and which display two

different cultural backgrounds to show that social hierarchy and exists in many societies and it is

influenced by respective traditions and values. In other words, patriarchy affects women all over

the world irrespective of their skin color, ethnicity and religion. Hence, our analysis will discuss

the common thematic features of the novels in relation to feminism and the representation of

female characters in a patriarchal context.

Moreover, we will attempt, throughout this work, to bring out the most underlying aspects of

patriarchy and feminism as elaborated by both authors. The work will look into the ironic

indoctrination and perpetuation of women’s oppression by women themselves. It will also explore

how oppressed women devise ways to fight patriarchy and create new fulfilling and empowering

identities and spaces for themselves.

Methodological Outline

At the methodological level, we intend to undertake our research following the IMRAD method.

Our dissertation is composed of five sections. We start our research by giving a general

introduction where we give a general overview of our topic based on a comparative study about

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Miral Al- Tahawy’s Blue Aubergine. (2002).The second

section, methods and materials, consists of bell hook’s two complementary theories named:

Feminism from the Margin to Center (1984) , Feminism for Everybody (2000) and the summary

of both Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Miral Al- Tahawy’s Blue Aubergine. The results

section contains the findings of our research. The fourth section, discussion, is divided into two

chapters titled: the indoctrination of the patriarchal discourse and Women’s Awakening and

Empowerment. The last section is a general conclusion that sums up our study and restates the

main findings

5
Endnotes:

(1)
Feminim.”History.April08, 2022.https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/feminism-

womens-history

(2) “Definition of feminism.” Cambridge University Press, 2022.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/feminism

”Feminim.”History.April08, 2022.https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/feminism-
(3)

womens-history

(4)
Abdullah, Manal. Saleem, Mohammad. “Gender, Class, and Identity in Alice Walker’s The
Color Purple and Suzan-Lori Parks’ In The Blood. (Department of European Languages and
Literature, University of Jeddah, 2019), 25.

(5) Ibid

(6)
Hajare, Ravindra D. “Predicament of Women in The Color Purple: A Critical Study.” Gurukul
International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, 2015, pp. 1-63.

Anishchenkova, Valerie. “Feminist Voices of the 1990s Generation: A Quest for Identity in
(7)
Miral Al-Tahawy’s Blue Aubergine.” Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 2017, pp.87.
(8)
Woffenden, Richard. “The coming: of age Blue Aubergine” Cairo Times 24, 2002

6
 II. Methods and Materials
a. Methods
This research paper examines the issues of patriarchy and feminism as represented in Alice

Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) and Miral Al-Tahawy’s Blue Aubergine (2002). To undertake

this study, we have relied on the American writer bell hooks’ two feminist theories namely

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984) and Feminism is for Everybody (2000). In fact,

hooks is regarded as a pillar in the field of feminism, for she has written several books and articles

that serve this cause and guide new scholars in leading their research in this area. These two

selected theories have grounded the way to our present research and provided it with a theoretical

framework on which our analysis leans.

bell hook’s Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984)

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center was first published in 1984 and revised in 2000. In this

book, hooks initially discusses the weaknesses within the feminist movement like the monopoly

of this cause by American white women and the exclusion of black ones. hooks advocates more

participation and inclusion of black feminist women in the feminist movement, and invites men

who undergo racism to join the movement and fight side by side with women.

hooks divides her book into 12 chapters and each chapter deals with a given aspect related to the

feminist movement , the American society and the “Political Solidarity between Women”, she

argues that women themselves tend to be sexist toward each other like when they prefer their sons

over their daughters and when they approve male-dominance and don’t support each other. Thus,

to end patriarchy, they should start sticking together and show solidarity to each other through an

intimate attachment of either: sisterly, motherly and friendship. Besides, the author rethinks some

other aspects such as power, work, violence, marriage and parenting which are highly influenced

by the patriarchal discourse or tradition. She, then, suggests an alternative politics based on

7
feminist values which call for equality and emancipation, in order to carry out some changes and

dissolve the patriarchal structure of society.

In the very last chapter entitled “Development Through Struggle”, hooks emphasizes the

importance of rebellion and the promising outcomes that it may engender in favor of women.

Indeed, she considers the feminist movement as liberation from patriarchy and an empowerment

for oppressed women all over the world.

bell hook’s Feminism is for Everybody (2000)

Feminism for Everybody is one of the major works of hooks which has a huge impact in the

academic field and which exposes a lengthy study of feminism in a social and a political context.

This book has seen the light in 2000 and hooks qualifies it as “a dream come true” (1) for the time

and the efforts that she has devoted to it. The author opens her discussion with an overall definition

of the feminist movement and a clarification about its aims and principles. hooks denounces the

extremist feminist thoughts and practices and explains that the feminist struggle is against the

patriarchal and sexist values rather than man himself since Feminism spans across any and all

genders.

Within that large framework, hooks divides her book into chapters to discuss different sub-

themes and underlining aspects, which are involved in patriarchy such as: marriage, religion, work,

education…etc. to examine the involvement of these institutions in the patriarchal discourse and

practices.

Our analysis draws more from the social context of patriarchy and feminism where hooks enlist

a set of major stereotypes and clichés about the distribution of roles based on the biological sex,

in addition to the transformations that the movement suggest to be carried on at the level of the

above mentioned institutions in order to fix society and achieve gender equality. Furthermore, as

far as we are concerned, violence is another main concept that we examine in this study relying on

hooks’ chapter “Ending violence” where she describes the relationship between men and women

8
as a master-slave, or a dominant-submissive relationship which implies power and violence, she

calls attention to the need to end male violence against women as an abusive force of

maintaining Domination and the role of society in perpetuating violence, that makes it

difficult to eliminate .

b. Materials

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982)

The Color purple is a novel written by the Afro-American writer Alice Walker. It was

published in 1982 and has won several prizes including the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The novel

was subsequently adapted to cinema and has become a prominent story in the American fiction.

Walker’s book is of a huge significance to black Americans, particularly black American women,

as it describes the struggle of black women in the USA against patriarchy and racism and depicts

the inspiring journey of the main character Celie.

Celie’s story evolves from a young black girl who is compelled to drop out of school to

nurse her dying mother and younger siblings, she undergoes different forms of abuse and

oppression since her childhood and she becomes a mother at the age of 14 as a result of rape by

her step-father Alphonso who was initially said to be her father. This rape results in two children

who were taken from Celie and given to unknown parents.

Illiterate, poor, and unattractive, Celie is compelled to marry a much older widower just to

handle the household and raise his children. Though completing all the tasks assigned to her, Celie

is still subject to abuse and oppression by her husband Mr. Albert without even protesting. She is

desperate and hopeless until she meets a black woman singer named Shug Avery who is her

husband’s mistress and who will mark a shift in the novel and in Celie’s life. Shug, who is

described as the total opposite of Celie: attractive, strong and independent, awakens Celie and

empowers her to handle her lot in a different manner. Hence, Celie’s life takes another road

towards empowerment and fulfillment, starting from regaining the bond with her sister Nettie, who

9
lives in Africa. Celie subsequently leaves her abusive husband and travels with Shug to another

city to start a business in cloth sewing. Celie finally feels liberated from male hegemony and

rescued from violence and oppression. She could then find peace and love amidst her people

including her sister Nettie and her children, whom she meets at the end of the novel.

Miral Al tahawy’s Blue Aubergine (2002)

Blue Aubergine is a novel originally written in Arabic by the Egyptian writer Miral-Al

Tahawy in 2002. The narrative tells the story of the protagonist Nada and revolves around the

different stages of her life to emphasize her psychological evolution and her journey towards self-

fulfillment and healing from childhood trauma. The core matter of the novel lays in the

representation of women in a society. The narrator brings the light both on the struggle of the

women of her society in relation to patriarchy and their implication or contribution to perpetuate

this tradition. Indeed, Nada undergoes a psychological crisis from her childhood and develops low

self-esteem because of her mother who constantly denigrates her and reminds her that she is not a

typical social model of girlhood and femininity. In fact, the title of the novel originates from the

name given to Nada at her birth; she was a premature baby and her skin looked blue like an

aubergine. As a child, she fell from a tree and got a large scar which distorted her mouth and made

her mother more ashamed of her. In this way, another woman (her mother) who keeps injecting

sexist values and patriarchal thoughts first introduced Nada to social standards of beauty and

gender roles.

Moreover, the narrative exposes different underlying aspects like physical appearance,

religion, education and marriage, which weigh on the construction of female identity and

determine gender roles. The journey of Nada as a young lady evolves through two extremities:

from integration and piety to anti-conformism and liberation. Indeed, in the first part of the novel,

Nada is described as an isolated religious and chaste girl who meets her society’s expectations.

10
She eventually chooses to respond to her inner voice and to rebel against all the social paradigms

that reflect sexism.

11
 III. Results
Through a close reading of Walker’s The Color Purple (19982), and Al-Tahawy’s Blue

Aubegine (2002), it is noticeable that both novels interrogate the cultural conception of

womanhood and project its literary representation in the context of “Oppression” then

“Empowerment”. In fact, the portrayal of women or the female characters in these narratives

has been based on social constructs and is related to cultural beliefs or stereotypes that are not

in the favor of women. Indeed, this stereotype-based representation perpetuates the inferiority

of women and their subordination. Further, this research has demonstrated that women are not

only victims of patriarchy, but they are themselves oppressors of other women and preachers

of the same values that denigrate them.

Our study of these two books has been carried out after a long contemplation and

consideration of the selected theories that we have relied on, and the results of our analysis have

basically encompassed two main points. The first is related to the idea of the indoctrination of

the patriarchal discourse or the internalization of sexist values mainly through women. The

analysis has also shown that both authors represent the role of women as being complicit in

the passing down of male superiority through incarnating sexist behaviors and teaching sexist

values to their children. Both Al- Tahawy and Walker have witnessed such behaviors in their

societies, thus they both have tried to reflect that women have largely contributed to the

perpetuation of their own suppression and denigration.

This analysis has also stressed the implication of social institutions such as marriage and

religion in preaching male-dominance and superiority and the subordination of women. It has

also shown the extent to which women identity is based on social constructs and stereotypes

like: for a girl to be feminine she has to be docile and obey the male of her society, the best

place of a women is her husband’s home and the best job for her is to give birth and take care

of her children.

12
 The idea of women’s awakening and empowerment in the light of feminist beliefs is

pivotal in both works. We have underlined the changes that occur at different levels and

institutions such as marriage, education and work. Through these changes women gain more

assertion, recognition and construct their own identity. Confronting their patriarchal societies,

women become rebellious and strive to end oppression. Both authors show how traditional

gender roles can be disrupted once women gather the strength to fight for themselves, and

become the leading voices to each other.

Through their works Both Alice walker and Miral Al-Tahawy have shown that gender

roles are a creation of patriarchal system in society and Women are perfectly able to do the

same things men can do when they finally taste freedom from the obstacles of discrimination.

Their whole view of life ships furthermore, the gender roles become flexible and shift

drastically as a confirmation of equality.

13
 IV. Discussion

Chapter One: The Indoctrination of a Patriarchal Discourse

This first chapter undertakes a comparative study between Alice Walker’s The Color

Purple(1982)and Miral Al-Tahawy’s Blue Aubergine (2002) from a feminist perspective

relying bell hook’s two compelling theories, namely Feminist Theory: From Margin to

Center(1984) and Feminism is for Everybody (2000).

As it is clearly noticeable, the title of this chapter gives an overall insight of what is to be

subsequently discussed in this first part. “The Indoctrination of a Patriarchal Discourse” will

undertake an analytical study of patriarchy from a social and feminist context. In other words,

we intend to tackle the theme of patriarchy in relation to the American and the Middle Eastern

societies, and shed light on the way sexist and racist values are internalized in people’s

collective mindset from an early age , we will attempt to refer and cover some related underlying

aspects and ideas that seem to highly intrigue both writers in their two respective books.

Our feminism study will rely on bell hooks feminist thoughts in order to support our claims.

We will then endeavor to illustrate from the two novels and bring out the most embodied cases

that best depict our concern in this chapter. After reading the two novels, we have noticed that

they do not only share the main concern as whole, but they also approach it mainly from the

same angle and discuss the same aspects that we stated above.

Women as Perpetuators of Patriarchal Values

Patriarchy denotes a social system where men hold a higher position than women and

benefit from more privileges because of nothing but thier gender. Thus, the tradition entails that

men (fathers, brothers, husbands) are on the lead of their families and on the control of the

women of their families in particular and of the women of their society in general.

14
 Both Alice Walker and Miral Al-Tahawy demonstrate that patriarchy was passed down from

one generation to another, and that women themselves played an important role in perpetuating

the same values they received and that always denigrated them. Indeed, women as mothers and

nurturers have a large impact on their children’s perceptions and handling of things or thoughts.

They supposedly endeavor to raise them well and teach them good manners and values;

however it seems that these women unconsciously transmit racist and sexist values that they

themselves were taught, and which affirm their subordination to men. In this respect, bell hooks

asserts that “most women are taught from childhood on that dominating and controlling others

is the basic expression of power.”1 She adds,

Women, though assigned different roles to play in society based on sex, are not taught
a different value system. It is woman’s overall acceptance of the value system of the
culture that leads her to passively absorb sexism and willingly assume a pre-determined
sex role. Although women do not have the power ruling groups of men often exert, they
do not conceptualize power differently.2

The Color Purple and Blue Aubergine, both embody bell hook’s statement. In the first

novel, Queen Nariman (Nada’s mother) incarnates the role of the oppressive mother. Instead of

showing feminine empathy and support to her daughter Nada, she seems to prefer her son and

give him more care and support. She is described as abusive for she does not only verbally

mistreat her daughter, but she also beats her and bonds her till she gets blue on her body. In

fact,“it happened that she tied her to the bed’s leg twice….the queen (her mother) hit her and

insisted on tying her to the bed leg for an hour.”3 Besides, Queen Nariman feels ashamed of

her daughter and is never proud of her because she was born as a weak premature baby which

looked like a blue aubergine. When Nada is growing up, she doesn’t seem to develop beautiful

and feminine traits to meet her mother’s expectations. In this way, Nada’s mother is

unconsciously implementing those gender values and stereotypes that she herself underwent.

In another part hooks claims that male-authority can be justified by the fact that males

are nourished since childhood with the patriarchal discourse that makes them believe that their

15
masculinity is measured by their authority over women and their apathy toward their suffering.

Thus, men enjoy manifesting their domination and toughness to assert their manliness. hooks

affirms that “in return for all the goodies men receive from patriarchy, they are required to

dominate women, to exploit and oppress us.” 4 However, it is illogical and ironic that a woman

who has been oppressed, oppresses . If women have no empathy toward each other, how can

they expect it from men? In this sense, Cherrie Moraga, a feminist Latina writer in her article

titled “La Guera” she maintains “we are afraid to look at how we have failed each other. We

are afraid to see how we have taken the values of our oppressor into our hearts and turned them

against ourselves and one another.” 5

In the same context, female characters from The Color Purple prove to be carriers and

implementers of sexist beliefs. From the very beginning of the novel, the author introduces us

to Celie’s abusive mother, though ill and dying, she does not hold herself from oppressing her

daughter. Celie laments, “My mama dead. She die screaming and cursing. She screams at me.

She cuss at me.”6 Celie, the 14years old gets abused by her step-father, whom she always

thought to be her father; he rapes her and keeps sexually harassing her. Her mother notices that

her daughter is being exploited and badly treated but she never seems to be upset. She is rather

satisfied because her husband abuses Celie instead of her. Celie says about this “and now I feels

sick every time I be the one to cook. My mama she fuss at me an look at me. She is happy,

cause he good to her now.”7

Obviously, women have internalized patriarchal views to the extent that they are

convinced that their oppression is the norm, and they believe that they are naturally born to

obey men and be subordinate to them. Women, who have always carried these values, find it

odd and abominable that another woman rebels and breaks the rules. For instance, in The Color

Purple, one of the female characters, Sofia, Harpo’s wife and Celie’s step-son’s wife, reflects

the image of a bold and brave woman who rebels against her society’s sexist and racist

16
standards. Sofia’s husband loves her dearly, but he seems to be unhappy because he cannot hit

her. She objects to being treated like the women of her surroundings. Harpo, the husband,

doesn’t actually long to mistreat his wife, but he feels inferior to his male peers and thinks that

his masculinity is ruined because he doesn’t implement the social measures of authority and

domination over women.

Celie, who is constantly oppressed and beaten, envies Sofia for the simple fact of being

bold enough. She thus incites Harpo –her son in Law- to hit his spouse. Celie says “I like Sofia,

but she don’t act like me at all.”8 She tells Harpo: “Wives is like children. You have to let ‘em

know who got the upper hand. Nothing can do that better than a good sound beating.”9 Celie is

jealous of Sofia’s courage and boldness. She doesn’t strive to be like her, but instead, she prefers

that Sofia becomes like her, oppressed. It this way, oppression seems to be a norm. hooks

maintains,

Male supremacist ideology encourages women to believe we are valueless and obtain value
only by relating to or bonding with men. We are taught that our relationships with one
another diminish rather than enrich our experience. We are taught that women are “natural”
enemies, that solidarity will never exist between us because we cannot, should not, and do not
bond with one another. We have learned these lessons well. 10

The above quote illustrates how women have largely contributed to their own suffering through

embracing their subordination and their inferiority as a status quo. They do not only yield to

abuse and oppression but they also, whether consciously or unconsciously, participate in

perpetuating this and passing down this tradition.

As a result, hooks considers a woman who perpetuates sexist values as being more

dangerous than a sexist man. She points out that “a female who remains wedded to sexist

thinking and behavior infiltrating feminist movement is a dangerous threat.”11 She believes that

it is imperative that women review their patriarchal education and be more aware of the impact

of their contribution to their own denigration and marginalization. She further writes that “the

enemy within must be transformed before we can confront the enemy outside. The threat, the

17
enemy, is sexist thought and behavior.”12 In short, women should fight their interior enemy

which is their sexist thought so that they can fight the enemy outside which is patriarchy.

Identity Based on Gender Stereotypes

Women and men have long been assigned different roles and labels based on their sex.

Their respective identities are associated to a set of codes and standards that they are taught and

are expected to incarnate in order to fit and meet the expectations of society. However, the

male-target standards reflect the superiority and domination of men, while those designed for

women imply their inferiority and subordination. In a patriarchal society, a man is active and a

woman is passive, the former orders and the latter obeys. In this context, Mary Becker says,

Men are men to the extent they are not women: masculine, independent, invulnerable,
tough, strong, aggressive, powerful, commanding, in control, rational and non-
emotional. Real women […] are dependent, vulnerable, pliant, weak, supportive,
nurturing, intuitive, emotional and empathetic. Real women and real men are essentially
different in patriarchal culture.13

The above quote displays the opposing characteristics and stereotypes respectively ascribed to

men and women. Furthermore, a female’s primary role is to serve her male relatives and be at

their disposition. She needs to be beautiful to please her husband and satisfy his desires, strong

to perform multitasks and bear the sufferings, docile and obedient, timid and chaste. On the

other hand, man is the head of the house, the authoritative protector. Less importance is given

to his physical looks and his manners; he can be whatever he wants and behave without

restraints and protocols. In this way, gender stereotypes evolve around a cultural belief system,

which classifies attitudes, behaviors and characteristics based on sex.

Both The Color Purple and Blue Aubergine epitomize the gender stereotypes. In the

Color Purple, Celie is an illiterate woman, who was forced to leave school. She is described as

dumb and lacking intelligence, thus she remains at home to help her sick mother and take care

of the household. She says: “the first time I got big Pa took me out of school, he never care that

18
I loved it[…] you too dumb to keep going to school, Pa say.”14 Though some females in the

novel are educated like Celie’s sister Nettie, the majority stay at home to perform domestic

tasks.

As far as education is concerned, during Nettie’s missionary trip to Africa for

educational and religious purposes, she becomes frustrated that only boys are allowed to go to

school. When she asks one of the mothers why she does not send her daughter to school, the

mother answers that “A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become

something.”15 Once again, a woman is a carrier of the patriarchal discourse. When Nettie says

that a girl could be a nurse or a teacher, the father protests and says “there is no place for women

to do those things.”16Nettie reflects on men-women relationship in Africa and proclaims,

There is a way that men speak to women which reminds me too much of Pa. they don’t

even look at women when women are speaking. They look at the ground and bend their

heads toward the ground. The women also do not look in a man’s face as they say. To

look In a man’s face is brazen thing to do. They look instead at his feet or his knees 17

These excerpts above illustrate how women are deprived of their basic rights like education and

freedom of speech. As a result, they grow up lacking intelligence and skills. Thus, they are

easily convinced that they do not know more than their brothers and husbands do, and they are

not concerned with any affair other than the domestic ones. In short, their appropriate place is

home and their basic task is nurturing. In this sense, Barbara Welter points out that “Home was

supposed to be a cheerful place, so that brothers, husbands and sons would not go elsewhere in

search of a good time. A woman is expected to dispense comfort and cheer.”18

Al Tahawy starts her novel with reference to beauty norms, she describes her protagonist Nada

as a “disappointment” 19 in the eyes of her family, especially her mother because she doesn’t

19
seem to inherit her beauty features. “They soon discovered that I would be a disappointment,”

says Nada.20 They call her Blue Aubergine because of her dark complexion and her skinny

body. The author describes Nada as “Small and skinny, her head bigger than her body, her legs

unable to carry her, she looked more like a small clown whose every silence, gesture, and lips

were comical.”21 Her grandmother calls her “the price of a needle” which signifies that “in the

market of young girls she will fetch no more than the price of a needle.”(21)

Under patriarchy, a female’s identity is to a large extent articulated in relation to the

beauty paradigm. In other words, a beautiful girl or woman is more feminine than an ugly one,

the beautiful one incarnates the real picture of womanhood, and thus she is regarded as fit, and

most importantly desired by men, which is indeed her foremost role. Furthermore, society has

internalized the belief that a female needs to be beautiful, to adopt a shy behavior and conform

to strict standards just because she is a female and she needs to look feminine. In contrast, males

are not restricted to beauty and behavior norms, they are males and can behave authentically

without caring if they look weird or vulgar.

To come back to beauty norms, Nada’s mother feels ashamed when her female friends

ask her about her daughter; they tell her that she doesn’t look like her. They say: “Glory be to

the creator. No one looking at her would ever guess she was your daughter, darling.”(22) Queen

Nariman strives to instill those beauty standards in her daughter. She always tells her how to

behave, otherwise she punishes her. Nada says,

and my mother will talk about my voice which is supposed to remain soft and quit, and
about my mouth, which is supposed to be completely closed especially in the presence
of her guests, and my laughter which should be short, polite, and appropriate.(23)

In this way, Nada’s mother is at once implementing and indoctrinating those patriarchal

assumptions and stereotypes about the identity of females. Nada, affected by her mother’s

remarks and her society standards, strives to meet those beauty norms in order to fit and to make

her mother proud. She says: “My mother wants me to be a princess, she made me wear shoes

20
that were too small… I would have to become taller because all princesses had slender

figures.”24

The following passage sums up Nada’s efforts to fit;

She tries to be a little taller so she hangs from trees to grow at least another
centimeters[…] she puts two bricks on her head and charges around the garden to learn
balance and poise, she stands on her hands against the walls so the blood rushes down
her head and she becomes a genius, or her cheeks turn red like Shirley Temple’s.” And
after trying every face mask beginning from apple and honey, and yogourt with lemon,
and bran with cruldred milk, and drinking a cup of hot water first in the morning, and
sleeping early, and putting tea bad on her eyes, and covering her eyelashes in castor oil,
she looked in the mirror, eye to eye, and realized that her dreams were nothing but the
ups and downs of the swing.25

Obviously, Nada feels frustrated and imprisoned by her mother’s as well as the social

expectations. As a result, she would do anything to acquire the mainstream beauty traits even

if that would cause her physical pain.

As a group, women are denied (via sex, race, and class exploitation and oppression) the
right and privilege to develop intellectually. Most women are deprived of access to
modes of thought that promote the kind of critical and analytical understanding
necessary for liberation struggle.26

women are deprived of their basic rights like education and freedom of speech. As a result, they

grow up lacking intelligence and skills. Thus, they are easily convinced that they do not know

more than their brothers and husbands do. Hook maintains,

As a group, women are denied (via sex, race, and class exploitation and oppression) the
right and privilege to develop intellectually. Most women are deprived of access to
modes of thought that promote the kind of critical and analytical understanding
necessary for liberation struggle.27

Women are not concerned with any affair other than the domestic ones. In short, their

appropriate place is home and their basic task is nurturing. In this sense, Barbara Welter points

out that “Home was supposed to be a cheerful place, so that brothers, husbands and sons would

not go elsewhere in search of a good time. A woman is expected to dispense comfort and

cheer.”28

21
Normalized Violence

Violence is a major characteristic of the patriarchal discourse. It is normalized and

justified in the name of authority and dominance. If a male uses violence over a female, it is

because she acts inappropriately and she breaks the rules. It is supposed that women need to be

beaten to be reminded that they are inferior and devalued. In this respect, hooks declares,while

I agree with Schechter that male violence against women in the family is an expression of male

domination, I believe that violence is inextricably linked to all acts of violence in this society that occur

between the powerful and the powerless, the dominant and the dominated.29

hook believes that violence is not limited to the patriarchal context (between men and

women), it is used whenever there is a powerful side and a powerless one, a dominant we part

and a submissive one, which is evidently the case in male-female relationships. She adds,

many of us who were raised in patriarchal homes where male parents maintained
domination and control by abusing women and children know that the problem was
exacerbated by the fact that women also believed that a person in authority has the right
to use force to maintain authority.30

Accordingly, violence becomes a natural practice even for women who are subjected

to it. They have always witnessed their female parents and relatives being mistreated and beaten

without protesting, thus they do not only accept it for themselves, but they also strive to hold

this tradition and pass it down like is the case of Celie who wants Harpo to suppress his wife

Sofia.

Though Nada does not seem to endure violence from men for the reason that she barely has

physical contact with them, Al-Tahawy reflects this issue through another female character

namely Safaa, who is Nada’s friend at university. Safaa is involved in a love affair with

someone who abuses her, his name is Ziyad. She says,

After holding up my underwear in front of the neighbors while he slapped her cheeks.
The glass was under my body but I didn’t scream, and after he given me a thorough

22
 kicking he said I was writing secret reports about him for state security…. I was bleeding
and my whole body was in pain.31

Safaa, a university student, though enlightened and informed about her rights and

duties, keeps accepting violence and oppression, she doesn’t only consent to be ill-treated, but

she is also adjusted to it. She says, “All this became a regular occurrence and I got used to it.”32

She adds, “the scars on my back haven’t healed yet. He says I am a whore.”33 hooks reflects

on violence in the lights of personal relationships and notes,

Women reading romances are being encouraged to accept the idea that violence
heightens and intensifies sexual pleasure. They are also encouraged to believe that
violence is a sign of masculinity and a gesture of male care that the degree to which a
man becomes violently angry corresponds to the intensity of his affection and care. This
is often the case in women’s lives. They may accept violence in intimate relationship.34

Indeed, Safaa, and other women like her romanticize violence in the sense that they

believe it to be stimulated by love and fueled by violent emotions and passion. They conceive

it as a masculine trait and this encourages their male-partners to perpetuate this practice.

On the other hand, Celie doesn’t romanticize violence, she knows that she is being

oppressed but also feels helpless to protest. She constantly gets beaten by her husband and never

says a word about it. She says: “he beat me like he beat the children. Cept he don’t never hardly

beat them. He say, Celie, git the belt… it all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood. I say to

myself. Celie, you a tree.”35 She tells her sister, “but I don’t know how to fight. All I know how

to do is stay alive.”36 Celie has been oppressed all her life, by her mother, father and then her

husband. She is jealous of Sofia because she fights and never accepts to be beaten. She tells

her, “I say it cause am jealous of you. I say it cause you do what I can’t….fight I say.”(36) And

Harpo tells Celie, “when Pa tell you to do something you do it. When he say not to, you don’t.

You don’t do what he say he beat you.”38 Celie responds: “sometimes beat me anyhow, whether

I do what he say or no.”39

Hooks maintains:Society’s acceptance and perpetuation of that violence helps maintain it and makes
it difficult to control or eliminate. That acceptance can be explained only in part by patriarchal rule
supporting male domination of women through the use of force. 40

23
 This passage implies that the perpetuation of violence is due to society’s acceptance

in general and most particularly to women’s acceptance of this practice. The acceptance and

normalization of this issue contributes to the maintenance of male domination and patriarchal

structure. It has always been this way and anyone who seeks to rebel or intends to break the

rules would be deemed as an outcast and a non-conformist.

Marriage and Sexual Relationships

Both The Color Purple and Blue Aubergine shed light on the issue of marriage and the

intimate relationship between a man and his wife or simply between a man and a woman . In

the same context of the patriarchal discourse, marriage is thought to be the best lot for a girl

and her ultimate destiny. Indeed, women under the conditions of a patriarchal system are

defined in the light of their marital life. A girl apparently comes to this world to be subsequently

a burden on her parents’ and family’s shoulders, they are only relieved once this burden is

removed through marriage. Therefore, a female is socialized to adopt a womanish behavior and

to learn domestic skills that qualify her as a true woman and a ready wife. It is maybe important

to mention that our focus does not imply the criticism of the institution of marriage as a concept

and a ritual, but we are mostly concerned with marriage as a gender role and a sexist practice.

Which define women’s responsibilities mainly on the basis of being a mother and

housewife, rather than the basis of occupational roles, Therefore man are the breadwinners

and women are the homemakers Indeed, William Little an adjunct assistant professor in

Sociology at the University of Victoria where he has claims that “Marriage was seen as a

stabilizing force because keeping the home and family in order was a wife’s main duty.”41 In

brief, a women’s fundamental’s role here is a housewife.

Most female characters in the two novels do not get married for love and complicity.

They do not choose their partners and even worse some of them like Celie repulse their

24
husbands and hate them. Indeed, Celie was forced to marry Mr. Albert, he too doesn’t have any

emotions for her and he is in love with another women namely Shug. Celie says, “Mr- marry

me to take care of his children. I marry him because my daddy made me. I don’t love Mr- and

he don’t love me. 42In this respect, Rajvi Desai argues:

In these considerations, love was hardly ever the reason people got married, which made the
purpose and primary focus of marriage a transaction –one that solidified gender roles and
determined a strict division of labor within the home. Women took care of child care and
housework, and men earned the bread and butter for the household.43

This quote depicts the way society paradigmatizes marriage and confines both women

and men to their respective gender roles. Similarly, some female characters in Blue Aubergine

surrender to the idea of a conventional and traditional marriage. For instance, Alia, who has

loudly expressed her love to Nader, ends up getting married to her cousin who is pretty older.

She says, “My cousin’s Age isn’t important… love isn’t necessary at all. I’ve come to

understand life more rationally.”44 Alia, though adopting a non-conformist attitude, seems to

be finally subdued to the reality of her society and conforms to its norms.

The sexual relationship between men and women is largely affected by society’s sexist

beliefs. The body of a woman serves as a goody to men, no more than of a source of erotic

pleasure and an extinguisher of desire. hooks sustains,

Implicit in the idea of sexual preference is the assumption that anyone of the preferred
sex can seek access to one’s body. This is a concept that promotes objectification. In a
heterosexual context it makes everyone, especially women, into sex objects. Given the
power differential created by sexist politics. Women are likely to be approached by any
man since all men are taught to assume they should have access to the bodies of all
women.45
As it is noted above, the body of a woman, devoided of its spirituality, serves as a sexual object.

Men, as given the label of the dominant, believe they can have access to the female’s body

whenever they want, even when she doesn’t consent. In this case sex is deemed as marital rape.

Accordingly, Blue Aubergin brings the light on the issue of sex through Safaa. This latter

engages with her abusive boyfriend Ziyad in repeated sexual practice. Ziyad abuses her body

and performs his fantasies even if she doesn’t like it. She says:

25
 He exhibits his sexual skills a number of times and when I can hardly take it anymore I
tell him I don’t feel pleasure this way and he says I’m frigid. Sometimes he thinks there
is a biological malfunction in my body and he insists that I was a prostitute. 46

Safaa is not married to Ziyad, he doesn’t love her, and neither does she; their bond is

based on a sexual relationship. Though she is voluntarily engaged with him, she is sometimes

compelled to satisfy his desire when she does not have lust.

Celie, though different from Safaa, as she doesn’t voluntarily sleep with Mr Albert, she

experiences the same sexual oppression. She says, “Mr- clam on top of me, do his business, in

ten minutes us both sleep… No matter what I feel. It just him. Heart feeling don’t even seem to

inter into it.”47 She adds, “most time I pretend I ain’t there. He never know the difference. Never

ast me how I feel, nothing. Just do his business, get off, go to sleep.”48 Celie and other women

that she represents getting sexually oppressed and raped by their partners. Their bodies do not

pertain to them but to their husbands. hooks notes,

Social norms as they are currently socially constructed have always privileged active sexual
expression over sexual desire. To act sexually is deemed natural, normal-to not act, unnatural,
abnormal. Such thinking corresponds with sexist role pattering. Men are socialized to act
sexually, women to not act (or to simply react to male sexual advances).”49

Religion:

The patriarchal discourse mainly affects different social aspects and envolves around

different institutions including that of religion. Indeed, religious patterns are thought to carry a

patriarchal ideology that entails the submission and the subordination of women. It preaches

the importance of women’s staying at home and serving their husbands, to be good mothers and

caring wives. Once again, the identity of women is inevitably related to men and to domesticity.

Barbara Welter argues that “one reason religion was valued was that it did not take a women

away from her “proper sphere,” her home. Unlike participation in other societies or movements

church work would not make her less domestic or submissive.”50

26
In Al-Tahawy’s novel, Nada is at first an extremely religious girl. She wears the veil “jilbab”,

gloves, recites religious texts and restrains from “el moharamat” or instinctive desires including

sex.

Furthermore, religion represents purity and piety: two vital features which make a

woman more feminine and innocent. Barbara Welter Points out that “religion or piety was the

core of a women’s virtue, the source of her strength.” 51 She further adds that “purity is as

essential as purity to young women. Its absence as unnatural and unfeminine.”52Additionally,

religion serves as a refuge for powerless people like women. They have faith in God and his

supernatural power. Thus they pray and think He will rescue them and end their misery. Celie

writes letters to God believing that he watches. Both she and Nada think God will save them

from oppression and reward them for their good attitude and patience. However, they soon lose

faith in this institution and in its ideals. Nada says, “In those days I still feared the Lord who

can see us, but I did not believe that patience is the key to the door of paradise, or that the most

beloved of his servants are the poor.”53In her turn, Celie says, “I don’t write to god no more,”54

“the God I have been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I

know. Trifling, forgetful and lowdown.”55 Celie rejects God because she had been taught to

see God as being like the people who had oppressed her. In short, the theological ideology

proves to be an effective method to inject the patriarchal discourse and convince the masses of

the subordination of women as a divine instruction and a natural condition.

This chapter has emphasized the partaking of women in patriarchy not only as victims but

mostly as active participants and carriers of sexist values that perpetuate their own denigration

and subordination in society. In fact, we have seen, throughout this chapter, the common

thematic characteristics between Alice Walker’s and Al-Tahawi’s novels which illustrate the

above discussed ideas through Celie and Nada in addition to the other female characters. We

27
have deduced that their depiction of the two characters is in one way or another fraught with

culturally-based beliefs that put women in the vein of inferiority and oppression.

In the following chapter, we will focus on the turning point of the characters and their

empowerment in the light of feminist beliefs.

28
Endnotes:
1
bell. hooks, Feminist Theory: from margin to center, 85.
2
Ibid.
(3)
Al-Tahawy,Blue Aubergine, 22.
1
Bell. hooks, Feminist Theory: from margin to center, ix.
(5)
Moraga, Cherríe. “La Güerra.” This Bridge Called My Back, edited by Cherríe Moraga

and Gloria Anzaldúa, 4th ed., State U of New York P, 2015, pp. 22-29.
(6)
Walker, The Color Purple, 12.
(7)
Ibid, 11.
(8)
Ibid, 42.
(9)
Ibid.
(10)
Bell. hook, Feminist Theory: from margin to center, 45.
(11)
Ibid.
(12)
Ibid.
(13)
Mary, Backer. “Patriarchy and Inequality: Towards a Substantive Feminism,” University of

Chicago Legzl Forum: Vol. 1999: Iss, 1, Article 3.

(14)a Walker, The Color Purple, 149.

(15)bIbid, 149.

(16)Barbara, Welter. “The Cult of True Womenhood”. The Johns Hopkins University Press,

Vol. 18, No. (1966): pp. 163, accessed May 23, 2022,https://www.jstor.org/stable/2711179
(17)
Al-Tahawy, Blue Aubergine
(18)
Ibid, 8.
(19)
Ibid.
(20)
Ibid, 12.
(21)
Ibid, 22.

29
(22)
Ibid, 27.
(23)
Ibid.
(24)
Ibid.
(25)
Bell. hook, Feminist Theory: from margin to center, 109.
(26)
Al-Tahawy, Blue Aubergine, 19.
(27)
Ibid, 144.
(28)
Bell. hook, Feminist Theory: from margin to center, 118.id.
(29)
Ibid.
(30)
Bell. hooks, Feminist Theory: from margin to center, 124.
(31)
Walker, The Color Purple, 30.
(32)
Ibid.
(33)
Ibid.
(34)
Ibid
(35)
Ibid.
(36)
Bell. hooks, Feminist Theory: from margin to center, 120.

(37)
Little, William. Introduction to Sociology: 2nd Canadian Edition. B.C Open Textbook

project, 2012. https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology2ndedition/chapter/chapter-14-

marriage-and-family/.

(38)
Walker, The Color Purple, 66.

(39)
Rajvi, Desai. “Mariage is an Inherently Unfeminist Institution.” The Swaddle. Last modified

Jul 31, 2019. https://theswaddle.com/marriage-is-an-inherently-unfeminist-institution/

(40)/
Al-Tahawy, Blue Aubergine, 71.
(41
Bell. hooks, Feminist Theory: from margin to center, 155.
(42)
Al-Tahawy, Blue Aubergine, 70.

30
(43)
Walker, The Color Purple, 68.
(44)
Ibid, 79
(45)
Ibid
(46)
Bell. hooks, Feminist Theory: from margin to center, 150.
(47)
Barbara, Welter. “The Cult of True Womenhood”. The Johns Hopkins University Press,

Vol. 18, No. (1966): pp. 153, accessed May 23, 2022, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2711179
(48)
Ibid.
(49)
Ibid.
(50)
Al-Tahawy, Blue Aubergine, 56.
(51)
Ibid
(52)
Barbara, Welter. “The Cult of True Womenhood”. The Johns Hopkins University Press,

Vol. 18, No. (1966): pp. 153, accessed May 23, 2022, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2711179
(53)
Ibid
(54)
Walker, The Color Purple, .
(55)
Ibid, 175

31
Chapter Two: Women’s Awakening and Empowerment

In the first chapter we have discussed the indoctrination of the patriarchal discourse and

we have seen the gender issues and relation-inequalities in addition to women’s subordination

and oppression as illustrated in the two studied novels. In this chapter, we will focus on the

turning point in the lives of the female characters which shows up as a watershed that breaks

the rules and brings a massive change to society patterns as a whole and most importantly to

women.

Indeed, this second chapter highlights the transition from weakness to empowerment,

from submission to rebellion, and finally from integration to awakening. In fact Alice Walker

and Al-Tahawy endeavor through their writings and the depiction of their fictional characters

to prove that women are not naturally doomed to oppression and suppression, that their

society’s decisions and norms are not static but flexible, and that they have as much potential

as men to handle their own lives and choose their own lot.

Moreover, the premise of this chapter is based on women’s awakening and

empowerment, thus we will attempt to bring the light on the different aspects. Indeed, this

chapter sets forth underlying and intertwined aspects of women’s empowerment.

bell hooks claims:

To end patriarchy, we need to be clear that we are all participants in perpetuating sexism
until we change our minds and hearts, until we let go of sexist thought and action and
replace it with feminist thought and action.1
Feminist writers such as Walker and Al-Tahawy strive through their writings to contribute

to the promotion of the feminist movement. They do not only depict the struggle of women in

the midst of a patriarchal society but they also try to offer alternatives like work, education that

give these women a more honorable and respectful position in society . They attempt primarily

to picture the status quo of the female characters through the lens of patriarchy and a sexist

32
society. However, they eventually decide to mark a divergence from this representation and

propose an unconventional identity to their fictional females. In doing so, the writers seek to

demonstrate that the reality and the lot of women depend on them; their status quo can be

changed if they want to, but most importantly if they stick together and uniformly advocate

their rights.

Sisterhood for Empowerment:

The very first step towards women liberation and empowerment is solidarity and

compassion. Indeed, women fathom that their sexist socialization and their hatred for each other

is the most foremost catalyzer that fuels the patriarchal practices and perpetuate them. hooks

asserts that “challenging and changing female sexist thinking is the first step toward creating

the powerful sisterhood that would ultimately rock our nation.”2. Walker reflects this

assumption in her novel through the different female characters, but most prominently Celie

and Shug. We have previously demonstrated how Celie is described as a weak and an abused

woman who is helpless to change her situation. But, as the novel evolves, the narrator introduces

us to Sugar Avery whose nickname is Shug. She shows up in the novel as a feminist character,

an important singer, and an eccentric and independent woman who would change the rest of

Celie’s life. Shug is involved in a love affair with Mr. Albert, Celie’s husband. At the beginning

of their encounter, they seem to repulse each other, but later on Shug becomes very ill and Celie

takes care of her till she fully recovers. Being thankful to Celie, Shug dedicates a song to her

that makes Celie feel important and strong. Furthermore, Shug awakens Celie on many issues

including her apprehension of men’s reality. She proves to her that the world does not center

on men, and that they are only much dominant and authoritative when women allow them to

be. She says, “man corrupt everything, he on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the

radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere you think he

God. But he ain’t.” 3

33
 Moreover, Shug discovers many letters that Mr. Albert hides from Celie. These letters

are from her younger sister Nettie who lives in Africa. Celie faces Mr Albret and finally dares

to tell him all the bad things she always thought about him, she says: “Sofia so surprise to hear

me speak up she ain’t chewed for ten minutes.”4 Celie and Shug read the letters and discover

many important facts about Celie’s life and her family. Shug decides to take Celie to Tennessee,

her home country to face her father, who turns up to be her stepfather, and to regain her own

legacy.

Walker utilizes the character of Shug as an empowerment motif to show that women

can lean on one another and uplift each other, and in doing so they create a strong invulnerable

bond that man and society can’t break. Celie leaves everything behind her, her husband, the

household, the duties and the expectations of her society, to start her own journey with Shug

toward liberation and self-assertion. She now feels empowered, and most importantly loved.

She says, “Shug say, Us each other’s people now, and kiss me.” 5 bell hooks affirm:. Feminist

sisterhood is rooted in shared commitment to struggle against patriarchal injustice, no matter the form

that injustice takes. 6

In this excerpt, hooks emphasizes the importance of the feminist movement in giving

voice to the oppressed women and encourages them to exchange their experiences, and

eventually bind together to end social injustice and gender inequality, and eventually to change

their unprivileged position and assert both their own collective and separated identities.

New identity

As we have already seen in the first chapter, a female’s identity is largely bound to her

physical appearance, conventional codes of femininity, gender roles and other patriarchal

norms. However, in this section devoted to women’s awakening and empowerment we will

highlight the issue of female identity as adjusted and modified by women themselves. Walker

and Al-Tahawy shed the light in the first place on the stereotypes and the traditional definition

34
of femininity and womanhood to represent the identity of women as determined by the

patriarchal discourse. Then, they both shift to another portrayal of an unconventional female

identity to claim that only women can decide who they want to be or to look irrespective of the

labels and the roles assigned to them. hooks notes that “before women’s liberation all females

young and old were socialized by sexist thinking to believe that our value rested solely on

appearance and whether we were perceived to be good looking, especially by men.” (7) In

addition to beauty standards, we have put the light on some other features that a true woman

should display like chastity, virtue, shyness, obedience and so on. However, as women start to

consider their liberation and self-esteem, they decide to defy their oppressive environment and

to assert their own thoughts and manners. They start to wear unconventional clothes, attend

places they were denied access to, adopt boyish behaviors and perform jobs that were only

targeted to men.

Blue Aubergine is a bildungsroman or a novel which revolves around the different

phases of the protagonist’s life. In the first section of the novel, Nada is portrayed as any typical

girl in a patriarchal society. Traumatized by her mother’s tough and abusive personality, she

becomes confused about her identity and ambivalent in the sense that she longs for an

adventurous life, but also seeks the approval of her family and society. In fact, Nada’s life can

be divided into two stages: conservatism and emancipation. Indeed, in the first stage, Nada is

depicted as a religious girl who wears the veil and the gloves and isolates herself. However,

Nada grows introspective and leads an inner conflict about her identity. The veil doesn’t not

only cover Nada‘s body but also her erotic thoughts and desires. Al-Tahawy uses the technique

of juxtaposition to contrast Nada to her university roommate Safaa. This latter is the very

opposite of the religious and conformist Nada, she is the ultimate incarnation of the

emancipated and anti-conformist woman. Safaa transcends the limits that her restrictive and

conservative society sets, and challenges the taboos. Safaa serves as a catalyst for Nada’s

35
awakening. She shares the very details of her sexual experience with Ziyad, she strolls with him

in the city streets at night, she wears tight and uncovering clothes and she smokes tobacco and

drinks alcohol. Inspired by Safaa’s outgoing personality and boldness to assume her own

desires, Nada decides to plunge into the other opposite extreme. She defiantly takes off the veil

and the gloves, she lets her long hair lay down on her shoulders and blow in the wind, and she

now wears tight pants and revealing clothes. Nada’s radical transformation is a transition from

integration to rebellion and self-assertion, she is likely to revolt against the social taboos, which

implied her frustration and buried desires. Nada engages in her first sexual experience with a

man she loves and describes her first night as “her birthday.”7 She is now satisfied and

convinced of her own choices as she says in her interior monologue:

Convinced in that moment that you were finally playing a role that suits you, and that
you are not a coward or blind, nor tied to the trunk of a palm tree. You are a rational
human being, past the age of consent, with a right to make your own choices. 8

In other words, Nada describes her conversion as a rebirth. She admits that she used to

be “coward” and lacking boldness to manifest her true identity. Hitherto, she decides to free

herself from the social constraints and responds to her inner voice.

Similarly, Walker tackles the theme of identity from two angles: the patriarchal perspective at

first, and the feminist one second. Indeed, she first of all represents the female characters as

defined and perceived in the midst of their sexist environment: oppressed, subordinate, inferior,

servants, submissive…. Nonetheless, Walker alters to a feminist perspective to give another

definition to female identity to demonstrate that women are able to change their status quo when

they feel brave enough to revolt against the mainstream sexist practices, and fight both their

inside and outside sexist thoughts.

Similar to Nada who gets awakened by her friend Safaa in Blue Aubergine, Celie’s life

takes another sense once she meets Shug Avery who awakens Celie and gave her possible

glimpse to revolt She encourages her to start her business in tailoring thanks to Shug Celie takes

power in her own hand. Indeed, both writers introduce the feminist and anti-conformist

36
characters namely Safaa and Shug as a motif to announce the break from the conventional and

traditional perception of the feminine identity. It is a strategy to affirm women’s recognition

as complete entities with separated identities different from those given to them by the

patriarchal society.

Identity in our context is implicitly related to the body: beauty standards, clothing,

physical relationships and so on. When women want to rebel and assert their freedom, they

usually display it through their bodies, their unconventional dressing and hair styling, their

gestures and physical practices. hooks reflects on this point and says, Understanding that females

could never be liberated if we did not develop healthy self-esteem and self-love feminist thinkers went

directly to the heart of the matter- critically examining how we feel and think about our bodies and

offering constructive strategies for change. 9

This passage restates what we have said above and clearly explains that empowered

women reconcile with their bodies and take control this time over their choices of how they

want to look or what they want to wear. hook adds,Just to be able to wear pants to work was

awesome to many women, whose jobs had required them to be constantly bending and stooping over.

For women who had never been comfortable in dresses and skirts all these changes were exciting. 10

Walker illustrates this claim through Celie who typically decides to handle her body

and pronounce her liberation through changing her clothing style. Celie, incited by Shug, can

now wear pants. The author writes: Well, she say [she refers to Shug], looking me up and down, let’s

make you some pants.

What I need pants for? I say [Celie is talking], I ain’t no man […] Mr- not going to let
his wife wear pants.
Why not? Say Shug.11

The use of pants by the writer transcends its literal connotation; it is rather used as a

symbol of empowerment and equality. Women now can wear pants just like men. In another

passage Celie says, “So me and Shug dress up in our new blue pants that match and big floppy

37
Easter hats that match too. Cept her roses red, mine yellow.” 12
The use of colors is another

symbol to reflect the vitality and the energy that comes from the innermost of the two women.

Finally Celie fathoms that all the stereotypes and the sexist roles that they have internalized and

socialized to women, are patterns to keep them under the control of men anda their disposition.

Celie’s identity shifts from an insignificant helpless black woman to an assertive one who has

her own choices and control over her body and her whole life.

Education and Work

Walker and Al-Tahawy stress the centrality of education and work for the Autonomy of

women. Indeed, a female who develops intellectual skills and a critical thinking can face and

challenge sexist practices. In an article about the role of education for women, Raouf Ahmed

Bhat asserts that “education is the milestone of women empowerment because it enables them

to respond to the challenges, to confront their traditional role and change their life.13 Education

is crucial in women’s empowerment for understanding the gender relations and the ways in

which these relations maybe changed, in addition to developing a critical thinking to discern

their rights and duties and choose what role they want to perform. Moreover, education and

work grant women an active and crucial role in society and permit them to develop a sense of

self-worth or a belief in their own ability to have full control on their own lives. Christine

Lagarde, a managing director of the international Monetary Fund identifies three prerequisite

conditions for women’s empowerment which she calls the 3 L’s which refer to: Learning,

Labor, and Leadership. She claims that “learning helps women to help themselves and break

the shackles of exclusion” 14and that “labor enables them to flourish and achieve their true

potential.” 15

In Blue Aubergine Nada incarnates the role of a well-educated woman equipped with

knowledge and a university degree. As she has always witnessed several forms of women

38
oppression and abuse in her patriarchal society, Nada sets up to write a doctoral dissertation on

“The Dialectic of Rebellion and Gender Oppression”16 , where she expresses her engaging

thoughts about patriarchy and male-domination. Nada uses this dissertation as a tool to

denounce the irrationality of her society, raise consciousness among women, and encourage

them to lead battles if necessary to prove their personalities and obtain their rights.Likely,

Walker reflects the pivotal role of instruction for the empowerment of women through the

character of Nettie. This latter is spared from the same miserable experience of her sister Celie

thanks to her intellectual skills. Nettie is an educated woman who acquired knowledge to share.

She travels to Africa with her tutors as a missionary to enlighten the native children and instruct

them. Nettie could have been like the majority of the females of her society and undergo

violence and oppression without protesting. But her potential permits her to perform an active

role in her life without being bond to and dependent on men.

Furthermore, though Celie was uneducated Black woman , she seems to find an alternative

which helps her to be autonomous: Celie starts a small business. Shug notices that Celie have

some skills in sewing and she can make beautiful pants and clothes, so she encourages her to

sew more especially those floppy comfortable pants for women, she tells her, “let’s just go

ahead and give you this diningroom for your factory and git you some more women to cut and

sew, while you sit back and design.”17Celie develops her traditional skill of sewing to make

patterns and designs new clothes where women can feel both attractive and comfortable. She

succeeds in making a profitable business and she soon launches her own enterprise called Folk

pants. Celie’s journey evolves from an oppressed and uneducated child who rears her younger

siblings to an enslaved housewife who also rears her stepchildren, works hard in the fields under

burning heat, and above all bears her husband’s violence, to eventually an empowered

independent woman leading a fulfilled life without dominant men. After that Celie achieves the

threshold of her ambitions and can finally recover from the traumatic experiences of her

39
childhood and womanhood, she longs for only one last thing which is to meet her beloved sister

and her own biological children whom she gave birth toas a result of her rape by her stepfather

Alphonso. In her letter to Nettie she says, “Am so happy, I got love, I got work, I got money,

friends and time. And you alive and be home soon. With our children.”18

Celie and Nada, in addition to the other female voices in the two novels such as Safaa, Sofia,

Shug and Nettie, represent all women in the world, regardless of their race, class and culture.

Al-Tahawy and Walker demonstrate how these women can revive from the ashes and rise when

they believe in themselves and equip themselves with knowledge and skills. Education and

work permit women to lead a better life and ensure an economic independence.

On Love, Marriage and Sexuality

As a matter of fact, marriage and male-female relationships are recurrent themes in

the Feminist discourse. The early advocates of this movement reclaim the reconstitution of

marriage and its definition as they suggest it to be based on love and mutual responsibilities

instead of domination and segregated gender roles. Besides, women adhering to a feminist

attitude restrain from traditional marriage and prefer to remain single instead of getting married

with a random man that society or family considers suitable. For instance, Al-Tahawy’s

protagonist longs for love and a romantic partner, but she is at the same time not able to maintain

a stable relationship and struggles to build strong bonds with the rough and dominant few men

she knew throughout the different stages of her life. Nada plunges into loneliness and emotional

void as long as her romantic aspirations of marriage do not seem to see the light. Moreover,

love under patriarchy is a complex and sensitive issue, which often contradicts with the feminist

discourse. In other words, feminist women display an ambivalent attitude when they long for

love and at the same time abstain to make sacrifices in favor of men and close their the eyes on

some patriarchal values. hooks declares, “Romantic love as most people understand it in

patriarchal culture makes one unaware, renders one powerless and out of control.”19

40
 Therefore, feminism calls for another definition of love which suits both men and

women.” as a feminist activist, hooks admits that she yearns for love, but in its feminist context,

she writes, “but I still wanted the love of a good man, and I still believed I could find that love.

However I was absolutely certain that first the man had to be committed feminist politics.”20

Marriage in its turn has to be adjusted to the feminist discourse, which implicatively excludes

violence and any other form of domination in the midst of this institution. In other terms,

empowered women have finally an assertive voice to proclaim their marital rights and manifest

their discontentment in case of any offensive practice toward them. hooks maintains that

“Romantic love as most people understand it in patriarchal culture makes one unaware, renders

one powerless and out of control”21 . However, after women get awakened and empowered by

each other, and as they can rely on their own potential to cover their need without depending

on men, there is less pretext for men to exercise power and domination on women. This premise

is clearly reflected by Celie who could finally speak for herself and confront the abusive men

in her life starting from her husband Mr. Albert, to her stepson Harpo and finally her stepfather

Alphonso. Ki

When Celie discovers that Mr. Albert hid the letters that her sister Nettie was sending

her for long years, she protests and raises her voice in front of him for the first time. She tells

him: “You lowdown dog is what’s wrong, I say it’s time to leave you and enter into the Creation.

And your dead body just the welcome mat I need.”22 In another passage, Celie says: “Mr- reach

over to slap me. I jab my case knife in hand.”23 Later on, she leaves for Memphis to settle down

there with Shug without even asking for his consent. He tells her that he should have locked her

up. And just let her out to work 24 but Celie responds that “the jail he plans for her is the one in

which he will rot.” 25 Days pass by and Celie’s life takes another sense, she leaves home, she

runs a successful business and lives in peace with her people in Memphis. Surprisingly, Mr.

41
Albert shows up again in her life, but he seems to be another man. They discuss and Celie

reconciles with her past and with him as well, and she even enters him in her own business.

However, when he sincerely proposes to her again, Celie declines his proposal, she says: “Mr-

done ask me to marry him again, this time in the spirit as well as in the flesh, and just after I

say Naw, I still don’t like frogs, but let’s us be friends.”26

Accordingly, Walker introduces us to another conceptualization of marriage which

implies a spiritual bond between the two concerned individuals and with their complete consent.

Celie refuses to marry Mr. Albert again because she doesn’t love him, and now that she knows

that her body is only her own and not his, she would not permit him to touch her and have

undesirable intimacy with him. As far as marital intimacy is concerned, the feminist discourse

implies the dismissal of the objectification of women’s bodies. In other words, women’s bodies

should no longer be regarded as sexual objects that pertain to men. Women should not be

subdued to marital rape and sexual practices when they want it the least or do not feel any

pleasure. In fact the patriarchal discourse injects the thought that a male is sexually active where

a female is passive. It means men are sexually dominant and can openly express their desires

and fantasies whereas women supposedly wait there to respond to these desires. In other words,

men are given much freedom to talk about sexuality, while women are taught to feel ashamed

to express their needs or to take the lead in such practices. In this respect, hook write :

Sexist thinking taught to females from birth on had made it clear that the domain of
sexual desire was always and only male, that only a female of little virtue would lay
claim to sexual need or sexual hunger.27

In the same context, Nada initially tends to hide her body’s desires in the name of

devotion and virtue, but she ends up responding to her impulsive voice for erotic pleasure. She

uses her doctoral dissertation to criticize the traditional concept of sexuality and argues that

“the concepts used to explain the honor of the body are deeply rooted concepts of social

misrepresentation and hypocrisy.”28 Furthermore, she assumes that women have the free will

42
“to behave in accordance with the logic of the possession of her own body, and the possession

of her chastity and her virginity, rather than accepting the commodification of her body.”(29

The two characters, Safaa and Shug, represent the liberated women who assume their biological

impetus for sexual pleasure and who do not feel ashamed to talk about their experiences. Shug

talks about her intimacy with Mr. Albert and say: “so when I met Albert, and once I got in his

arms, nothing could git me out.it was good.”30 In contrast, Celie does not know

much about sexual pleasure; she also does not have much knowledge about her body. One day,

Shug tells Celie to take off her clothes and sit in front of the mirror to contemplate her body

and she enlightens her about what parts are most concerned with sexual excitement. After that,

Shug asks her if she feels that excitement with Mr. Albert, when she answered by “no” the

former tells that she is still a “virgin” 31. Celie is literally not a virgin, but Shug describes her as

such because she is a stranger to sexual fulfillment.

Conventional Religion or Spirituality

Feminist activists consider that conventional religious patterns have a fundamental role in

inflecting and perpetuating patriarchal values which imply hegemony and gender inequalities.

Thus when the feminist movement came to review the implementation of the patriarchal

ideology in the social institutions, it set religion at the head of the list. Khushi Kabir, a

Bangladeshi feminist activist writes,

All religions, and am very clear about in stating all religions, are patriarchal in nature
by the very way they are created and the way they are practiced. Religions especially
revealed religions, tend to take their holy books literally, which means there is not much
room for adjustment. Discrimination of women, therefore, is the result of centuries old
beliefs, manifested in religious writings and performances which cannot be questioned.
32

Religions often preach patriarchal values and stereotypes in relations to gender roles.

For example women are given the role of nurturing, caring and giving birth. While these roles

are presented positively and as essentials, they reinforce the gender norms in society and the

43
patriarchal power structure. So, many women who set themselves up to revolt against patriarchy

look skeptically at religion and start to turn to spiritual faith instead of theological beliefs. In

brief, masses of women have lost faith in conventional religions. hooks asserts that “Choosing

alternative spiritual paths has helped many women sustain commitment to spiritual life even as

they continue to challenge and interrogate patriarchal religion.”33

In Blue Aubergine, Al-Tahawy portrays women’s disappointment in the traditional

religious paradigm through the anti-conformist characters Safaa and Nada who undergo a

profound religious crisis. In the following passage, Nada talks about a university comrade who

assumes that God is an invention to justify the power norms. She says, “he looks at my head

covering and continuous: “your lord rules as from a superior position.” [….] his words were

provocative but I didn’t disagree.”34This excerpt reveals that Nada is ambivalent and confused

about her faith; she says that his words were provocative, but at the same time she didn’t

disagree. While she still wears the veil, Nada seems to be deep-down unconvinced. In another

passage, Safaa openly declares her disappointment about religion using these words, “I didn’t

believe that patience is the key to the door of paradise, or that the most beloved of his servants

are the poor.”35 Both Nada and Safaa lost faith in the religious ideals and choose to fully live

their own lives and find joy in spirituality.

Similarly, Celie expresses her disappointment when she opines that God is unfair to

let her go though much suffering. In fact, at the very beginning of the novel Celie addresses

God and says, “I am a fourteen years old. I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give

me a sign letting me know what is happening to me.”(36) Besides, the first part of the story is

written in form of letters where Celie addresses God and chronicles the details of her life

44
pleading him to make end to her suffering. However, she eventually gives up writing him letters

thinking that he is absent and indifferent to her pain. She tells her Sister Nettie in one of her

letters: “I don’t write to God no more, I write to you.”37And when Shug asks her about what

happened to God Celie firmly responds: “what God do for me?”38 She thinks that God is as

harsh and cruel as the men she knew; he made her undergo the most awful things without mercy.

She declares: “the God I been praying and writing to is a man, and act just like all the other

mens I know.”39 Shug tries to convince Celie that God exists, but he is not the one people

worship and pray to in the church, she says that she never found God at the church, all she found

is “bunch of folks hoping for him to show.”40 Shug introduces Celie to another God that she

finds in beautiful things and emotions like when she lays back alone, or pass by a field and

admire the color purple.41 She tells her: “the things I believe. God is inside you and inside

everybody else.”42 On the other hand, Celie finds God in Shug and her Sister Nettie who

awakened her to see beauty in herself and in other things and empowered her to be enough

strong to confront the world.

To sum up, hooks affirms,

Feminist spirituality created a space for everyone to interrogate out modeled belief
systems and created new paths. Representing God in diverse ways to restoring our
respect for the sacred feminine, it has helped us find ways to affirm and re-affirm the
importance of spiritual life.”43

Accordingly, many women departed from the fundamental religion which they think

to be patriarchal, and found alternatives in spiritual beliefs which rather match with logic and

rationality.

To summarize, this second chapter has highlighted the potent moments of the protagonists’

lives and their journey from oppression to liberation

45
Endnotes
(1)
hook, bell. Feminism Is For Everybody, ix.

(2)
hook, bell. Feminism Is For Everybody, 15.

(3)
Walker, The Color Purple, 149.

(4)
Ibid, 181.

(5)
Ibid, 167.

(6) )
hook, bell. Feminism Is For Everybody, 15.

(7) )
hook, bell. Feminism Is For Everybody, 31.

(8)
Al-Tahawy, Blue Aubergine, 81.

(9)
Ibid, 81.

(10)
hook, bell. Feminism Is For Everybody, 31.

(11)
Ibid.

(12)
Walker, The Color Purple, 136.

(13)
Ibid.

(14)
Bhat, Rouf Ahmad. “Role of Education in the Empowernent of Women in India.”
Journal of Education and Practice, v6 n10 p188-191 2015. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1081705

(15)
Christine, Lagarde. “Daring the Difference: The 3 L’s of Women’s Empowerment",

International Monetary Fund. May 19, 2014.

(16)
Ibid.

(17)
Al-Tahawy, Blue Aubergine,

(18)
Walker, The Color Purple, 192.

(19)
Ibid, 193.

(20) )
hook, bell. Feminism Is For Everybody., 110.

46
(21) )
Ibid,101.

(22) )
Ibid, 101.

(23)
Walker, The Color Purple, 181.

(24)
Ibid, 187

(25)
Ibid, 127.

(26)
Ibid, 247.

(27)
hook, bell. Feminism Is For Everybody,85.

(28)
Al-Tahawy, Blue Aubergine

(29)
Ibid.

(30)
Walker, The Color Purple,115.

(31)
Ibid.

(32)
Kabir, Khushi. Made for Minds: “We need to talk about religion and patriarchy.” October

22, 2019.

(33)
hook, bell. Feminism Is For Everybody, 108.

(34)
Al-Tahawy, Blue Aubergine, 61.

(35)
Ibid, 56.

(36)
Walker, The Color Purple, 11.

(37)
Ibid, 175.

(38)
Ibid.

(39)
Ibid.

47
(40)
Ibid, 176.

(41)
Ibid.

(42)
Ibid, 177.

(43)
hook, bell. Feminism Is For Everybody, 106.

48
V. General Conclusion

Throughout our work, we have attempted to shed light on women’s struggle in the

light of patriarchy and their journey towards empowerment. We have analyzed those Alice

Walker’s The Color Purple and Miral Al-Tahawy’s The Blue Aubergine based on bell hooks’

Feminism is for Everybody and Feminism from Margin to Center highlighted the changes that

occur throughout that journey which eventually marks a passage toward freedom and

recognition.

Despite the fact that the two analyzed novels are written by authors from different

backgrounds, they emphasize the same experiences with their protagonists, they were born in

patriarchal societies and witness sexist practices since their childhood. Having had personal

experiences with patriarchy, Walker and Al-Tahawy highlight the common social norms and

paradigms that exclude the role of women as active participants in society. They also stress the

implication of women in the perpetuation of the patriarchal tradition through accepting it and

performing it on other females. In this way, women are considered as both oppressed and

oppressors.

In our analysis of the two narratives, we have attempted to cover the most relevant

aspects of patriarchy and feminism. The two writers have shed the light on the role of women

and other institutions such as religion in the upholding of a sexist mentality which grant men

more privileges. In the light of this assumption, several examples were provided from the two

novels which demonstrate the gender role segregation based on stereotypes and social standards

of beauty and behavior. The research has also focused on the fulfillment journey and the shift

that marks the female protagonists and other female characters in both narratives. The

characters get empowered when they stick together and reject the sexist values towards them.

49
 Through our study we have noticed that the two authors’ endeavor not only to represent

women’s struggle in the light gender discrimination but also to show how women’s suffering

and denigration have resulted in creating solidarity with each other, their awakening and

empowerment to fight against patriarchy. Women are finally granted more freedom and

recognition through advocating women’s rights and equality.

Nada and Celie, though belonging to different cultures and backgrounds, they both

suffer from similar predicaments and pain, and undergo similar journey from conformism to

rebellion and liberation. In this way Walker and El-Tahawi transform their novels from their

own experiences in their respective societies into a story of women at large. Both of them

transcend the barriers that society set, and boldly criticize the conventional institutions like

marriage and religion, and evoke taboos such as sex and homosexuality.

Nevertheless, walker’s The colour purple and Al-Tahawy’s Blue Aubergine diverge in

some details .in Arab society traditional patriarchal values are related to Islamic identity which

helps mal dominance. Women are put in second position they were obliged to wear hijab and

do not have access to public sphere . Which is not the case of Black women’s suffering due to

thier gender and skin . Furthermore Walker gives a happy ending to Celie and pictures her as

being free, successful and loved by friends and family. While Nada ends up lonely, misfit

because of her anti-conformist attitude and rebellious acts, and most importantly frustrated as

she did not find the pure and true love that she has long been longing for.

Last but not least, the scope of this work did not allow us to deal with all the issues,

though both novels are still rich grounds for new perspectives. The research can be enlarged

and tackled from other angles such as the intersection of gender and race and as contributing

factors to female’s discrimination and oppression.

50
VI. Bibliography

Primary source:

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York, 1982.

Al-Tahawy, Miral. Blue Aubergine. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2022.

Secondary sources

hook, bell. Feminism Is For Everybody. Cambridge: South End Press, 2000.

hook, bell. Feminist Theory: from margin to center. Boston:South End Press, 1984.

“Feminim.”History.April08,2022.https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/feminism-

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