Description
Women occupy a pivotal position in the novel “A Woman of Two Floors” by the Syrian novelist Haifa Bitar, and they appear different from those portrayed by other writers. Here, she is an ambitious intellectual, bursting with beauty and desire. This is Nazik, a thirty-eight-year-old woman who grew up in a Christian family where she was taught spiritual love and the suppression of physical love. Nazik rejects societal values and concepts and tries to carve out her own place. Because of her beauty, she becomes the object of men’s attention. She undergoes numerous experiences and fails to be a lover, wife, or mother. Her last relationship ends in divorce. When she becomes free, she decides to pursue writing professionally and writes her first novel. She meets a famous writer in the country who will introduce her to a well-known publisher, who will publish her novel. Despite her talent for writing; She is offered a bargain, her body bartered away. She rejects the offer, fails to achieve her goal, and returns to where she came from. Yet, she carries with her a genuine sense of her inner womanhood and a triumph over her own limitations in a patriarchal society that sees women only as objects of pleasure, regardless of their status. Perhaps this is the most accurate reflection of the traditional Arab mindset, where the perception of women remains unchanged and confined to the realm of the physical body—a theme this novel attempts to explore.
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