The Symbolism of Women in the Arabic Novel

Description

Symbolization is, in itself, a process that reduces the symbolized to a mere symbol, stripping it of its status as an object, while the symbolizer or creator appropriates all subjectivity for their own benefit. From this perspective, we can understand how women have been degraded in the Arabic novel because it is a novel of men, and even when women are used to symbolize the homeland, they lose their independence and self-determination, becoming like clay, molded by others but not shaping themselves; possessing malleability but lacking the power of freedom. This study, which analyzes the works of some major Arab novelists—Naguib Mahfouz, Tawfiq al-Hakim, and Fathi Ghanem—attempts to demonstrate how much women, as human beings, lose when they are reduced to symbols of the homeland, and how much the homeland loses when it is symbolized by a being devoid of freedom.