Saadawi Study Guide

As you read Saadawi's Memoirs, focus upon the following points.

• p. 7: Woman in her twenties when she wrote the novel
• p. 7: Revolutionary feminist novel which revealed the double exploitation of women; general social oppression and private oppression through marriage
• p.9: Conflict between herself and her femininity 
• p. 10: Everything about her was shameful
  
  •   "A state of enmity already existed between me and my nature."
• p. 11: "I began to search constantly for weak spots in males to console me for the powerlessness imposed on me by the fact of being female."
• p. 13: Onset of menstruation (10 yrs. old)
• pp. 11-12: Her body the source of shame; tyrannical femininity
• p. 13: Doorman who noticed her sexuality
• p. 14: Marriage: that loathsome word ...!
• p. 15: The hateful, constricted world of women with its permanent reek of garlic and onions
• p. 15: Grandmother's eyes on her breasts; meeting with potential suitor
• p. 15: Father had acknowledged her intelligence; her father says "she's first in her group at primary school this year"
• FIRST SIGN OF REBELLION: refusal to wear her cream dress and accentuate her attractiveness, her virginity
• pp. 15-16: Body the locus of shame and cause of rebellion: breasts, long hair
• p. 17: Chains on my arms and legs and round my neck every day
• p. 17: Gets rid of a "woman's crowning glory"
• p. 18: My challenging of authority had turned me into an immovable force
  "FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE; I UNDERSTOOD THE MEANING OF VICTORY; FEAR LED ONLY TO DEFEAT, AND VICTORY DEMANDED COURAGE"
• p. 19: ROLE OF LEARNING AGAIN: Favorite room which contained books, loved school except home economics
• p. 19: Longing for companionship
• pp. 20-21: Rude reminders of her sexuality and how she is now viewed by male former childhood friends
• p. 22: "I hated my femininity, resented my nature, and knew nothing about my body."
• p. 23: "MEDICINE WAS A TERRIFYING THING.  IT INSPIRED RESPECT, EVEN VENERATION, IN MY MOTHER AND BROTHER AND FATHER. ...I'd prove to nature that I could overcome the disadvantages of the frail body she'd clothed me in, with its shameful parts both inside and out."
• p. 24: "I had charted my way in life, the way of the mind.  I had carried out the death sentence on my body so that I no longer felt it existed."
• p. 24: Asserts her power over the male naked corpse
• p. 25: "In the course of it men lost their dread power and illusory greatness in my eyes."
  
  • man as a god toppled before her eyes
• PP. 25-26: WHAT DOES A MAN'S BODY SIGNIFY IN THE WOMAN'S, SOCIETY'S EYES? 
• p. 26: De-mystification of the male body "How ugly man was, both inside and out"
• pp. 26-27: A new perspective on the value of feminine beauty
• pp. 29-30ff.: The creation of a doctor; learning the secrets of the body: subverts CULTURAL CONSTRUCTS about the body
• p. 32: Science revealed the secrets of human existence to me and made nonsense of the huge differences which my mother had tried to construct between me and my brother.
• pp. 33-34: Struggle with her (feminine?) compassion
  p. 34: The god of science is mighty and merciless.
• p. 36: I was alone with a man in the middle of the night
• p. 38: SELF-REALIZATION: THE FOCUS OF THE STRUGGLE INSIDE ME WIDENED OUT FROM MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY TO EMBRACE HUMANKIND AS A WHOLE
• P. 39: Science cannot defeat death SCIENCE TOPPLED FROM ITS THRONE AND FELL AT MY FEET NAKED AND POWERLESS
• p.41: Comfortable with her body; "I stretched and yawned in delicious indolence"
• p.42: Rejection of culture; acceptance of nature
  "NATURE WAS A BEAUTIFUL AND MIGHTY GOD; CULTURE CHEAP SHODDY GARMENTS"
• p.42: "I felt that emotion was sharper-witted than reason"
• p. 43: Vivid description of lush nature, acceptance of life; validation of womanhood in its life-supporting activities of procreation and nurturing
• p. 44: Description of rebirth; acceptance of the self
• p. 45: I was seeing the patient as a whole person
• p. 46: pleasure of pain, pleasure of my humanity
  Free rein to emotions; to dislodge the dark veil that was insulating my heart
• p. 47: Rediscovery of love: LOVE OF LIFE
• pp. 48-49ff: Awakenings of sexual longings
• p. 55: The man says, "A beautiful woman cannot be clever"
• p. 61: Marriage contract
• p. 63: Husband's need to control (an engineer)
• p. 64: PSYHOLOGICAL INDEPENDENCE
• p. 67: Defiance; dares to leave her husband
• p. 70 ff: Search for the perfect man
• p. 75: The battle between a man and a woman
• p. 77: "It was my will which guided my behavior"
• p. 78: Arrogance turns a man into a stupid, feeble-minded creature
• p. 79: Fate of a woman living alone
• p. 81: "All society's tragedy came into my surgery; deception and deceit"
• p. 71: "All or nothing was my abiding principle"
  
• p. 88: Meeting with a second husband (an artist; songwriter)