Shaarawi Study Guide

As you read Shaarawi's Harem Years, focus upon the following points.

• Max Weber's definition of class in The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1947), 424.
  • A "class" is any group of persons occupying the same class status.
  • The term 'class status' will be applied to the typical probability of a given state of:
    
    1. provision with goods,
    2. external conditions of life, and
    3. subjective satisfaction or frustration will be possessed by an individual or a group.

 
A. Class and Education:

• p. 73: Able to initiate divorce by Atiyya Hanim Saqqaf, make stipulations in the marriage contract for Huda
• p. 19 -20: Charitable activities help bridge private and public
• p. 74: Reverence for the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad
• Sharifa—baraka and class

B. Education and Social Authority

•   p. 40: Grammar
  • p. 41: Turkish grammar

• p. 41: Another reason to love her father: he loved literature and surrounded himself with poets and learned men.
• p. 42: But Sayyida Khadija knew grammar - itinerant poet; shared her love of poetry 
• p. 62: Failure at learning Arabic grammar again; but mastery of French
• p. 89: In Istanbul, met a girl, the sister of Hilmi Pasha, impressed by the fact that she had mastered Arabic grammar
• p. 59: Learning shields from failed relationships
  "I began to carry a book around with me --"
• p. 78: Education: "Mme Rushdi not only guarded my reputation, but also nourished my mind and spirit."
  
• p. 81: Mme Rushdi attended Shari`a courts; "I was aghast to see the blatant tyranny of men over women."
• pp. 33-34: Umm Kabira—learns to read the Koran
• pp. 68-69: class-based respect: shopping expedition to Chalon

COMING OF AGE:

• p. 80: Mme Rushdi and the Saturday salon

HONOR:

• p. 21: Notion of honor (also grounded in Islam)

 
ROLE OF LANGUAGE:

• Language of the Feminist Union: French (at once a marker of the educated upper class)
• p. 134: However, as the movement matured, the women's funds supported two monthly journals (in French and Arabic).