The forceful roles of women seen among the early pharaohs were also new to me. I know something of this pattern which has been found in Europe, but nothing of the parallel story elsewhere. She writes about the archeological finding that women and their goddesses were the leaders in pre-agricultural Egypt.

El Saadawi alsowrites about other issues related to sexuality such as illegitimacy, prostitution and abortion, and the ways in which ideas about female beauty distort women’s lives.Īfter exposing women’s abuses, El Saadawi recounts the ways in which women have played a critical role in Egyptian and other Arabic history.

She relates how women were rejected when they did not bleed on their wedding night, despite the fact that bleeding is not a valid test of virginity because of normal women’s physical differences. El Saadawi also describes the problem of sexual abuse of young girls by other family members and the excessive attention given to virginity in Arab culture. She sees women as an integral part of their larger society and polices making improvements in their lives as necessary for substantial social change to occur.įemale circumcision is not the only problem which Arab women and girls faced. The images are disturbing, but El Saadawi believes that progress can only come when the problems of women, traditionally kept hidden, are exposed. She goes on to relate the physical damage to women and girls that she saw in her medical practice. The fact that both her parents were unusually well educated did not prevent them from assuming that this act was simply what was done. The Hidden Faces of Eve opens with El Saadawi’s own traumatic experience of circumcision, when she was taken from her bed at age 6, unaware of what was happening. Although her words sometimes resonate with those of western feminists, she is never a mere copy of them. Nawal El Saadawi speaks out as an Arab woman, grounding her words in the unnecessary abuses she and other women face in the present and the strengths they have shown in the past. Zed Books (1980), Paperback, 224 pages.Īn account, written in 1980, of the problems faced by Arab women by an important Egyptian doctor and literary figure. The Hidden Faces of Eve, by Nawal El Saadawi.

The hidden face of eve