Tuesday, May 5, 2009
The role of women in the Middle east...wait...that's right, they don't have one!!
This story was about a woman, Fatiha, getting married. She wanted to live a modern life, to go to school, and get a job. But her dreams are shattered when she is arranged to be married. This story shows how women in the Middle East are less important than men, like life in the 1800s. Wives do not express their opinion, its only the husband's that matter. A daughter should obey their father, because he does what is best and is the man of the house. A wife should do wahtever her husband says. And women should be married off, or sold like pigs, to men. At the end of the story, Aicha and another woman talk of marrying their son and daughter. We see that all women here go through life the same way. Childhood, where you cook clean and obey your father, then you marry, your husband is chosen by your father. When you are a wife, you do whatever your husband says. Motherhood, you teach you daughters how to cook clean, and eventually marry them off. And of course, you ALWAYS go with our husband's opinion. He is a man, so he knows better than you, a woman. This is really sexist, and can ruin the lives of many young women that dream of learning and working. In my opinion, it is very unfortunate that middleeastern women are treated this way.
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I definitely agree with you on the fact that the women do not have as many rights as the men do. As you put it in your blog, that is very sexist. But, the sad truth is that some of the women that are being married off at an early age to some man that they don't even know, don't realize how their are having their youth taken away from them. I can imagine that with some cases (not really Fatiha's), young women are being married and don't even know what they are missing, because their mothers and their mothers mothers and so on, have been keeping the same tradition going on for so many years. But with Fatiha, she realizes that she is probably not going to be able to attend her schooling and classes anymore, which she loves dearly. After reading this story, I kind thought that it some of the main themes resembled "Assassination of Light at the River's Flow," since both Raha and Fatiha loved learning and didn't want to be stripped of that when they were to be married off. It's kind of interesting how "Assassination of light at the River's Flow," "The Night of the Festival," and "A Wife for my Son" all have to do with women and getting married in the Middle East.
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