[ms] Feminist Themes in Nawal el Saadawi’s Novels

Abstract

Nawal El Saadawi is a prominent feminist in the Egypt who voice out the Arab women’s suffering through literary writings. Among her literary outputs that become the focus of this article are her famous novels al-Wajh al-Ari li al-Mar’ah al-‘Arabiyyah (1977), Hubb fi Zaman al-Naft (1993) and al - Zina (2009).This article discusses feminisme issues that have been propagated by Nawal El Saadawi and to identify feminist theme in her three literary writings. The main methodology employed in this study is qualitative method using the content analysis approach and feminist literary critic methods. Results show that Nawal El Saadawi as a novelist and feminist, successfully raise issues of feminism in the novel through education, domestic violence and family institutions involving marriage and polygamy. Her novel’s writings became the main medium for expressing his criticism and commentary on the practice of Arab culture since the days of his youth until now.

Keywords: Nawal El Saadawi; feminism; education; domestic violence; family institutions