Prostitution in Nawal El Saadawis Woman at Point Zero and Bernard Shaws Mrs Warrens Profession - Essay Example

? Damascus Faculty of Art and Humanities English Department Graduate Literary Studies Prostitution In Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero & George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession A report submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Arts Submitted by: Suher Hussein Supervised by: Dr. Nada Zen Alden 11- July- 2012 In public life, deviations, whether forced or done intentionally, always exist. Among many social deviations, almost all countries and all ages have prostitution1. The reason women plunge into the world of sex are countless. Hence, through contextualizing these causes against the oppression of women in patriarchal societies, in this paper I intend to expose the root causes of women’s prostitution in two controversial literary works, Firdaus in Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi and Kitty Warren in Mrs. Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw2, In any patriarchal society, to be a woman is to be oppressed. No matter what her class position, language, race, or nationality is, a woman is always discriminated against due to her gender. Although gender differences do not matter, as long as they do not deliver gender inequality, Kate Millett argues that, “The limited role allotted [to] the female tends to arrest her at the level of biological experience” (26). Consequently, most of the social problems that most women face around the world emerge from the cradle of injustice and gender bias by men to gain supremacy over women, so “it is generally true that gender is constructed in patriarchy to serve the interests of male supremacy” (Greene and Kahn 3). In fact, women are doubly oppressed in patriarchal societies. First, by depriving them of their basic rights of education and of respectable work, and forcing them to resort to other twisted ways such as prostitution as a necessary evil to compensate for the lost opportunities. Then, by condemning those oppressed women for being prostitutes. This shows the hypocrisy of a society that condemns prostitution while encouraging the discrimination against women that makes prostitution inevitable. Thus, to reduce prostitution, a certain society must put women in an equal position to that of men. Also, “we must aim for a society in which we have ceased to categorize logic, conceptualization and rationality as ‘masculine’, not for one from which these virtues have been expelled altogether as ‘unfeminine’” (Kristeva, p. 160). Along with the oppression of women, there are many other causes for women's involvement in prostitution. Among these causes are the failure of familial relationships, the failure of romance, the status of women’s education, and the low/ impecunious economic conditions. Unhealthy familial relationships are one of the sociological causes behind women’s prostitution because family plays an affective, complex role in the upbringing of children. It is widely known that almost all prostitutes come from broken families in which females particularly suffer from bad if not awful circumstances. These circumstances include sexual/physical abuse by one of the patriarchal figures of the house, i.e., father, stepfather, uncle, siblings, cousins. This is similar to what happened to Firdaus in Woman at Point Zero. Firdaus was raised in unhealthy familial conditions, where her father beats her mother. Firdaus says, “When the child that died was a boy, he would beat my mother, then have his supper and lie down to sleep”3 (El Saddawi 17). By the same token, her father also beats her (Firdaus), “I went in search of my father and asked him for a piaster. He hit me on my head and shouted, ‘I have no piasters’” (El Saadawi 69). Together with the physical abuse by her father, her uncle constantly molests her; Firdaus says: But I paid no attention until the moment when I would glimpse my uncle’s hand moving slowly from behind the book he was reading to touch my leg. The next moment I could feel it travelling up my thigh with cautious, stealthy, trembling movement. (El Saadawi 13) Therefore, being exposed to sexual experiences from a young age would definitely affect her psychology in later stages. In addition to that, when she married Sheikh Mahmoud, he from time to time beats her with or without reason. Firdaus says, “He got into the habit of beating me whether he had a reason for it or not”, and “on one occasion he hit me all over with his shoe. My face and body became swollen and bruised” (El Saadawi 46).4 Along with beating her, Sheikh Mahmoud forces Firdaus to have sexual intercourse with him, as he argues that it is his right since he is feeding her. Sheikh Mahmoud inquires: Why did you come back from your uncle’s house? Couldn’t he bear to feed you for a few days? Now you will realize I’m the only person who can put up with you, and who is prepared to feed you ... He leapt on me like a mad dog. The hole in his swelling was oozing drops of foul-smelling pus. I did not turn my face or my nose this time. I surrendered my face to his face and my body to his body, passively, without any resistance. (El Saadawi 47) Thus, domestic violence and sexual abuse are common causes that women attempt to escape through the path of prostitution. This is what Firdaus did. In the marriage context, a woman’s role is similar to that of a prostitute, in the sense that for her sexual and domestic services she gets financial support from her husband. That is, “the general legal assumption that marriage involves an exchange of the female’s domestic service and (sexual) consortium in return for financial support. (Millett 34-35). Similarly, the wife is more like a slave who in return for her services gets food: It is important to understand that as with any group whose existence is parasitic to its rulers, women are a dependency class who live on surplus. And their marginal life frequently renders them conservative, for like all persons in their situation (slaves are a classic example here) they identify their own survival with the prosperity of those who feed them. (Millett 38) Firdaus came to realise that being a prostitute is much better than being a wife. Firdaus argues that, “the least deluded of all women was the prostitute. That marriage was the system built on the most cruel suffering of women” (El Saadawi 94). Based on what Firdaus faces, in my opinion, are good justifications to quit the family life5 that enslaves her. In fact, part of women’s enslavement is the economic necessity argues Shaw6: Under the Capitalist system women found themselves worse off than men because, as Capitalism made a slave of the man, and then, by paying the woman through him, made her his slave, she became the slave of a slave, which is the worst sort of slavery. (197) Therefore, to Firdaus ‘marriage’ is a women-enslaving institution, thus she chooses to be a free woman through prostitution, and break the old-fashioned oppressive rules7 that enslave her. The failure of familial relationships in G. B. Shaw’s Miss Warren’s Profession are not as radically tackled or clearly mentioned as they are in Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero. As readers we are not informed in bold letters that Mrs. Warren’s8 father left her mother, but we rather conclude that information from what Mrs. Warren says, “She [her mother] called herself a widow and had a fried-fish shop down by the Mint, and kept herself and four daughters out of it” (Shaw 57). Thus, her father puts the extra burden upon the mother’s shoulder to raise her four daughters and to provide their livelihood. Not to mention that Kitty Warren is an unmarried mother that also puts more responsibility on her. Since Kitty is a poor woman in a merciless patriarchal society, the fact is that a good deal of money must be provided to raise her daughter Vivie, so she resorts to prostitution as their source of livelihood. Another sociological reason behind prostitution is the failure of romance, the disappointments in love. This is especially true in relationships where a sexual intercourse was involved. For instance, in Egypt, few girls would engage in sexual intercourse under the male’s pretext of marriage afterwards, which is something that never happens to Firdaus. Ibrahim used to sleep with her under a similar pretext, that is love, “on the third day he took me to his small house and I spent the night with him. We talked very quietly for a long time and we had said all we had to say, we gave ourselves to one another in a warm embrace” (El Saadawi 89). Later on, Ibrahim abandons Firdaus to marry his boss’ daughter for more financial benefits. That accident left an inerasable impact in Firdaus’ life, who later on knew that he did not love her. Firdaus says, “I realized that he had not really been in love with me, but came to me every night only because he did not have to pay” (El Saadawi 96). Millett argues that romance is another way through which men exploit/manipulate women. She says, “The concept of romantic love affords a means of emotional manipulation which the male is free to exploit, since love is the only circumstance in which the female is (ideologically) pardoned for sexual activity” (37). Therefore, in this context, sexual intercourse can be either ecstasy for the woman when it is accompanied with love as when Firdaus says, “Love has made me a different person. It has made the world beautiful” (El Saadawi 90), or humiliate the woman, “Nothing could really hurt me and make me suffer then the way I was suffering now. Never had I felt so humiliated as I felt this time” (El Saadawi 93). Firdaus felt humiliated because she realises that Ibrahim exploited her under the motto of love then he threw her away by marrying his manager’s daughter. On the other hand, in G. B. Shaw’s play we do not see him mention the failure of romance clearly. He presents it in a rather different way. Love in the case of G. B. Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession is referred to in the dichotomy of marriage/the failure to get married. We can trace that in Mrs. Warren’s statement: What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him? … The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her. If she’s in his own station of life, let her make him marry her; but if she’s far beneath him she cant expect it. (Shaw 59-60) Thus, failure of romance, or even the failure to get married, both are connected with why women turn into prostitutes. Women become prostitutes for many reasons. One of these reasons is to make up for the lost opportunity to ensure a provider. This is what happened with Mrs. Warren’s sister who, “married a Government labourer in the Deptford victualling yard and kept his room and the three children neat and tidy on eighteen shillings a week” (Shaw 57). Among the other reasons are frustration and disappointment like Firdaus' case; Firdaus says, “Now I was aware of the reality, of the truth Now I know what I wanted. Now there is no room for illusions. A successful prostitute was better than a misled saint” (El Saadawi 94). This is the truth that tears the veil exposing the hypocrisy of the patriarchal society, the truth that there is no true love only exploitation of the female body and soul. Women in a patriarchal society are always in a subordinate position to that of men. This is prominent in educational life. Education is a powerful weapon that the majority of women around the world were and still deprived of. The main reason behind this deprivation is gender discrimination against females. In addition, patriarchy is afraid that women might get power through education to qualify them as their rivals; this mere idea terrifies men, If knowledge is power, power is also knowledge, and a large factor in their [women] subordinate position is the fairly systematic ignorance patriarchy imposes upon women ... Since education and economy are so closely related in the advanced nations ... traditionally patriarchy permitted occasional minimal literacy to women while higher education was closed to them. (Millett 42) Similarly, Firdaus was not able to continue her higher education because her uncle took the liberty to deprive her from that right, he claims: “To the university? To a place where she will be sitting side by side with men? A respected Sheikh and man of religion like myself send his niece [Firdaus] off to mix in the company of men?!” (El Saadawi 37). In other words, the lack of education is a part of why women head towards prostitution. If Firdaus were able to continue her higher education she would have ended up in a respectable way of life rather than as a prostitute. Thus, women have to be educated in order to attain their rights and to develop qualifications to widen their horizons along with the potentials in the modern world. Unlike Firdaus, Vivie Warren was able to continue her higher education in one of the most famous universities in the world, Cambridge University. Her higher education and the respectable job were on the expense of Mrs. Warren’s body. Kitty says, “Why am I independent and able to give my daughter a first-rate education, when other women that had just as good opportunities are in the gutter? Because I always knew how to respect myself and control myself” (Shaw 60). This was an education that Mrs. Warren was deprived of because she could not afford enough money to live. She says, Do you think I was brought up like you? Able to pick and choose my own way of life? Do you think I did what I did because I liked it. Or thought it right, or wouldnt rather have gone to college and been a lady if I’d had the chance? (Shaw 57) Hence, Kitty Warren could not attend university as her daughter did because she did not have the opportunity that she provides to her daughter. Thus, education is considered as a life jacket to save/lift the family from poverty. That is why most women with no education or a good level of education find no place in the respectable world of opportunities; hence, trading in their “good looks” is the only job that is available for them. Last, but not least, the economic factor is one of the root causes of women’s involvement in prostitution. There is a correlation between women’s economic situation and their level of their education. The lack of education will lead to the lack of the alternative means of livelihood, i.e., jobs. Women, who are not enrolled in any type of educational institution, are less likely to be fortunate in the job market and more likely to be dependent on men as their providers. Even if women get the chance to hold a job, soon they will be under various forms of exploitation. Sexual exploitation is the most recurrent form of exploitation that a female will face, sooner or later. Firdaus says: I even refuse invitations to lunch, or to a drive along the Nile ... I felt sorry for the other girls who were guileless enough to offer their bodies and their physical efforts every night in return for a meal, or a good yearly report, or just to ensure that they would not be treated unfairly, or discriminated against, or transferred. (El Saadawi 82) Also, exhausting/humiliating females workers with low paid work is another form of exploitation. Says Firdaus: I also knew that if I lost my job, all I would lose with it was the miserable salary, the contempt I could read every day in the eyes of the higher level executives when they looked at the lesser female official”, and “an employee is scared of losing her job and becoming a prostitute because she does not understand that the prostitute’s life is in fact better than her. (El Saadawi 82) In other words, the economic necessity—the low/impecunious economic condition— is one of the most related reasons behind prostitution. Mann argues that, “Prostitutes were generally working class girls drawn to the work for economic reasons. The “respectable” work available to women at the time—in factories, domestic service, and restaurants—was poorly paid, physically exhausting, sometimes dangerous, and generally unpleasant” (Par. 2). After that illustration, it is obvious that most prostitutes are poor women who belong to the working class of society. On the other hand, the economic statues of this low/working class in Victorian England (1837-1901) is similar to that of Egypt in 1973, where men, women, and even children used to perform a daily labour with very low wages. These poor families, most of the time sleep without food, wear dirty clothes, and have no healthy environment whether at home or at work. These bad conditions cause the death of many family members. This is exactly what happened to Mrs. Warren’s sister, “One of them [her half sisters] worked in a whitelead factory twelve hours a day for nine shillings a week until she died of lead poisoning. She only expected to get her hands paralyzed [because she has to earn her living]; but she died” (Shaw 57). Thus, poorly paid jobs that exhaust the female’s body and soul are the key driver for females to enter into the world of prostitution. This is clearly expressed by Kitty, “Do you think we were such fools to let other people trade in our good looks by employing us as shopgirls, or barmaids, or waitress, when we could trade in them ourselves and get all the profits instead of starvation wages? Not likely” (Shaw 59). It is important to mention that in the Victorian age, the available jobs that poor women were able to do were domestic servants, cotton workers, mineworkers9, and agricultural workers. The wages compared to the exhausting labour were usually very poor, and not enough to purchase the necessities of domestic life. That is similar to what happened with Mrs. Warren, says she: That clergyman got me a situation as a scullery main in a temperance restaurant where they sent out for anything you liked. Then I was a waitress; and then I went to the bar at Waterloo station: fourteen hours a day serving drinks and washing glasses for four shillings a week and my board. That was considered a great promotion for me ... where can a woman get the money to save in any other business? Could you save out of four shillings a week and keep yourself dressed as well? (Shaw 58) Hence, most women in a similar condition to Mrs. Warren, become prostitutes as their only way to survive, John Allett argues that: Her [Mrs. Warren] choices were tainted, limited to selecting among a variety of evils. The point Shaw wishes to stress, however, is that in her own untutored way Kitty was nonetheless abiding by cherished liberal principles when she finally decided to become a prostitute. (28) Mrs. Warrens expresses this idea by saying: Why shouldn’t I have done it? The house in Brussels was real high class: a much better place for a woman to be in than the factory where Anne Jane got poisoned. None of the girls were ever treated as I was treated in the scullery of that temperance place, or at the Waterloo bar, or at home. (Shaw 58) Actually, what Mrs. Warren uses as a justification is also justified by G.B.Shaw. He argues10: It is no defense at all of the vice which she organizes. It is no defense of an immoral life to say that the alternative offered by society collectively to poor women is a miserable life, starved, overworked, fetid, ailing, ugly. Though it is quite natural and right for Mrs. Warren to choose what is, according to her lights, the least immoral alternative. For the alternatives offered are not morality and immorality but two sorts of immorality. The man who cannot see that starvation, overwork, dirt, and disease are anti-social as prostitution—they are the vices and crimes of a nation11, and not merely its misfortunes—is (to put it as politely as possible) a hopelessly Private Person. (Abrams 2224) Thus, Mrs. Warren is justified considering the circumstance during Victorian England, where many women and young girls’ of 18 and 22 resorted to prostitution as their only way to survive. It is important to bear in mind before making judgments; those prostitutes are not vicious or sex hungry, as much as poor, independent, hardworking females. There is no better way to conclude this modest analysis of such a controversial subject as that of Prostitution than a quotation by G.B. Shaw12, “The word prostitution should either not be used at all, or else applied impartially to all persons who do things for money that they would not do if they had other assured means of livelihood”. Because of the available possibilities to improve their livelihood and their living condition are poor, thousands and thousands of women are forced every day to go to the world of the street. Therefore, to reduce prostitution and even delete it, then poverty and gender discrimination must be eliminated as well. Thus, if any society reaches this point of awareness where there should not be a gender discrimination against women, there will be neither women at point zero nor the oldest profession13. Works Cited Abrams, M.H., and Stephen Greenblatt, eds. "Bernard Shaw" The Norton Anthology of English Literature. NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001. P. 2222-2224. Print. Allett, John. “"Mrs. Warren’s Profession" and The Politics of Prostitution.” Penn State University Press Vol. 19, (1999): 23-39. JSTOR. Web. 4 Jun. 2012. El Saadawi, Nawal. Woman at Point Zero. Trans. Sherif Hetata. London: Zed Books, 1975. Print. Graham, Trey. “Arts & Entertainment: Theatre Review.” Washingtoncitypaper.com. 2 Aug. 1996. Web. 6 Jun. 2012. Greene, Gayle, and Coppelia Kahn. "Feminist Scholarship and the Social Construction of Woman." Making Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism. Ed. Gayle Greene and Coppelia Kahn1985. 1-36. Print. Kristeva, Julia. "Marginality and Subversion."Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. Comp. Toril Moi and Ed. Terence Hawkes1985. 150-173. Print. Mann, Emily. “The Oldest Profession.” Mccarter.org. n.d. Web. 6 Jun. 2012. Millett, Kate. Sexual Politics. London: Virago, 1969. Print. Shaw, G.B. The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. New York: Bretano’s Publishers, 1928. Print. Shaw, G.B. Mrs. Warren’s Profession. Pennsylvania State University, 2004. Print. Read More