STUDIA UBB PHILOLOGIA, LX, 1, 2015, p. 103 - 113
(RECOMMENDED CITATION)
DIDACTICISM AND THE FEMINIST QUEST:
THE CASE OF MRS. DALLOWAY AND BEIRUT 75
TAREK MUSLEH1
ABSTRACT. Didacticism and the Feminist Quest: The Case of Mrs. Dalloway
and Beirut 75. This paper compares the British prose writer Virginia Woolf and
the Arab writer Ghada al-Samman. Western society is liberal and consequently,
literature represents freedom by characters that are not usually manipulated by
ideology. On the other hand, Arab culture is largely oppressive and literature is
often dominated by preaching especially when writers, such as feminists, feel
enthusiastic about a case.
Keywords: feminism, didacticism, artistic distance, dramatization, Arabic Literature,
English Literature, Virginia Woolf, Ghada al-Samman.
REZUMAT. Didacticismul şi căutarea feministă: cazul Doamna Dalloway şi
Beirut 75. Această lucrare este o comparaţie între prozatoarea britanică Virginia
Woolf şi scriitoarea arabă Ghada al-Samman. Societatea occidentală este liberală
şi, în consecinţă, literatura reprezintă libertatea prin personajele care, de obicei,
nu sunt manipulate cu ajutorul ideologiei. Pe de altă parte, cultura arabă este, în
mare măsură, opresivă, iar literatura este adesea dominată de didacticism, mai
ales atunci când scriitorii, de exemplu feministele, se entuziasmează în legătură cu
o situaţie anume.
Cuvinte cheie: feminism, didacticism, distanţă artistică, dramatizare, literature
arabă, literature engleză, Virginia Woolf, Ghada al-Samman.
Men and women have lived on earth for many millions of years.
Presumably, they have been interacting together in a world of survival. They
passed on their consciousness and unconsciousness from one generation to
the other. Both developed knowledge, understanding, sympathy and even
1
Tarek Musleh is professor in the Department of English at Jadara University, Irbid, Jordan. Contact
address: <[email protected]>.
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TAREK MUSLEH
identification with one another, although some men, who were in a position of
power, abused women throughout history. This long history implies that
instinctively men can penetrate the nature of women and vice versa to such an
extent that made the great psychologist Carl Young develop his well-known
theory of the anima and the animus. This theory challenges the purity of each
sex and insists that in every man there is a little woman and in every woman
there is a little man; hence the ability of writers of both genders to penetrate
the personality of the other sex.
A great writer should be able to visualize how his characters, whether
they are males or females, think and react to life in different situations. As a
principle in fiction, a thief has to be illustrated as a thief, not as a preacher,
who every now and then intrudes into the narrative to deliver a moral
judgment. Similarly, if a male writer depicts the life of a female he should,
temporarily at least, abandon his own masculinity and imagine how a woman
actually thinks and behaves in the situations that he creates. It is generally
assumed that a female writer is able to handle female characters more
convincingly than her male counterpart.
However, despite the partial reality of this generalization, in the
literary tradition there are many examples of male writers who could draw a
comprehensive picture of the female, so much so that their works have
become archetypes. Antigone by Sophocles, Pamela by Richardson, Madame
Bovary by Flaubert, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, The Portrait of a Lady by James,
Women in Love by Lawrence, A Street Car Named Desire by Williams, are all
outstanding examples of the many works about women that were written by
men. All the issues of feminism, whether related to the suffering of women,
their equality with men, or depicting their own femininity from within, were
given a powerful and dramatic image by these well-established classics.
Certainly one can suspect the purity of almost anything in our age of
doubt. There is nothing absolutely special about women writing except the
simple fact that a particular work is written by a sensitive female who has a
first hand experience of the main issues of feminism. Perhaps a woman would
be more honest and less artificial in outlining her problems and exploring her
psyche. However, the result can be negative at times, especially when the
authoress becomes very enthusiastic and preaches feminism directly through
her mouthpieces. That is why some feminist writings, despite their special
insight into the nature of women, are marred by didacticism. On the other
hand, a great female writer can both illustrate feminist issues powerfully as
she experiences them herself and, at the same time, maintain an artistic
distance between herself and her material. Whatever the situation is, men and
women are united by their humanity, which is handled by great writers
regardless of gender.
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DIDACTICISM AND THE FEMINIST QUEST: THE CASE OF MRS. DALLOWAY AND BEIRUT 75
I have chosen two works for my demonstration. The former one is Mrs.
Dalloway by a typical Western writer who belongs to a liberal and democratic
culture and has both the background and artistic ability to present the female
character convincingly. The latter is Beirut 75 by an Arab feminist who is,
perhaps unconsciously, part of a somewhat oppressive tradition where
ideology dominates at the expense of artistic requirements.
Virginia Woolf could be taken as an example of an English culture
where writers are principally committed to their art and personal existential
experience. Her characters are fully explored through internalization, which
allows them to particularly dramatize their inner life, past and present, with
little manipulation from the narrator. She is one of those writers who are able
to penetrate the psychology of their characters of both sexes with great
success, although the female takes the better part of her genius. As a critic, and
novelist she challenges the traditional concept of characterization and
chronological plot and accuses Bennett, Galsworthy, and Wells, the writers who
dominated the English literary scene at the turn of the century, of producing
skeletons rather than real people. Their writing is marked by excessive
attention to a deterministic view of man. These writers, in Woolf’s opinion,
distorted human nature and produced social types rather than individual
human beings with inner conflicts. In her novels she is bent on revealing the
reality and the depth of the human psyche. The outer life is just the surface of
a much troubled life within. Woolf’s novels do not ignore social life, but she
emphasizes that the essence of man's reality lies much deeper than the
outside movements.
In Mrs. Dalloway, inner life is shown to be far more important and real
than the superficiality of the ruling class. Authenticity is well established as an
ideal that allows the characters to probe into some existential issues. Right
and wrong are solipsistic values and decided by personal experience, rather
than imposed by an outside force. The idea of conversion is ridiculed through
the character of Doris Kilman, who symbolizes imposition, if only too obviously
by her type name. Even psychologists who are supposed to provide a balanced
view of normality are satirized and shown to be part of the oppressive forces
of society that are driving some individuals to become mad and suicidal. There
is no definite conclusion and Clarissa Dalloway has to be accepted as she is,
despite, or because of, her unpredictability, and this is part of her charm.
Throughout Mrs. Dalloway everything seems fine on the surface but
within the recesses of human nature there are waves that cannot be halted. As
a female restricted within the limitations of her society, Clarissa Dalloway can
only devote her life to the world of appearances. Her preparation for the party
apparently delights her, and she likes to make of it a great successful event;
but the whole party splendor falls on the floor when she hears the psychiatrist
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TAREK MUSLEH
Sir William Bradshaw talk about the suicide of an unknown young man called
Septimus Smith. In fact, she is shocked and shattered to the extent that she
feels a strong sense of association and even identification with Septimus.
Furthermore, she is almost unconsciously driven to go imaginatively through
the process of suicide, which she visualizes as a challenge and a failure of
communication on the part of psychologists and the whole society. In other
words, her so-called superficiality is just one thin layer of a tormented soul.
Woolf gives the impression that the female has to be accepted on her
own terms and the domestic concerns of Mrs. Dalloway have to be visualized
as no less important than the life of politicians and army generals who lead
wars. The end of Mrs. Dalloway is quite significant; Clarissa's old admirer,
Peter Walsh, is suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of “terror, ecstasy, and
extraordinary excitement” (102), and ends the novel with the expression, 'for
there she was' (124), implying that both Clarissa's weak and strong points that
he has experienced are part of her charm and humanity.
Woolf is not so much worried about typical male chauvinistic
accusation that women are inferior to men, especially in connection with their
intellectual ability and main interests. Unlike other feminists who have fallen
into the trap of this accusation and tried enthusiastically to prove the
opposite, Woolf is just bent on exploring the female as she is, regardless any
male prejudice or expectation. Her heroine is, at times, superficial, worldly,
with little knowledge of the intellectual life and without any public concern
outside her small world. She thinks of her parties as an offering, which is
difficult to be understood by men, and she is amused by their ignorance of a
world that is simply not hers:
She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be
liked; talked oceans of nonsense; and to this day, ask her what the Equator was,
and she did not know. All the same, that one day should follow another;
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning;
see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter;
then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was! - that it
must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all;
how, every instant. (Mrs. Dalloway 69)
In 1923 when Mrs. Dalloway was published, men valued travel,
adventure, work, dedication to country and national heroism. By contrast,
women's life was more domestic and obscure, and they usually found
accomplishment in personal relationships, reading memoirs, and cultivating
their own children. No one can logically conclude with any certainty that the
values of men should be considered superior. They are just different and each
value demands a special talent. Woolf always hated male power and the
supposition that men should have the upper hand in society. Although
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DIDACTICISM AND THE FEMINIST QUEST: THE CASE OF MRS. DALLOWAY AND BEIRUT 75
Clarissa's life is not shown to be directly influenced by male domination, the
whole atmosphere of a Patriarchal age has partly shaped her femininity and
made her cautious of any form of control in her life.
Despite the fact that Clarissa seems to be enjoying life on the surface,
deep down she has a strong sense of insecurity. Recently she has suffered an
illness that turned her hair white and she seems preoccupied with death.
Already in her youth she witnessed the death of her sister who was killed by a
falling tree, an accident which shattered her illusions about life and stability.
The choice of Richard Dalloway as her husband rather than Peter Walsh could
be traced back to her need of both security and independence. Richard is
definitely more competent, predictable, and steady and can protect her against
the shocks of life.
Peter, on the other hand, is romantic, adventurous and full of gayety, but
he would be intrusive and domineering without realizing the 'otherness' of her
personality and her need for privacy. Her choice of Richard is perhaps that of a
lesser evil; for neither man would help her to fully realize herself. Her frigidity
unequivocally demonstrates that there are aspects in her personality that have to
be sorted out. Perhaps Richard is partly responsible, but her past life gives a clear
sign that her development was not quite sound in a typical patriarchal society.
Her lesbian experience with Sally Seton may be interpreted as a reaction against a
patriarchal society partly represented by Peter Walsh who, despite his special
charm, would not understand properly the real potentiality of the female.
Symbolically, Peter appears immediately after her moments of ecstasy with Sally
Seton, which Clarissa describes in almost religious terms:
Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn
with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked up a flower; kissed her on the lips.
The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared;
there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present,
wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it – a diamond, something
infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and
down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the
religious feeling! (Mrs. Dalloway 29)
In those days both Sally and Clarissa spoke of marriage as a
catastrophe. Immediately after this experience, Peter proposes to Clarissa and
he is rightly and expectedly rejected. The lesbian experience can also be
interpreted in psychological terms and may be traced back to the intricate
process of coming to terms with Oedipus complex. According to Freud, man
has to substitute a woman in the same shape of his mother in order to
overcome this complex. In the case of woman, it is more difficult since the
substitution is far more demanding and the substituted male figure is entirely
different from the mother.
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TAREK MUSLEH
Society sometimes does not understand the intricate nature of the
female development and some women may yearn to go back to the “garden” of
their mother's womb that is substituted by another woman. If Freud is right,
then Clarissa's lesbian experience can be seen as a reaction against a
patriarchal society which pays little, if any, attention to the female's sensitive
and delicate nature. Thus, her present frigidity is probably caused by the kind
of man Richard is, but more so by her past. It is quite likely that she represents
her creator who similarly had to tackle a patriarchal society that did not even
allow her to have a systematic education.
Virginia Woof insists again and again that Clarissa should be fully
accepted on her own terms, although typical male chauvinists may find it
difficult to stomach some of her attitudes. Perhaps there is a hidden Clarissa in
every female, but some societies would not allow her to appear on the surface.
Clarissa is not traditionally classified as a great woman who challenges a
whole community as, for example, Antigone did, but in her own way she
represents the sensitive female whose charm is the result of her fragility and
complexity, and who constantly invites the reader to accept her as she is
despite, or because of, her limitations.
The question of didacticism is probably related to culture. Virginia
Woolf belongs to a liberal democratic tradition where characters are generally
accepted for what they are. In traditional Arab culture everything has to be
supervised. Many Arab writers are committed to society, nationalism and/or
religion; and they try one way or another to reform the individual. Literature
is there to change people and instruct them about how to conduct the best
form of behavior. Narrators are usually intrusive and they particularly appear
in authorial mouthpieces that every now and then bombard the reader with
religious and popular slogans such as “murder will out,” or “God may delay
punishment, but never neglects anything”, or “the rope of lying is short”.
Under such manipulation, there is not a real sense of suspense and the
line of development could easily be predicted. In other words, there are no
real shocks or surprises or complexity of situations, and there is usually a
sense of finality presented either in marriage, or death, or reformation, or
punishment. Rarely do we have an open ended work that is complex enough
to puzzle us and make us speculate about what is going to happen next.
Moreover, Arab writers are often openly didactic. Their enthusiasm to deliver a
message makes their literature direct, without usually being able to dramatize
any theme convincingly.
At times the characters appear as puppets, and the resolution is often
imposed from above rather than springing from within. There is little or no
artistic distance between the writer and his material. Furthermore, the
religious culture of the Arabs has made them glorify one form of Arabic,
namely, formal, or classical Arabic, which most writers use in all situations,
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unlike Western fiction, which employs local dialects extensively. Regardless of
any consideration, formal Arabic is not suited to be employed all the time in
fiction, especially when writers want to convey the actual wording of what
goes inside their character’s mind, as in the stream of consciousness technique
and more specifically in a dialogue, simply because it is not used in actual life.
If the character that is especially ordinary and uneducated uses formal Arabic,
this will undoubtedly dwindle its connection to reality. Writers have to choose
between formal Arabic, in which case their character’s reality is partially
sacrificed, and using a local dialect that appears realistic but may not be
completely understood in certain parts of the Arab World.
Quite recently, there have been many Arab writers who are beginning
to move towards liberalism and respond favorably to globalization. Ghada alSamman could be cited as an example of a feminist who is influenced by the
West and enthusiastically preaches equality among the sexes. Unfortunately,
the clutches of didacticism are stifling her art. In Beirut 75 she could not help
creating an authorial mouthpiece who has to be a poet in order to convey her
own ideology and sensitivity about various aspects of life and existence.
The novel is dangerously didactic, bordering on direct statements that
try to present a case. There is nothing wrong with the feminist ideas presented
by Ghada al-Samman; the real problem is the manner which is imposed on the
text. The writer tries desperately to show that her heroine is a victim of
patriarchy and that men in the East cannot accept women as they are; they
themselves practise promiscuity, but deny women any form of pre-marital sex.
'But I am not a prostitute! I love you! At the beginning of our relationship you
were hinting about marriage!'
'Marriage! You're crazy! Do you think that I would marry a woman I slept with
before marriage?'
'Why not? Didn't you boast that you advised your father before election that
he should tackle women equality with men in his election campaign?'
'He didn't answer, but started to repeat shockingly, 'I marry a woman I slept
with before wedding!' (Beirut 75, 45)2
The problem with this kind of writing is not the feminist ideology that
stands behind it, which is quite fine, but the way it is presented. Here the
writer imposes an idea rather than dramatize it convincingly. Instead of
concentrating on inner life and internal conflict and showing vividly how such
ideas interact together, the writer imposes an obvious case which may be
logical as a statement but hardly credible fictionally. The situation is highly
artificial and this is made worse by the use of formal Arabic which is not
suited either for dialogue or reflection.
2
Translated by Tarek Mushleh.
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TAREK MUSLEH
One of the main problems that feminists are obsessed with is their
objection to treating the female as a sex object without understanding the
human side of her potentiality. Again the objection is quite legitimate and may
apply to the majority of men particularly in the East. However, the way it is
presented is through direct and non-fictional statements distorting the image
of men to the point of caricature. Making man admit that he thinks of women
only physically through reflective statements helps the writer come to the
simplistic conclusion of men's blindness towards any form of spirituality
without showing or dramatizing the complexity of the situation.
Is it possible that I can love? I love a poor girl! She allowed me to sleep with
her before marriage! Love, love, love! That's all she keeps talking about or
understands!
Why is this rubbish? I've never thought or wasted my time about women! I just
think about them when I am with them. Their body is what attracts me to them.
When they are not physically with me I forget about them. Moreover, I have many
other things to attend to! (Beirut 75, 65)3
There are many scenes in the novel which disrupt our usual notion of
probability and we have to be extremely tolerant in order to accept the
sudden turn of events which are sometimes too shocking to be true.
She was glad to see her brother. He was angry. She remembered that she did
not pay him for weeks the price for his dignified honor! He shouted,
'Good you came, I haven't got a penny!'
'Nor me,'
'How? What about Nimr Bey?’
'He'll get married.'
'You bloody liar! So you have started business on your own, and now you have
more than one lover!'
He attacked her, took her purse, found nothing, got mad, and started to beat
her many times. Then he inquired,
'Where is the money, you bitch?'
Blood was all over her face; unconsciously she started to hit back. He became
mad shouting, 'you bitch, hitting me too! I'll slaughter you!’
She wanted to say, 'I'll pay tomorrow, there is no need to defend your socalled honor!' But her mouth was full of blood. Before uttering a word, he
stabbed her chess. She felt utterly shocked!
After about half an hour, the brother went to the nearest police station
carrying a bucket covered with a newspaper. He sat in front of the officer. He
took his sister's severed head which was still bleeding and said in a manly
manner, 'I've killed my sister in defense of my honor, I want to confess.' The
3Translated
by Tarek Mushleh
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DIDACTICISM AND THE FEMINIST QUEST: THE CASE OF MRS. DALLOWAY AND BEIRUT 75
officer looked at him in an admiring way, but he was frightened and put the
severed head back to the bucket and hid it! The brother was confessing, while the
officer's assistant was writing with a look of admiration too! (Beirut 75. 80-81)4
In this kind of passages formal Arabic, which is artificially imposed on
the text, the highly melodramatic and most unconvincing successive events,
the excessive distortion of the brother, which is shared automatically and
inhumanly both by the officer and his assistant, all these add to the unreality
of almost everything in the scene which is meant to preach the cause of the
victimized female and give us a lesson. There is no doubt that in traditional
societies there is what is known as “honour crime” which is inflicted on
“permissive” women. Still, a great novelist is usually more involved with the inner
psychology and internal conflict than just narrating far-fetched melodramatic
events handled clumsily and obtrusively by the narrator. The three male
characters, especially the brother who should show at least some regret, are
more like puppets than characters with flesh and blood. These highly
melodramatic events need much psychological preparation and dramatic
conflict. They may satisfy vulgar readers used to similar action films but they
hardly satisfy the notion of probability developed in serious fiction.
If we move to Western literature, we realize that the battle against
didacticism is not yet over. Some of the great masters like Dostoevsky, Ibsen,
Lawrence, Camus, and many others are sometimes quite didactic. In Dostoevsky’s
masterpiece Crime and Punishment the dramatic change of Raskolnikov and his
conversion to Christianity, in addition to the concomitant language, may not
sound quite convincing and are certainly incommensurate with his previous
sense of persistent absurdity. In Ghosts, Ibsen sometimes cannot be distinguished
from his mouthpiece, Mrs. Alving, or her son. Birkin and Ursula in Women in
Love appear at times, in the words of John Bailey, as “bloodless ghosts” (The
Characters of Love, 39) enacting as they do the thesis of Lawrence himself.
In The Outsider by Camus we realize that reality, particularly in the
second part of the novel, is presented as one sided; presumably society tries
the protagonist for his “deviation”, but it is actually Mersault who reverses the
picture by directly condemning the legal, religious, and social systems and
criticizing them openly. However, these works are great and they certainly
tempt readers, at least partially, to silence their possible objection to whatever
drawbacks they may have. They belong to a democratic culture where
everybody is given a chance to express themselves fully. Polyphony, or
multiplicity of voices, is well established as an ideal in Western literature,
which moves towards (though it may not fully reach it) the condition of pure
art as particularly manifested in music. Liberal humanism preaches tolerance
4
Translated by Tarek Mushleh
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TAREK MUSLEH
and accepts humans as they are, despite their so-called deviation. That is one
reason why characters are lively and certainly more realistic and far less
idealized than in Arabic literature. In fact, at times the aberration becomes the
norm. All sides of man are explored especially inner life and unconsciousness.
At times the reader feels that writers put themselves both into the
protagonists as well as into the antagonists, simply because of this sense of
doubt which permeates much of the Western culture and literature. Svidrigaylov
in Crime and Punishment, Gerald and Gudrun in Women in Love, the Foxes in
Howards End and many other antagonists are powerfully dramatized. They
follow the tradition established by Shakespeare and given a chance to justify
their attitude forcibly. The reader becomes in many cases confused as to the
sympathy of the writer. Very often the characters in many works are lost and
disillusioned with almost all social values. Writers appear to be free from any
restrictions or constraints to explore the inner resources of their characters
and the deep recesses of human nature. There is no real commitment to any
outside forces except one’s own personal experience and belief.
It seems that commitment in the Arab sense reduces the writer’s
attention, which should be focused on the literariness of literature, that is, on
the artistic elements which make literature what it is. Once, the well known
poet Hassan Ibn Thabet was asked about the reason of the decline of his
poetry. His blatant answer was, “it is Islam”. (Al-Asfahani, Songs, 243) That is,
persistent commitment to a particular ideology may drive writers away from
their art or preclude exploring all aspects of human nature.
The same commitment problem can be observed in feminist Arabic
fiction. Most feminists are too enthusiastic when they preach the cause of
women to the extent that they often ignore the artistic quality of their work.
There may be a few voices that try to maintain a balance between ideology
and the necessity of dramatizing all the elements of fiction. However, many
writers in the Arab world are influenced by the traditional and nondemocratic culture where individuality is suppressed. Consequently, their
characters can never feel free. One can only hope that Arab feminists will
realize that they are first and foremost artists rather than preachers.
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DIDACTICISM AND THE FEMINIST QUEST: THE CASE OF MRS. DALLOWAY AND BEIRUT 75
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