Scheherazade Goes West by Fatema Mernissi

For my Muslim Women Writers course, I had to read Scheherazade Goes West by Fatema Mernissi. I thought the book was interesting and definitely worth reading. It is about the author Fatema Mernissi's quest to understand the varying perceptions about harems--women's prisons--in the East and the West. In this book, Mernissi makes an interesting argument about Muslim feminists by emphasizing the strong female historical and traditional characters.

Mernissi argues that in both cultures, patriarchy is manifested in two different ways. In the Muslim world, women are more spatially repressed by veils and where they are allowed to physically go. However, according to Mernissi, the culture does not pretend that women do not have intellectual capacities. Rather, higher percentages of women are in high ranking science and business positions than in the Western world. Additionally, female characters in Muslim folk tales and in their history are depicted as strong; and women in harems were often expected to entertain men with intellectual and artistic skill. This means that these skills were important to the science of attraction in the Muslim world.  One example Mernissi gives is the character, Scheherazade, in One Thousand and One Nights. Scheherazade is a female character who cleverly tricks a cruel tyrant into allowing her to live--after he repeatedly killed his lover. She tells him stories that require psychological and intellectual skills, as well as the ability to control her fear of losing her life (47-48). Scheherazade not only convinces the king to fall in love with her and allow her to live, but she also helps solve the kind's sociopathic psychological problems and guides his decisions to be a more humane ruler.

Conversely, the West controls women in a more subliminal fashion--by controlling their physical appearance through definitions of beauty that are defined by men, and by stripping intellect from the list of characteristics that are deemed "attractive." The western form of patriarchy reduces the definition of the desirable woman to a mere body, without intellectual capacity. While western women are allowed to be more mobile society--they are free to attend school, participate in most social events, and are technically allowed into all positions of work (although few women achieve these positions). Mernissi illustrates this by observing how the Western versions of the Scheherazade story strip her of her intellectual power and reduce her to a beautiful creature who enchants the king (68). However, Mernissi argues that, if this was the case, the king would have killed her just like all of the other women. Additionally, the Western form of patriarchy pressures women to conform to an appearance that is unnatural for women--they expect women to remain skinny like children. This is symbolic of how western men also expect women to have the intellect of a child so they can patronize them. Ironically, women who try to be skinny often suffer from malnutrition, which makes them more passive, emotional, weak, and unable to think clearly (218). Coincidence?

I believe this book definitely makes an important argument about Eastern vs. Western culture. Thanks to the mass media, Westerners commonly believe that Muslim women (in general--yet Muslim women are just as varied as Christian women) are extremely oppressed simply because they wear a veil. However, Mernissi shows that many Muslim women are actually empowered by the belief that their intelligence matters. Additionally, they do not have to fulfill the same beauty expectations that women in the West have to fulfill.

Scheherazade Goes West confirms my suspicion that, in some ways (excluding extreme circumstances where women are killed or seriously abused), the subliminal oppression of women in the West is worse. This is because many women in the West do not recognize the extent to which they are oppressed, objectified, and stripped of their intellect; or the extent to which men are encouraged to force themselves on women and view them as mere bodies. This prevents them from taking any action to challenge or overcome this patriarchy.

I do have some criticisms of the book. For example, Mernissi spends all of her time studying the manifestation of patriarchy in Western and Eastern bourgeois culture. While, in many cases, the ruling class defines how men should treat women, I do not think this could even hint at the conditions of the poorer classes in Muslim societies and Western societies. Mernissi also ignores the political realities of many Muslim countries that interpret the Koran in ways that oppress women. I think these realities are much more important than abstract manifestations of women in stories. However, the information in Mernissi's writing is potentially empowering for women.

This book has inspired me to study feminism more. In the past, studying issues that western women face has frustrated me beyond the ability to further pursue research. However, now I can see how taking tid-bits from each culture can empower me and show me that different visions of attraction exist and therefore I do not have to conform to any particular vision of attraction.