"Palace Walk"
Sep. 9th, 2006 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI've begun reading Palace Walk, the first volume of the Cairo trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz. I haven't gotten very far yet - five chapters or so - but I've noticed something that I think is interesting; it's under the cut.
The beginning of the story is seen through the eyes of an Arab woman. It is just after midnight; her husband will be home soon from a night out with his friends, and she has gotten up to prepare for his return. Her thoughts drift through the years of her marriage, and we see how thoroughly subservient she is to her husband. We also see that she is happy in that subservience, and if that happiness is to some extent willed, well, it is not less real for all that.
Her husband returns, and she tends to him, providing a cup of tea, a change of clothes, and a washbasin. She sits near him as he relaxes and, slightly inebriated, tells her of his day; she revels in this rare time of communion. Finally - and we're a chapter and a half into the novel - he addresses her by name.
This is the interesting thing: up to this point, the reader has not seen her name. She has been only "the woman". Her husband's name we have already seen, passing through her thoughts, but not her own - that we do not learn until her husband speaks it aloud.
It may be that this is an artifact of translation (but I doubt it); it may be conformity to Middle Eastern, or Arabic, or Egyptian novelistic convention; or it may be something Mahfouz has done deliberately. If it's the last of these (and I'm inclined to think it is), it strikes me as an interesting way of emphasizing Amina's subordination. I'll have to keep an eye out for other, similar effects.
As an aside: I doubt I would have noticed this, if not for discussions on the Bujold list of a similar effect deployed by Bujold in Mirror Dance. Chalk up another debt I owe that group.
The beginning of the story is seen through the eyes of an Arab woman. It is just after midnight; her husband will be home soon from a night out with his friends, and she has gotten up to prepare for his return. Her thoughts drift through the years of her marriage, and we see how thoroughly subservient she is to her husband. We also see that she is happy in that subservience, and if that happiness is to some extent willed, well, it is not less real for all that.
Her husband returns, and she tends to him, providing a cup of tea, a change of clothes, and a washbasin. She sits near him as he relaxes and, slightly inebriated, tells her of his day; she revels in this rare time of communion. Finally - and we're a chapter and a half into the novel - he addresses her by name.
This is the interesting thing: up to this point, the reader has not seen her name. She has been only "the woman". Her husband's name we have already seen, passing through her thoughts, but not her own - that we do not learn until her husband speaks it aloud.
It may be that this is an artifact of translation (but I doubt it); it may be conformity to Middle Eastern, or Arabic, or Egyptian novelistic convention; or it may be something Mahfouz has done deliberately. If it's the last of these (and I'm inclined to think it is), it strikes me as an interesting way of emphasizing Amina's subordination. I'll have to keep an eye out for other, similar effects.
As an aside: I doubt I would have noticed this, if not for discussions on the Bujold list of a similar effect deployed by Bujold in Mirror Dance. Chalk up another debt I owe that group.
