Arab Women’s Trauma and Oppression in Arab Anglophone Literature: Fadia Faqir’s Pillars of Salt

Abstract

The present study examines how are women oppressed and traumatized by both their patriarchal society and the British Mandate (colonialism), in Jordan, in Arab Anglophone literature: Fadia Faqir’s Pillars of Salt. It explores how oppression and trauma affect their lives and led them to madness. In this vein, the paper shows how Colonialism or the British Mandate has a hand in creating domestic conflicts among members of the Bedouin community and even of one family. It also undertakes the social constraints and cultural barriers that oppressed women and ranked them in a very inferior position to men. Thus, this  paper highlights how the two ladies, protagonists, ended up in a mental hospital, oppressed even in the process of their medical therapy, after a long journey and struggle against patriarchy. Analyzing the protagonists’ unbalanced psychologies will be done through Critical Disability studies theory. This helps engaging deeply, when studying the protagonists’ attitudes, within the social structure in the Arab bedouin society.  The mentioned theory examines how literary narratives have shifted from describing madness passively to representing and reflecting disabled psychologies as a result of a distorted social composition. It studies how the two women were sharing their experiences despite the fact they were from different backgrounds and even different social classes, one Bedouin and the other Urban. Sharing experiences is seen as a source of power to push resistance and rebellion against patriarchy and social exclusion. Finally, it sheds light on the way Fadia Faqir utilizes Arabic Narrative Techniques and arabizes the language of the novel in dramatizing the traumatic consequences of oppression on Maha and Um Saad.