Blog #12-The Truth

It is known to be that the novel Woman at Point Zero was actually both fiction and non-fiction. According to the author, El Saadawi, the character that she came up with, named Firdaus, was actually a real character that she met in the Quanatir Prison in 1973. El Saadawi was working on her research on Women and Neurosis in Egypt when she met and interviewed a woman who came to be known as Firdaus (a name El Saadawi made up). In some ways, El Saadawi and Firdaus are foil characters. They both were oppressed by the society because of the fact that they were women. El Saadawi served four years in prison because of her political views. Firdaus on the other hand, was sent to jail because she had killed her pimp, who was going to take control of her. Firdaus had dealt so many hardships dealing with repression from men in her life that El Saadawi decided to make a novel out of her life story. In addition to Firdaus’s story, El Saadawi incorporated her life story as well, which coincidentally came to be similar. In the time the novel was written, they were never treated equally as men. Women were considered to be slaves to men. They had to satisfy the men in the house, whether it was their husband, uncle, or whomever. This is illustrated in the novel as well. Firdaus’s father beat his wife when one of his sons died and also beat Firdaus and other girls in the house. Not only that, but her father never went to bed with empty stomach; but her mom and the rest of the children did (Woman at point Zero, 18). This is how the society was and might still be, as of today.