The female, the feminist and the feminine: re-reading Tayeb Salih's season of migration to the North.(Critical essay)

This paper inquires into the dynamics and the inner dialectics in the construction of Arab women's identities in Tayeb Salih's "Mawsim al-Hijrah ila Shimal" (Season of Migration to the North 1969). The novel, (henceforth Season) has been acclaimed in the East and the West for its excellent imbrications of race, gender, culture and empire, with such an iconicity that is altogether too good to be true. The quality and quantity of studies that the novel has occasioned attest to its pre-eminent position in contemporary literary writing in Africa even as it has succeeded in bringing Sudanese creative writing to the front burners of literary discourse at the international level (Nabil 1995; Kadiatu 1998; Gibson 2002; Wail 2003). That the novel has "not finished being read" (Macherey "Problems" 70) is a function of its artistic excellence. It is because Season is artistically complex and original than its peers. Corti says the "more artistically complex and original a work of art, the more it rises over the works that surrounds it, the greater is its availability to different readings" (An Introduction 5-6).

But despite the panoply of studies on the novel there still appears to be a lacuna. Season was written as a nexus for the re-articulation of culturally and socially mediated world-view of the colonial subject/object and second, as a mirror of the intra-Sudanese cultural experiences and encounters (Makdisi "The Empire" 804-820). Whereas existing works and studies have attended to the former in depth, they have, however, focused little on the latter. Whereas most of the works have examined the postcolonial role the British women play in the novel, the role of Arab women has not enjoyed much detailed and in-depth study. The works have also focused little attention particularly on Mabrukah, wife of Wad al-Ris, in relation to the thematics of the narrative even as they have largely not created a web in which the Arab (Sudanese) women would intersect and interface with a view to underscoring the conflicts in their identities and the contrarieties in their relationship at the gender level.

This paper tries to fill this gap. It explores the paradoxes in these women's identities not necessarily as an allegory for the intersectional or cross-cultural conflicts of class, race and its usage as motifs in nationalist/postcolonialist and indeed "imperialist" discourses (Wail "Gender (and) Imperialism" 309) but rather as a medium for the appropriation of that all important spirit in women--the woman's "genie" (Irigaray "The Question" 14)--and how this is manifested in narration. In order to do this the paper adopts the triadic approach of Elaine Showalter in her analysis of women writers in Europe at the turn of the century. These are the female, the feminist and the feminine (Showalter A Literature of Their Own 13) (1). But before it does that the paper re-examines the cultural template which could have, in part, served Salih's purpose. This approach is deemed desirable as an aid towards understanding the architectonics of Salih's creativity, the scope of his originality and the source of his skills and vision (2). I proceed, thereafter, to inquire into the value of difference in the characters of the three Arab women in the novel: Bint Majdhub, Bint Mahmad and Mabrukah. To what extent can we say these characters are true representations of women in Sudan? How authentic is their representation of the Sudanese (Arabic) culture as a whole? To what extent is their sense of identity mediated by and in conflict with the image they, individually, have of the "Other"? How do these characters give confidence to women, show them to themselves and "reclaim" lost histories and identities "from women's point of view"? (Keyssar "Introduction" 1-19).

The Cultural Background

Women in Sudan, like their male counterparts, appear to have no identity of their own. How they perceive themselves is largely a function of how they are perceived by their society. At birth the female, in Sudanese traditional setting, is loathed for coming to the world not as a male. At puberty she, as is typical of Africa's patriarchal culture, occupies an inferior position vis-a-vis her male counterparts. This is a categorical imperative. It is the weltanschauung which is enshrined in the Sudanese tradition. Known as 'Adat wa taqalid" ('Abidin "Tarikh" 55) the Sudanese tradition contains legislations which is "constricting and liberating" (Muge Reconstructing Gender 6). It is the storehouse of the religious and, indeed, irreligious norms and values of a number of Muslim communities and societies in the contemporary period.

No matter the perspective from which one assesses it, however, tradition functions in constructing women's identities in Sudan, at least, in three different ways. Very early in their lives, women in the lower part of the Nile Valley are circumcised. Circumcision affords the girl the opportunity of becoming a queen. With it she attains a new social status. She becomes somebody who deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. Perhaps most importantly circumcision guarantees for the woman the highest bargains from prospective suitors. This is because an uncircumcised girl/woman in Sudan-a ghalaja (Noubia "Women and Health in Sudan" 102) is deemed to be eternally in a state of impurity. She is equally seen as an outcast: a rebel against the very spirit that gives her society its life and vigour. Such women are deemed unfit for marriage and are considered immature regardless of their level of education or degree of personal or intellectual excellence" (106).

Henna dyeing (103) occupies a secondary source of identity creation for women in Sudan. In fact it mirrors women's creative abilities. It also serves as a plank upon which their beauty and femininity could be projected. Without the henna on her hands and foot the Sudanese woman feels totally incomplete. She would feel as if she belongs neither to the masculine nor the feminine worlds. The henna reinforces the woman's sense of self; it also enhances her image in the sight of the "other". Henna dyeing, however, has a compeer in the pressure on women to be fat. Obesity is still considered a sign of beauty in a Sudanese woman and among Arab women generally (104). Like the pre-Islamic woman of the desert a beautiful woman is, thus, the one who "passes through the door with much difficulties; she is the one who rises from the floor only with the assistance of her neighbours" (Farukh Tarikh al-Adab 60). In order to measure up to this notion of identity which has been created for her sex/gender these women "would spend time in the kitchen, concentrating on food" (Noubia "Women and Health in Sudan" 106). For the ordinary woman in Sudan this is nothing but a means towards an end: the goodwill and attention of the male who makes her, in Iris Young's phrasing, "feel surplus" (Young Justice 48-65). For his sake she competes with her female peers. She considers herself, in 'Aisha's words, "men's sexual plaything"--lu'abi al-Rijal (al-Munajid al-Hayat al-Jinsiyyah 26).