Woman's body, woman's word: gender and discourse in Arabo-Islamic writing (review)

Reviews 133 The answer Ues in its very success as a nanative in the context of the series in which it appears. Other tides under the rubric of British history in perspective have discussed a giventopicor period while introducing the reader to current scholarly debates, reminding the unwary student that the author's perspective is not unchallengeable. Hutton omits all contested issues, the only exception being an inadequate assessment of the recent furore over the existence OT otherwise of the Ranters, as 'some of the nastiest academic exchanges of our generation' (p. 33). He compounds this failure by providing no references to the extensive recent research of other historians which he has condensed into his personal narrative. Experienced historians will recognise this as sading pretty close to the wind. However, consider its dangerous impact on the neophyte. Unable to distinguish between Hutton's own research and opinions, and those he bonows from others, and without the intimate knowledge required to recognise debatable interpretations, students will succumb uncritically to that ancient seductive siren, the unruffled narrative, which implicitiy argues that history is a given form of knowledge, not one to be derived from the exercise of independent critical intelligence. They will also be ill-equipped to ask a more fundamental question, that is, whether one can in fact nanate British events 1649-60 within the compass of 135 pages, without omitting inconvenient facts and issues. The most obvious unexplored question here lies in the book's verytide,for Hutton's own words show that despite his slipshod use of the term, there was no 'British Republic' 1649-60. H e defines the task of the Purged Parliament in 1649 as that of seeking stability through 'a republican form' (p. 15), but later admits that 'there was absolutely no tradition of republican thought in England' outside a tiny clique. H e frequendy misuses the word 'republic' when he means 'Commonwealth', which is how the Parliament defined its regime in 1649 (for example pp. 35, 37). Later he denies that the lesser gentry were 'republican' (p. 39), but talks about them serving 'republican regimes' (p. 129). Playing fast and loose with language in this manner arouses natural suspicions that beneath the placid surface of Hutton's nanative there are dark and dangerous creatures waiting for the unwary. Glyn Parry History Department Victoria University of Wellington Mai ti-Douglas, Fedwa, Woman's body, woman's word: gender and discourse in Arabo-Islamic writing, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991; cloth/paper; pp. xi, 206; R.R.P. US$37.50 (cloth), $12.95 (paper). Woman's body, woman's word 'is not a survey of the images of women in classical and m o d e m Arabic prose', explains Fedwa Malti-Douglas, 'but rather the analytical confrontation of classical prose texts by male scriptors and m o d e m 134 Reviews prosetextsby female scriptors' (p. 8). Therationalebehind such an arrangement is that 'a dialectic operates between mental structures involving w o m e n and sexuality in the m o d e m age and their antecedents in the classical period' (p. 4). Thus, thetextsare not studied within their socio-historical contexts, but rather as part of a continuous cultural discourse on women. To Malti-Douglas, the choice of 'gender-conscious' approach is vital since the culture she investigates 'uses gender as a major organizing principle' (p. 6). To illustrate the central thesis of her book, namely that woman's voice in Arabic-Islamic literature istiedtothe body, the author deals with a truly wide range oftexts,covering popular and anecdotal tales as well as philosophical and mystical treatises, works of geography, cosmography and autobiography, from the ninth through the twentieth centuries. The book is divided into nine chapters. It begins with an analysis of narration and desire in the case of Shahrazad, the storyteller of The thousand and one nights. Shahrazad desires to marry Shahrayar, the cruel king, in order to reform him into a kind, just ruler and to liberate the kingdom, and its women in particular, from his tyranny. According to Malti-Douglas, Shahrazad's storytelling 'teaches a new type of desire', replacing 'an immature male pattern of excitement, satisfaction, and...