Madwomen Agents: Common Experiences in British Imperial, Postcolonial, and Bedouin Women’s Writing

Women have long used the literary theme of women’s madness as a form of protest within patriarchal cultures. Instead of a strictly Eurocentric approach to female protagonists’ experiences of madness, the dissertation places British imperial literary culture in the nineteenth century alongside postcolonial writing by women, whether in the Caribbean (Dominica), South Asia (India), or the Middle East and North Africa (Jordan and Egypt). Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1996), Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997), Fadia Faqir’s Pillars of Salt (1996), and Miral al-Tahawy’s The Tent (1996) are placed alongside Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). I consider “other” experiences of female madness by juxtaposing the Victorian madwoman with the postcolonial and Bedouin madwoman, and attempting to displace the dichotomy that divides them. The postcolonial novels Wide Sargasso Sea and The God of Small Things highlight how colonialism and its effects have harmed the postcolonial nation and psyche, specifically the female subject’s sense of identity in a chaotic process of failures to decolonize. Madness thus emerges as a clear product of colonialism.

Colonized women and Bedouin women share the subjugation of Western women. This is not to undermine or ignore their specificities and differences but instead to evoke a wider perception, a multifaceted madwoman trope. The Victorian madwoman who is locked up is not so different from the postcolonial or Bedouin madwoman, who is confined not to the attic, but in a tent, a room, or a mental space that is the result of both colonialism and patriarchy. I address the relationships between madness and empire, madness and patriarchy, and examine madwomen as agents of resistance.

Madwomen in literary narratives are excluded from the discourse of normalcy; they may be mentally deranged, physically disabled, or both. The final chapter of Egyptian Miral al-Tahawy’s The Tent deals with madness and disability through a Bedouin lens. The heroine is left physically disabled and is shunned from society and labeled “mad” and deviant. Her madness manifests in her body. She is equally rejected due to her bouts of madness and physical disability. Yet the protagonist reclaims her identity and body through the very body that oppressed her. The subversion of the status quo is seen throughout the heroine’s journey of madness and, eventually, disability. In a society that values normalcy, the protagonist chooses to embrace her failure to perform “normalcy.”

There are different understandings attached to the theme of disability in the Arab world and in Bedouin culture specifically as I show in my analysis of Fadia Faqir’s Pillars of Salt (Jordan). The stigma is connected to gender and the concept of “purity.” To be a “pure” and “good” woman is to be healthy, sane, and able-bodied. This dissertation emphasizes that British literary culture and experience are not very different from Arab women’s literary experience of madness. This study examines two texts against a backdrop of Bedouin culture in an effort to call for the integration of “Bedouin studies” and “Bedouin texts” into Middle Eastern studies. Bedouin culture is distinct and particular, and this study aims to highlight this distinctiveness. I argue that literary madness denotes rebellion against patriarchy.