Art-Ahdaf Soeuif-

2 Pages 465 Words

“A Reflection in the Looking Glass: A Parallel with the Past”


An analytical analysis of Ahdaf Soueif’s
In the Eye of the Sun


Universally and historically female writers have addressed issues regarding their female sexuality and women’s role in society, per their cultural norms. Since this has long been the case many cultural norms and mores have been introduced to other societies. For instance, Gabrielle
Colette’s The Vagabond forces readers to view the main character’s struggle with her own sexual identity in addition to grappling with her own views of what a “proper woman” should do and not do within her surrounding society. In doing so, the reader must come to grips with a side of France that had not and is not typically discussed; the vaudeville lifestyle. Ahdaf Soueif addresses this issue, as well. The main character of In the Eye of the Sun, Asya, struggles with her own sexual identity while trying to wrestle with her instilled cultural criteria. Her ethnic background pushes her towards finding and obtaining an “ideal lifestyle,” which includes a bread-winning husband and a “baby on one arm”
(Soueif, 529).
Soueif apparently looks to historical fiction writing that parallels with social female issues. Her book, Eye in the Sun, includes a story pulled straight from a nineteenth or early twentieth century novel penned by a female. These periods embodied extreme separation of gendered identities and domains. Romantic novels tended to make the contrast between the domestic enclosure of women — their spatial and social immobility — and the mobility of men central to the narrative. The heroine/ main character lingers, dreams and hopes — the hero (man unattainable) has an active life, occupies some place in the public world, and must be drawn into the private world of feeling if her happiness is to be achieved. This particular convention is shown throughout Soueif’s novel via Asy...