Feminist Awareness in the Writing of the Syrian Writer Zakaria Tāmer

Abstract

This article seeks to examine the image of women as reflected in the short stories by the important Syrian author Zakaria Tāmer, which were written in the second half of the twentieth century. In light of the theoretical debate on the extent to which men can faithfully represent the female experience, this article seeks to present Tāmer’s work as writing that is by and large free of the chauvinistic male perceptions that were prevalent in Syria at the time, and as writing in which feminist perceptions are expressed with regard to the woman’s place and status at a time when “the female voice” had not yet been formulated in writing in Syria. In many of his stories Tāmer positions the woman as a central figure and creates a new (fictional) world, wherein men and women possess equal rights and status; in other stories in which the motif of the woman’s oppression is manifested, she surprises with her resourcefulness and by “breaking the rules” in protest. These perceptions are expressed even in Tāmer’s early stories. Given that the writing prevailing in Syria up to the mid-twentieth century, and to a considerable degree later as well, writing that ignores female endeavor and creativity on the one hand, and mainly presents women as maidservants or mistresses on the other, Tāmer’s work can be viewed as writing that extracts “the female voice” and accords it unique weight even in his first stories. As a writer who presents a high degree of feminist awareness in his writing, he conducts a literary-social-historical reform that embodies a challenge to intellectual and literary writing in the Arab world.