Gendered Space in Seamus Heaney's Death of a Naturalist (1966) and Ahmed Abdel Muti Hijazi’s A Heartless City (1959): A Feminist Geo-Critical Approach

Abstract

Gendering spaces is one way of reinforcing a culture's gender norms and maintaining hierarchical relationships between men and women. Women's identities are effaced when they are used as a symbol for a nation; they are seen as inferior to men when they are assigned the private space of home as opposed to men's public space. The most efficient way of examining whether these dichotomies and hegemonic relationships exist across different cultures, as Linda McDowell suggests, is by conducting comparative studies. The present study examines how space is gendered in Seamus Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist (1966) compared to Ahmed Abdel Muti Hijazi’s A Heartless City (1959). The findings show that space is gendered in the same way in Eastern and Western cultures: the homeland is portrayed as a woman; men are assigned public space while women are confined to the private space of home; moreover, a woman's body is portrayed as space for men's sexual acts. These findings suggest the persistence of gender stratification, masculine hegemony and women’s inferiority across cultures, which is alarming given the fact that they have been so deeply engraved in collective consciousness that they have come to be viewed as natural.