Gender relations in Tawfiq al Hakim’ the tree climber from a feminist perspective

Abstract EN

This chapter is aimed to provide an in-depth analysis of gender relations in Tawfiq al-Hakim’s 1962 play, The Tree Climber (Ya Talee’ Es-Shagara) through the feminist perspective, specifically through the writings and thoughts of Simone de Beauvoir.

Al-Hakim is a prominent figure in Theatre of the Mind or Intellectual Theatre, which deals with abstract ideas, such as the struggle between man and time as described in Ahl al-Kahf (The Sleepers in the Cave), 1933 or between man and space as in Shahrazad, 1934.

The play The Tree Climber is considered one of his master pieces since it reflects the influence of the Theatre of the Absurd during his stay in France.

The play is governed as much by an obsession with the unreal as the obsession with a distinct representation of gender relations that have developed across different social, economic, and cultural levels.

The play revolves around the disappearance of Bahana, a childless widow, who has married for the second time.

She is obsessed with the baby girl she aborted during her first marriage almost forty years ago.

Her present husband Bahadir is a sixty-five-year-old retired man who is obsessed with the only orange tree in the yard of his small house and the green lizard that lives under the tree, Lady Green.

In the story, Lady Green is suspected of killing Bahana, but she reappears.

The husband bombards his wife with questions.

She responds with “no” to every question even when “no” does not logically apply.

The husband becomes frustrated.

He chokes Bahana and she dies.

This singular focus will highlight the scope of al-Hakim’s capability to articulate gender relations that engages the audience in array of actions that highlight a myriad of different social, economic and cultural criteria in which Beauvoir s examination of women’s lives and their inherent limitations is paralleled in al-Hakim’s play.

Beauvoir’s ethical interest in relational principles, such as female’s