Abstract
Mobility is the most pronounced feature of this age. Lash and Urry suggested that modern society is a ‘society on the move’ (1994, 252). However mobility is not uniformly accessed by all members of a society. This article aims to provide the much needed information in travelling theory about the nature or otherwise of Arab Muslim women’s mobility, as well as to puncture the meta-discourses about Muslim women’s proper place, ideologically favouring the male gender. The nature of Arab Muslim women’s travelling and forces limiting their mobility are explored in the fiction of Egyptian writer Nawal El Saadawi. The paper explores the private and public division and role relegation which restrict women from conservative or lower socio-economic classes to the domestic world. Interestingly, while this subjection to the private space requires them, round the clock, to contribute to the mobility of their male family members, it denies them sufficient space and scope for their individual development through participation in educational and economic opportunities.
Keyword(s)
Travelling, Mobility, seclusion, public and private, socialization, chastity, sexuality, El Saadawi