Aunt Safiyya and The Monastery:

As i read the novel "Aunt Safiyya and The Monastery" I see the difference between how women are brought up compared to men. It baffles me how different men and women are brought up in this little village just outside of Luxor in Upper Egypt. Women in the village are brought up as women of servitude, they have a specific pattern on what they must do which is to follow their mothers orders to the T, and get married with the man approved by the parents. Women do not decide whom they want to marry and spend the rest of their lives with. In the village outside of Luxor women have a specific order of when she should wed, starting from the first born all the way to the youngest female in the family. Another thing that caught my eye was how the worth of a female in the village is solely based on how beautiful the female is. It seems that there is no indication of how smart or intellectually fulfilled the female is. It turns by spine on how the female are judged by their looks. I noticed the envy their is between the sisters toward Aunt Safiyya and how there is a love/hate relationship between these girls. There must be quite a psychological rift between all these girls. Think about it this way, you are part of this family described in the book, you have an older sister whom is more beautiful than you are your parents favor her in every way and form. How would you take it? Knowing that you will be second best for the rest of your life just because your sister is more beautiful.

So feeling undermined is a constant in many parts of this book. I feel strongly against how women are raised just because of the favoritism of parents over their children, even to the extent that parents control if they should or shouldnt go to a higher learning like college. I guess what im trying to say is that as an outsider looking in I do not agree with the favoritism of the parents toward the daughters or how these women are raised. But every culture is different and its all about ethics, and there is a term called Cultural Relativism which describes how one can not judge on a different culture just because their views are different.