Okay, this week, I am covering a discussion that a friend and I had recently regarding a book that we both read lately. The Book is Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih. The topic: the role of women in it. Now, understand that if you haven’t read the book, there are spoilers here.
It is, gentlemen, that in Tayeb Salih’s novel “Season of Migration to the North”, one of the most interesting aspects of the novel is the portrayal of women by both Salih and his characters. In particular, three women prove to be interesting examples of Salih’s portrayal of women: Bint Majzoub, Hosna Bint Mahmoud, and Jean Morris. All three of these women are examples of stereotypically “strong” women, though not all in the same way. However, I would better hold that these three women do not make up for the fact that many other women are hardly strong characters, primarily Mustafa’s mother and the three other women that Mustafa seduces before he has the affair with Jean Morris.
In “The Development of Contemporary Literature in Sudan”, Eiman El-Nour discusses how Salih revolutionized Sudanese contemporary literature. “A number of themes and images dominate Tayeb Salih’s, among them his portrayal of women as strong characters”. While I do not argue that Tayeb Salih does portray some women as strong characters, that does not mean that all of the women in “Season of Migration to the North” are strong characters. Mustafa Sa’eed, who could be argued as being the main character or at least one of them, treats women mainly as being territories to be conquered sexually.
In “Popular Islam in Al-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ” Ahmad A. Nasr discusses that Mustafa Sa’eed in fact has a very low opinion of women, which Nasr blames, at least in some part, on Mustafa’s mother. “He is an orphan who has no relatives or friends, and whose relationship with his mother is void of motherly love and tenderness… No wonder then that when he leaves the Sudan to pursue his education he says farewell to her without tears or kisses.” Nasr goes on to discuss that when Ann Hammond, Sheila Greenwood, and Isabella Seymour come in Mustafa’s life, he is so separated from his roots in the Sudan that it is ironic that they should be attracted to the “exotic mysticism of Africa or the East.” However, Mustafa, yearning to conquer the “territories” of the west, takes advantage of this by surrounding the girls with this “exotic mysticism”. It is not until Mustafa meets Jean Morris that he truly encounters what might be considered a “strong” woman. “Unlike the other girls, she is not attracted by the atmosphere of Mustafa’s room nor by his sharp mind, and therefore she is not seduced by him.” The most interesting aspect of Nasr’s description of Jean Morris’s feelings toward Mustafa comes immediately afterward. “In fact, she despises the ‘sharp knife’ of which he is proud.” In Nasr’s mind, Jean Morris is such a strong woman that and because she rejects the idea of being an object with which men relieve their sexual needs, undeniably what Mustafa did with the three women before Jean Morris. Mona Takieddine-Amyuni describes Jean Morris and Mustafa’s relationship as a “sadomasochistic game… with Jean Morris chewing at his very liver (p. 157), until that icy night of reckoning when she waits for him naked on their bed, her white thighs opened, calling for ‘his satanic warmth’ (pp. 162-165).”
Hosna Bint Mahmoud, given how her story ends, is, by no means, a weak woman. Mona Takieddine-Amyuni put it best in “Images of Arab Women in Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz, and Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih” when she states that “Family, village, and religion mold her [Hosna] and require her to be totally submissive to the males who hold power in their hands.” However, Hosna, as clearly demonstrated in “Season of Migration to the North”, ultimately rebels against what is required of her. “‘Wad Rayyes had been stabbed more than ten times – in his stomach, chest, face, and between his thighs.’” No one can deny that this is definitely rebellion against social norms, with special attention paid to the expectation that women should be sexually submissive to men. As Takieddine-Amyuni says, Salih uses Hosna “to denounce a sociopolitical system based on oppression and injustice.” This is especially interesting when one considers that Hosna is traditional at times, such as at her sons’ circumcision celebration. As it says on page 106 of “Season of Migration to the North”, “The day the boys’ circumcision was celebrated, Hosna bared her head and danced as a mother does on the day her sons are circumcised.” One of the most interesting facts about Hosna’s “end” is the fact that she blatantly tells the narrator that she is going to do it. “At last, though, I became aware of her voice in the darkness like the blade of a knife. ‘If they force to marry, I’ll kill him and kill myself.’” The narrator only reacts to this with silence, either as though he does not believe that she would do this or that he is shocked to hear a woman speak in such a way. It could even be possible that this is simply shock because he knows that Hosna is capable of it. Whatever his reason for his silence is, even when he hears that she actually killed Wad Rayyes before committing suicide, he expresses surprise, albeit possibly just at the brutality of the murder and suicide.
The third strong female character that warrants attention is Bint Majzoub, the close female friend of the narrator’s grandfather. Bint Majzoub is strong in a different way than Jean Morris and Hosna Bint Mahmoud. Rather than rebelling against society like Hosna or showing herself to actually see the man behind the mystique like Jean, Bint Majzoub has fully embraced society as it is and prospered from it. She has gained great riches by marrying many men, which she augments by demonstrating that she is skilled in sexual acts. “This business never kills anyone.’” Bint Majzoub says when the narrator’s grandfather implies that Bint Majzoub killed one of her husbands. She views sex as a business of sorts, something that most would consider as being a more masculine thought. She also uses masculine mannerisms, such as “May I divorce”. However, one could argue that Bint Majzoub is not that strong, as she does not really attempt to better society, but rather just embraces it for what it is, but this seems to mostly just be a matter of personal definition.
There is little doubt that Jean Morris, Hosna Bint Mahmoud, and Bint Majzoub are all strong women. Jean Morris is virtually unaffected by the wiles of Mustafa to the point where he has to actually kill her by himself, clear evidence of his inability to affect her. Bint Majzoub embraces society as it is and uses it to further herself. Hosna Bint Mahmoud breaks social norms completely by killing Wad Rayyes before taking her own life, both behaving in a manner that is not submissive as well as obeying the social norm of remarrying when her husband dies. However, these three women do not hide the fact that there are many other women in “Season of Migration to the North” that are not even remotely strong. The narrator’s mother gets only one line in the entire novel and is never named. Mustafa’s birth mother is also hardly in the novel and completely suffers without a husband. Ann Hammond, Sheila Greenwood, and Isabella Seymour all are completely taken in by Mustafa’s charms and when he betrays them, they kill themselves. Interestingly, even the narrator seems somewhat sexist, despite his exposure to the West. The fact that the narrator opens the novel by referring to the reader as “gentlemen” is particularly thought-provoking. When one considers that Salih specifically wrote this novel for the West, it seems particularly odd that he should have his narrator, who has been open to the West, blatantly address the reader as male.
“Each work… consists also of forceful female characters who in their own way rebel against the age-old traditions of a taboo-laden, rural, male-dominated society.” This quote by Eiman El-Nour, when applied to “Season of Migration to the North”, fits only to Hosna Bint Mahmoud, and possibly to Jean Morris. In fact, for the most part, the majority of Tayeb Salih’s female characters in “Season of Migration” are used only to make the few examples of strong female characters seem stronger by comparison. Mona Takieddine-Amyuni most likely saw this, describing Ann, Sheila, and Isabella as “the various manifestations of Jean Morris”. Each one of these women was simply a part of Jean Morris, a well-developed, “strong” female character.
