New perspectives on “the European woman” trope in the Arabic novel. A concise study of the Egyptian case

This article documents the genesis and the morphology of the European woman trope in the Egyptian novel and its evolution after 1935 through the analysis of works published by Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm, Fatḥī Ġānim, Bahā’ Ṭāhir and ‘Alā’ al-Aswānī. The article explores the ways in which European female characters have been deployed by Egyptian male authors in the production of gendered and competing imaginaries of Egyptian nationhood, and alternative visions of modernity. The novels published during the decade 1935–45 depict a tense relationship between the Egyptian male protagonists and the European female characters, and reveal the authors’ widespread dissatisfaction with the models of modernization that had dominated in previous decades. However, after the 1960s, the European woman trope has been deployed for questioning selfhood and masculine identities and as part of a critical rethinking of nationalist discourse.