132 The American Journal of [slamic Social Sciences 19:4 

May Her Likes Be Multiplied: 

Biography and Gender Politics in Egypt 

Marilyn Booth 

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 335 pages. 

Marilyn Booth's remarkable study blends literary criticism with historical 
research to better understand the construction of modem Egyptian woman­
hood. Booth analyzes hundreds of women's biographies that were written 

in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and published in the 
popular women's press. She situates this activity within the context of 
Egypt's nationalist struggle and burgeoning feminist movement at a time of 

foreign economic, military, and cultural domination. With the publication 

of biographies of women as diverse as the Prophet's wives, Jeanne d'Arc, 
Hatshepsut, Jane Austin, and Safiyya Zaghlul, Booth uncovers the diversi ­

ty of the Egyptian women's press in its scope and vision of what Egypt 
should expect of its women. 

Booth complicates our understandings of women's participation in the 
public sphere by illuminating the ethnic and religious diversity of the 

Egyptian women's press. She also delves deeply into the class issues moti­
vating the construction of the ideal Egyptian woman as a selfless member of 

her family - both nuclear and national - conforming her domestic sphere to 
the mold of communal, nationalist needs. Revealing women authors as both 

shaping and being shaped by contemporary ideas of successful femininity, 
Booth's study is perhaps the most potent analysis of Egyptian feminism pub­

lished in quite some time. It is an indispensable guide to a literature steeped 
in the Arabic literary past as well as modem Egyptian society. 

In a complex prologue, Booth argues that any examination of author­
ship can only vaguely determine how audiences react to published texts. 
Thus, although she sets out to analyze the messages inherent in women's 
biographies, she cannot relay the manner in which the women's press was 

received by its audience. Her book is an analysis of prescription through 

example, but only can hint at the resulting impact. Booth focuses on how 
these biographies became part of a larger social project to define women as 
national symbols situating the nation as the ultimate community, all the 

while maintaining patriarchal constructs in the home and other social 

spheres. She declares the biographies she examines to be ultimately "fem­
inist," for, although they often maintain crucial elements of the status quo 







Book Reviews 135 

sive selected bibliography of 14 pages. It is not merely a book to be read 
on its own, but to be read against the larger literature of Egyptian femi­

nism, and, indeed, nonwestern feminism, for its exhaustive nature stands 

as a solid model for comparative study. 
For scholars of the Middle East and the larger Islamic world, Booth pro­

vides an irreplaceable volume that successfully links modern biography with 

the rich Arabic literary tradition of biographical dictionaries. She also situ­

ates the nationalist debates about women's role in the private and public 
spheres in British-era Egypt without glossing over the significant differences 

between the country's Muslim, Christian, Egyptian, and Levantine popula ­

tions- all of which were active in the female press. For non-Arabists, Booth 

provides a wonderful series of translations from the women's press, thereby 
making available an excellent comparative case for the debates over imper ­

ial motherhood, women's roles in nationalist movements, international fem­

inism, and women's roles in the public and private spheres. 

Perhaps most importantly, Booth sheds light on the precursory litera ­
ture of today's lslamist literature in Egypt. This gives her volume remark­

able relevance for understanding the exemplary conduct literature that 

shapes women's ideals in vast segments of contemporary Egyptian society. 
In sum, May Her Likes Be Multiplied· Biography and Gender Politics in 
Egypt is a masterful study that will have a long-lasting impact not only on 

the way that modern Egyptian nationalisms and feminisms are studied, but 

on how the portrayal of women's exemplary public roles in published 
biographies engender nationalist debates in the Islamic world and beyond. 

Dr. Nancy L. Stockdale 

Department of History 
University of Central Florida, Orlando. Florida