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THE ENTRAPPED FEMALES OF NAWAL EL 

SAADAWI’S GOD DIES BY THE NILE 

 

Onyekachi Georgeline Oge-Chimezie 
Department of English Language & Literature 

Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka 

Email: georgelionyi@yahoo.com 

Abstract 

Fictional texts have gone far beyond the portrayal of authors’ 

concerns. They are viable sites for academic research. An aspect 

of these concerns worth being researched into focuses on 

increasing number of issues about the female members of 

society: the young and the old, the educated and the uneducated. 

Growing up in a society rooted in patriarchal norms, some 

female characters in Nawal El Saadawi’s God Dies by the Nile 

go through devastating experiences. Employing the 

psychoanalytic theory, this study examines the nature of the 

struggles of these female characters, their various forms of 

entrapment as portrayed in the selected text and what informs 

their behavior in relation to their social, cultural, political and 

economic contexts. The study finds out the devastating traumatic 

effects of these experiences on the minds of the female 

characters, the emergence of various personalities and the 

aftermath behavioural output. The female characters’ emotional 

and mental disconnections with themselves and with society as a 

result of their traumatic experiences are equally highlighted 

thereby creating awareness about the complex nature of life. 

Keywords: Trauma, Patriarchy, Psychoanalytical Theory 

mailto:georgelionyi@yahoo.com


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Introduction 

The history of the African female who has gone through 

patriarchy, colonization and racism is that of the subjugated; 

pushed into a certain class and position. She is therefore 

entrapped, faced with fragmentation, alienation, filled with 

despair and these adversely affect her personality.As such, 

entrapment as a result of patriarchal oppression and gender 

discrimination produce unhealthy environment which leads to 

psychological and emotional trauma for the female. These are 

evident in the novel under study. Trauma is as a wound upon the 

mind caused by a painful experience like loss of a loved one, 

rejection, and racial discrimination.  Therefore, this paper 

focuses on the sufferings of the black female as portrayed in the 

selected novel and theadverse effects on her psyche. The 

novelselected portrays what Laura Brown calls the “private, 

secret, insidious traumas” (102) “that are often experienced by 

women, girls, and people of color and which result from ongoing 

humiliation and degradation in interpersonal relationships rather 

than from a single extraordinary event” (Kennedy 89). In this 

study some characters and socio-cultural factors are examined to 

see their responses to traumatic experiences. Some of the 

traumatic experiences portrayed in the selected novel take place 

in childhood. According to Judith Herman “repeated trauma in 

adult life erodes the structure of personality already formed, but 

repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms personality . . 

.” (96) as such there is the need to examine the nature of the 

trauma the victims go through in other to evaluate the impact on 

their personality. This paper discusses patriarchy as a relevant 

concept and trauma as resultant effect of patriarchal entrapment.  

Patriarchy 



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Patriarchy literally means the role of the father and it is derived 

from the Greek word “patriarkhes” meaning “father of a race.”  

Patriarchy therefore refers to rulership by the male head of the 

family. It is male dominance by any means necessary. Hooks 

Bell defines patriarchy as a “political – social system that insists 

that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and 

everyone deemed weak, especially females and endowed with 

the right to dominate  and rule over the weak and to maintain 

that dominance through various forms of psychological 

terrorism and violence” (1). Similarly, Rubaya and Gonye are of 

the view that patriarchy “is the manner in which men as a social 

group exploit, dominate and oppress women as a social group 

(61).” In Things Fall Apart which is considered the beginning of 

African Literature, Achebe portrays this patriarchal society. 

Okonkwo rules like a god in his home and no one dares to talk 

or express personal feelings.A patriarchal society is “male-

centred and – controlled; organised and conducted in such a way 

as to subordinate women to men in all cultural domains . . .” 

(Abrahams and Harpharm 125). The entrenchment of patriarchal 

norms into the fabrics of some African communities creates the 

impression of patriarchy as a religion. Over the years, patriarchy 

has become a system in which males hold primary power in 

political leadership, social, cultural and religious spheres; where 

fathers exercise authority over women and children. Any society 

that upholds the rule or governance of males alone is patriarchal. 

In African setting, fathers and brothers are the custodians of the 

females’ personality and sexuality. This male-dominated socio-

cultural life entraps the protagonistand some other female 

characters in the novel under study leading to psychological 

trauma and some behavioural problems. 

Psychoanalytic Theory 



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Prior to the 19th century, Aristotle evolved a theoretical stand 

that art, especially tragedy, has the ability to affect the emotion 

of the reader. He argues that the action to be imitated should be 

such that can elicit the feelings of pity and fear which lead to 

catharsis – the purgation of the emotion (1449). Aristotle’s 

theory can be considered a psychological one because it 

indicates an effect on the emotion. 

However in 19th century, Sigmund Freud proposed his 

psychoanalytic theory which increased the understanding of 

human personality. In two of his books: Studies in Hysteria co-

authored with Joseph Breuer (1895) and Interpretation of 

Dreams (1899), Freud put forth his theories about the working 

of the human psyche, causes of hysteria, the effect of traumatic 

experiences and the concept of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis 

was coined in 1896 by Freud and it refers to a body of ideas he 

developed in the 1890s in the course of treating his patients. It is 

a branch of psychology which deals with the investigation and 

treatment of emotional and behavioural problems through 

interviews that bring to light events in the patient’s early life. He 

believes that many of his patients’ problems like anxiety, 

depression and sexual dysfunction are the results of painful 

experiences they had gone through, especially as children. He 

uses psychoanalysis as a therapeutic method for treating mental 

disorders. This he does by looking into the relationship between 

conscious and unconscious elements in the patient’s mind 

thereby bringing into consciousness repressed fears and conflicts 

through the method of free association and dream interpretation 

(Freud 57).   

Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality development 

and its dynamics. In literature, psychoanalytic criticism is “. . . 

the study of the psychological types and principles present 

within works of literature . . .” (Wellek and Warren 81). It is a 



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theory that brings to light hidden aspects of human life and 

behaviour which writers explore in the characters they 

create.Psychoanalytic theory is used to study characters and 

societies in a work of art. The critic applying this theory is 

“interested in the psychological drives of a character and what 

makes a character to act in certain ways he/she does” (Asika 

308). Thus, psychoanalytic theory is used in the study of the 

selected novel to examine the subconscious and unconscious 

elements that motivate some of the female characters. Also the 

repressed memories which psychologically affect some of the 

female characters are equally examined. 

Patriarchal Entrapment in Saadawi’s God Dies by the Nile 

Saadawi portrays the difficult life of the female in a typical 

patriarchal African society. Patriarchy in this novel is 

consolidated by the cultural, political and religious forces 

represented by some male characters in the novel.  Kafr El Teen 

is a village where the majority of the people are peasants 

exploited by the Mayor. The people labor tirelessly to meet the 

demands of the Mayor and in addition to this the women are 

oppressed by the men in the family and society.  

The females in God dies by the Nile are entrapped by patriarchal 

laws. They have no voice of their own but only do what the men 

require willingly or by force: “don’t you know that girls and 

women never do what they’re told unless you beat 

them?”(Saadawi 27)  The patriarchal system constitutes identity 

crisis for the females who are turned from being individuals who 

have a mind of their own to robots who do as they are told 

without reasoning or questioning: “So Kafrawi called unto her in 

a firm voice, ‘you, Nefissa, come down here at once’ but Nefissa 

showed no signs of doing what he told her, so he clambered to 

the top of the oven, struck her several times and tugged at her 

hair until she was obliged to come down. He handed her over to 



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Sheikh Zahran in silence” (Saadawi 28).  The fear of the mayor 

has traumatised twelve year old Nefissa right from childhood 

such that the mere mention of his name sends a shiver through 

her body and on sighting him in the village, she runs away and 

hides. When her father tells her she will be taken to the Mayor’s 

house “that night, she could not sleep a wink” (Saadawi 26). She 

is forced into the Mayor’s house where she is raped and gets 

pregnant. Trauma here is depicted as a forceful invasion into the 

personal and emotional life of young Nefissa who becomes 

devastated and in reaction abandons her baby and runs away. 

Such an action is expected because according to psychoanalytic 

theory certain devastating experiences which are repressed can 

influence a bizarre action. One imagines what the life of a young 

girl without a sense of belonging, a family to run to, a means of 

livelihood, a shattered identity and in a strange land will look 

like. 

Nefissa’s younger sister Zeinab is also caught in this wave of 

patriarchal entrapment fortified by religion and politics. Initially, 

she keeps her shoulders high and fights against oppression by 

the Mayor but later comes to a zero point when her husband is 

unjustly sent to prison. The trauma of her sister’s disappearance, 

her father’s imprisonment and aunt’s failing health render her a 

prey to religious deception. Haj Ismail, one of the Mayor’s 

oppressive tools convinces Zeinab through an arranged prophecy 

with a holy man at “Sayeda Zeinab” (a mosque)   that working 

in the Mayor’s house is God’s requirement for her aunt’s cure 

and she agrees to this. Adrienne Rich as quoted by Shihada Isam 

states that “Patriarchy is the power of ideological, political 

system in which men by force, direct pressure, or through ritual, 

tradition, law, and language, customs, etiquette, education, and 

the division of labor, determine what part women shall or shall 

not play, and in which the female is everywhere subsumed under 



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the male” ( 167). The outcome for Zeinab is that she is raped and 

repeatedly exploited sexually by the Mayor. She like her sister 

goes through distorted identity; torn between being herself and 

being the Mayor’s plaything and sexual object. Like her sister, 

she runs away from Kafr El Teen to Bab El Hadeed where she 

frantically searches for permission to visit her husband. When 

she exhausts all possibilities, she goes into prostitution. Her 

identity changes from that of a well mannered hardworking girl 

with a sense of good judgment to a cheap prostitute. The 

decisions and actions of these two sisters are the resultant effects 

of their gruesome experiences. 

All this while, Zakeya keenly observes the trend of events as a 

little girl growing up in her father’s house. She watches as her 

mother was maltreated and mourns from the time “her father 

struck her mother on the head because she had not borne him the 

son he expected” (Saadawi 95) to the time “she developed two 

breasts which the menfolk would pinch when there was nobody 

around to prevent them” (Saadawi 95). As a married woman she 

has gone through the trauma of patriarchal oppression at the 

family and social levels. She is physically and emotionally 

battered by her husband and experienced the trauma of losing 

fifteen children: “. . . for it was like that. Every time a son of 

hers died he would strike out at her blindly, and beat her up with 

anything he could lay his hands on. And the same thing would 

happen whenever she gave birth to a daughter. She had given 

birth to ten sons and six daughters – but the only child who had 

lived to grow up is Galal” (Saadawi 89). She further says that “. . 

. her husband Abdel Moneim would beat her with a stick, then 

climb on her and bear down on her chest with all his weight 

(Saadawi 95). 

 Zakeya watches as her son and only hope is abducted into the 

army. She endures as her niece Nefissa, is forcefully taken by 



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the Mayor. She is helpless when the Mayor takes Zienab, her 

remaining niece and again she could do nothing to stop him. 

Zakeya is one female with too many troubles and traumas in the 

novel. 

 The effects of trauma and pain reflect in her strides and physical 

outlook. Saadawi describes her thus: “a tall upright shadow 

slipped through and advanced on two legs with a powerful 

steady stride …. The lips were tightly closed, resolute, as though 

no word could pass through them. The large, wide-open eyes 

fixed on the horizon expressed an angry defiance” (1). Almost 

consumed by anger which is an effect of trauma Zakeya pours 

her strength into her farm work: 

And the blows of her hoe seemed to echo with an anger buried 

deep down as she lifted it high up in the air and swung it down 

with all her might into the soil …. They went on with a steady 

thud, thud, thud, echoing in the neighbouring fields throughout 

the day almost inhuman, relentless, and frightening in the fury of 

their power. Even at midday, when the men broke off for a meal 

and an hour of rest, they went on without a stop (Saadawi 3). 

She works furiously from dawn to dusk yet the pain and anger in 

her do not go away. 

According to Sigmund Freud “symptoms of hysteria are the 

result of unresolved but forgotten traumas from childhood” 

(quoted in Dobbie 51). The traumatic experiences of the past 

which are stored in her unconscious return to haunt her in form 

of nightmares. In the novel are dreams that expressed her 

childhood memories of the iron gate (a symbol of oppression), 

her marital experiences and the memories of her son. According 

to psychoanalytic theory, nightmarish dreams are expected in the 

life of a traumatized person: “the traumatic moment becomes 



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encoded in an abnormal form of memory, which breaks 

spontaneously into consciousness, both as flashbacks during 

waking states and as traumatic nightmares during sleep” 

(Herman 37).  

Furthermore, her repressed memories bounce back and affect her 

behaviour. Zakeya’s behaviour becomes strange. She “still 

squatted on the ground, in the same place. She would close her 

eyes, then open them, then close them again . . . she would open 

her eyes in terror, and look at faces gathered around her” 

(Saadawi 90). Her niece frantically calls for exorcism through 

religious rituals and prayers “but the devil refused to leave 

Zakeya’s body” (Saadawi 97) because it is not the devil after all. 

It is what psychoanalytic theory call dissociation, an altered state 

of consciousness induced by trauma. Zakeya has witnessed a lot 

of violence and “in each instance, the salient characteristic of the 

traumatic event is its power to inspire helplessness and terror” 

(Herman 34). These are evident in Zakeya’s behavior: “her eyes 

kept turning this way and that with a frightened look. ‘Zeinab, 

my child, do not leave me alone. I am frightened. The devils are 

looking at me from behind the bars of the window’. Zakeya 

would catch the hold of Zeinab’s galabeya. ‘No, Zeinab, don’t 

leave me alone” (Saadawi 98). This behavior is recognized in 

trauma as hyperarousal, a symptom of post traumatic stress 

disorder (PTSD). Sometimes when an individual goes through a 

traumatic experience “the human system of self preservation 

seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return 

at any moment . . . . The traumatized person startles easily, 

reacts irritably to smell, provocations, and sleeps poorly” 

(Herman 35). Zakeya is therefore in a state of constant vigilance 

for the return of danger. 

Later, Zakeya is forced into constriction by religion. 

Constriction is a consequence of trauma; a state of surrender, 



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complete powerlessness where “the system of self-defense shuts 

down entirely. [It is] paradoxically a state of detached calm, in 

which terror, rage and pain dissolve” (Herman 42). Zeinab and 

Zakeya are forced by religion to believe that Zakeya’s healing 

will only come by their surrender to the oppressive demands of 

the Mayor. As such, Zeinab is raped by the Mayor and is 

sexually exploited repeatedly yet she and Zakeya, her aunt 

accept it as the only way by which Zakeya will be healed. 

Herman further explains that in the state of constriction, “events 

continue to register in awareness, but it is as though these events 

have been disconnected from their ordinary meanings” (42-43). 

The meaning of what would have otherwise been a grievous 

crime changes to a saving/healing tool. In this state, there is a 

“feeling of indifference, emotional detachment, and profound 

passivity in which the person relinquishes all initiative and 

struggle” (Herman 43). One could say that Zakeya and Zeinab 

were more or less hypnotized. On the surface they appear calm 

and detached from the oppressive environment and activities but 

underlying in them are the unforgotten traumatic experiences 

and hurts. 

When Galal, Zakeya’s son returns from the army Zakeya seems 

to springs back to life and in a short while narrates all the 

ordeals to her son. According to psychoanalytic theory, bringing 

into consciousness certain repressed fears, conflicts and 

experiences through talking about them is a big tool for healing 

the hurt. The power of healing lies in speaking the unspeakable.  

Galal, the “healing balm” marries Zainab and brings back love 

and security for his wife and mother. However, this is short-

lived as the Mayor’s ruthless and oppressive hand falls on Galal. 

Like Kafrawi, his uncle he is framed-up for theft and sent to 

prison. According to Sigmund Freud “symptoms of hysteria are 

the result of unresolved but forgotten traumas from childhood” 



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(quoted in Dobbie 51). This means that certain painful and 

threatening experiences can be repressed in the unconscious but 

not forgiven and sooner or later they inform an action. At this 

point all the traumatic experiences and hurts which were 

repressed into the unconscious memories of Zakeya during the 

constriction period bounce back. She waits for the emergence of 

the Mayor through the iron gate. When he does, she murders 

him in a rage. He who destroyed her entire family does not 

deserve to live. The word “god” in the title of the novel 

symbolizes owner of all; the one who decides if you will live or 

die: “. . . the Mayor is a god and no one could punish him” 

(Saadawi vii) so Zakeya ensures she dethrones the god of Kafr 

El Teen. 

Conclusion 

The analysis above establishes that memory and the way we 

account for our experiences go a long way to influence our 

behaviour. Although at early childhood the child may seem to be 

untouched by the grief and pains of negative experiences, as 

time goes on their effects begin to emerge through the behaviour 

of the child. Bearing this in mind the question is: who decides 

what is befitting for the girl-child who eventually becomes the 

mother tomorrow? 

In explaining the dynamics of her protagonist’s psyche Head 

portrays domestic violence in the novels which eventually leads 

to psychological trauma. The psychological and behavioural 

problems as a result of the oppression of the female examined in 

this paper should alert society, parents and care-givers to give 

room for equal opportunities, self expression and peaceful co-

existence of male and female children. This will enhance the 

journey towards discovering one’s authentic self (personality) 

and when this is achieved, one becomes confident and bold 

enough to face life. 



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Brown, Laura S. “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist 

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Dobbie, Ann B. Theory into Practice. 2nd ed., Wadsworth 

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