“Frailty thy name is woman,” said Hamlet. But I don’t believe he was right — at least not entirely.
This Saturday, I saw an article in a newspaper about a woman who found it impossible to live with her husband and sought a divorce. She could not obtain it immediately because he refused to cooperate. So she had to give up all her legal rights to get it.
On the same day I read in a magazine an interview with the now-famous Rania Al-Baz. She said that she gave up all her legal rights and forgave her husband for his crime — attempted murder. She also hinted that she might go back to him.
Still in shock after reading that a woman was forgetting all the harassment she suffered and the support she got from the public in her battle to escape it and was choosing to go back, my eyes fell on a news item about of a newly wed couple who went shopping in one of the city’s big malls. While browsing through the stores, the man managed to chat up a woman walking around the mall. At this, his wife got furious and attacked him physically, screaming at him and telling people what an unfaithful husband she had.
If we examine these three events, they show two types of women: Those who accept harassment and infidelity, and others who do not and take extreme measures to prove it. The case of Rania with all the attendant media exposure highlighted one kind of Saudi women — and proved true to Shakespeare’s type.
Others are not that frail, but do not get the attention they deserve.
So what do women really want?
In this country there is a saying that goes “Taking shelter in a man’s shadow is better than being sheltered by a wall.” Untrue though this saying is, it demonstrates exactly how women think. A man by definition is a protector and guardian and our society gives this definition to any man even if he does not deserve it. Women believe and accept that definition blindly. To be fair to all, we must see it as every woman’s right to accept or not to accept this principle, because, after all, that is what personal freedom is all about.
Even in the West, some women do get harassed. Some of them end the relationship while some others opt to live with their abusers. They may have their own personal reason for that. Again, that is their choice and they are entitled to it.
What about the abused women in the Kingdom? When one of them complains that she is being harassed and gets people to defend her case and then, suddenly, she decides to give up on her rights and goes back to the abusive relationship, should she be looked upon as representative of abused women? Or does she represent only herself? Many people who supported such a woman while she was fighting would feel betrayed by her decision. They would ask, “Why did she go public with her case then?” Many would also say that, in the end, it is her decision and should remain so.
My feeling is that if a woman makes her case public, she should be willing to take the pressure that comes along with it. Pressure there will surely be, for choosing to come out of the shadow into the glare of public attention, hers becomes a test case and she acquires an iconic status because of the response it evokes from the public and the hope it raises in many. Such publicity also encourages others to come out and bring their own cases to public attention. That makes the society aware of such situations and drives it to take remedial action.
This shows strength rather than frailty. So once again I have to say, “Sorry Hamlet, but I don’t agree with you.”
