Arab Wife

Publication Instance Details #1162

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	No	No	Yes	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	Gender-based violence
Languages	English
Genre	Short Lyric
Medium	Print Collection
Paratext Text	(after the Advice of Mwana Kupona upon the Wifely Duty, a 19th century Kiswahili poem by a mother in Pate entreating her daughter to be good to the man chosen to be her husband)
Notes	The speaker of the poem describes the duties and expectations surrounding an 'Arab Wife' - beauty, attentiveness, care, household duties, obedience to her husband, and so forth. The speaker describes how, if a wife displeases her husband, she can be consigned to hell forevermore, implying the husband's almost complete control of the wife's life and fate. This could be read as a commentary on the highly patriarchal cultures of some Arab nations, although the speaker of the poem does not comment on these attitudes or criticize them. The poet has based this poem on an earlier work, as detailed in the paratext.