Kevin Lam Discussion 2

“The Wife” by Emily Dickinson and “Another Evening at the Club” by Alifa Rifaat explore the constraints and societal expectations placed upon women within different centuries. While Emily Dickinson’s poem was written in the 19^th century and Alifa Rifaat’s story was written in the 20^th century, they both shed light on the limited roles and sense of entrapment experienced by women. In the poem “The Wife”, Emily Dickinson writes: “She rose to his requirement, dropped. The playthings of her life. To take the honorable work. Of woman and of wife.” In this quote, Emily Dickinson was speaking of a woman who willingly sacrificed her own personal desires to fulfill the societal expectations of being a wife and a woman. This theme was echoed in “Another Evening at the Club” through the character of Samia, who was expected to conform to traditional gender roles and societal expectations. In “Another Evening at The Club,” Samia is portrayed as a woman who is required to abide by her husband’s every need and desire, for example in the story mentions the following quote “The gesture told her more eloquently than any words that he was the man, she the woman, he the one who carried the responsibilities, made the decisions, she the one whose roles it was to be beautiful, happy, carefree.”, based of this quote you can deduce how much control her husband has over her, causing her to retain in the traditional gender role and social norms where men makes the decisions as to woman needs to listen and support the decision that was made by him.