After reading the poem “The Wife” by Emily Dickenson, some themes noticed throughout the story were womanhood, marriage, and the subjection of women during this time period. The main one to focus on in my opinion would be marriage, as Dickenson expresses the feelings many women may have felt as a wife during these times. Dickenson starts the poem by saying she is done with being a wife. This statement stood out to me because it connected with many women who probably felt the same way at this time. Dickenson also expresses in the story how challenging it is to be a single woman versus being a wife. As badly as many women didn’t want to be married as expressed, this wasn’t the social norm. Being a single independent woman was great, but the backlash and opinions from others is what many people were afraid of. Not only that but male domination was greatly shown throughout these time periods, especially towards women. This could’ve been some of the many reasons why the woman in the story went back from woman to wife again. These themes were echoed in the story “ Another Evening at the Club” by Alifa Rifaat. In the story Samia, one of the main characters, wanted to go to school to further her education but sadly couldn’t. Her parents, mainly her father, had arranged for her to be married. The power males had was always shown at these times, especially in ways like this. Just like Dickenson’s poem in this story, marriage was a big issue as well. Samia was faced with a huge decision after she partially caused the problem. After losing her wedding ring because she decided to get drunk and accusing Gazia without any proof, she told her husband knowing he’d flex his masculinity. Abbould confronted Gazia of stealing the ring, without any proof, and when she denied she got slapped. Gazia was locked up and beaten for a crime she did not commit. When Samia found the ring and told her husband so they could release Gazia, he basically shut the whole idea down because he was too prideful to own up for a mistake they caused. Samia had no choice in my opinion but to agree because if she didn’t it would’ve been consequences. This was just the sad reality that many wives like Samia faced because they had no real power or identities of their own, they were brought up not to.
