By Mursi Saad El-Din I was brought up in a home that loved and respected women. My mother, who was a patriot in the true sense of the word, wrote poems in praise of our nationalist leader Saad Zaghloul. She called me Saad after him, and gave my younger sister the name Safia, after Zaghloul's wife, known as "Um Al-Misriyin", or the mother of Egyptians. Which brings me to the subject of this column. In 1955 a number of women published a book edited by a certain Marion Turner Sheehan, with the intriguing title The Spiritual Woman : Trustee of the Future. The book comprises texts by some 15 distinguished women who are addressing "the pressing spiritual and moral problems which women face" in their search for "a meaningful purpose of their lives". Considering that the book was published as far back as 1955, one is all the more impressed by its prescience, given that it predates all the international interest in women's issues, and the UN endeavours in this respect. What gives the book its importance is the variety of its female contributors and consequently the insights and experiences they bring to The Spiritual Woman. The contributors deal with the role of women in the arts, business, management, media, communications, education, entertainment, industry, leisure, literature, politics, nursing and social work. Indeed, the contributors themselves come from these different fields. Before moving to essays on the arts and literature, the "Foreword", written by Turner Sheehan, who has held many posts, including the vice presidency of the American Women's Association, deserves some attention. The purpose of the book, she writes, "is to stir the consciences of American women, regardless of race or colour, creed or class, to make a fight to save the moral standards". The chapter on the arts begins with, "What does woman, as woman, contribute to the arts? What is her place in music, painting, sculpture, letters? Is she best suited to interpreting the work of another? Is she, more properly, for instance, the musician, who is, in effect, another instrument for the composer? In music there are names like Bach, Beethoven, Brahms... but where are the feminine grace notes?" Again in the arts -- and it should be noted that the writer was then vice president of the American Federation of Arts and Chairman of the Exhibition Service -- the Renaissance can claim such dazzling artists as Botticelli, Fra Angelino, Leonardo and Raphael, but "was there a woman? None has survived. The same applies to the successive centuries". In the Impressionist and post- Impressionist periods, the writer adds, there were two women, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, "whose talents entitled them to hang their works with the masters, Renoir, Cezanne, Pissarro, Monet Van Gogh and Degas". After a lengthy discussion, the writer reaches a conclusion which some may consider controversial, especially from the vantage point of the year 2006. She asserts that women should not try to compete with men. While they can bring an influence to the arts, she suggests, they are to remain second fiddle. Where women can make a contribution is in the field of art criticism, for which they have a particular penchant. "Here woman's natural role as a teacher and elevator of taste", the writer continues, "is called on to the full". But she claims that it is in procreation that woman's power and glory lie. Woman is the one who shows her child that "beauty is not only pleasing to the eye, but that through the eye it reaches every corner of the... soul." The mother's role, she continues, is the most important one, but " [h]er role as an artist's wife is no less important." I wonder how many women would agree with her today.
