Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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It is amazing how the issue of feminine literature keeps cropping up from time to time. But is there such a thing as feminine literature, as distinct from male literature? I had always subscribed to Taha Hussein's position: when asked about the issue, he said, "There's no such thing as female literature and male literature; the real distinction is between good literature and bad literature." I thought I was rather behind the times in holding fast to this position, but a recent debate indicates otherwise.

In one of its recent issues, the Daily Telegraph posed the question whether men can write romantic novels. The issue was raised by a new programme on the novel on BBC4, called "Reader, I married Him", presented by Daisy Godwin. Godwin claimed that "you can't have a really seriously romantic book written by a man". If you are a male writer, she went on, "you lack insight into the ways of women." Responding in the Daily Telegraph, Ray Connolly claimed that "She really is talking through a prism of prejudice and stereotypes." Connolly is a novelist, and according to him, his new novel Love Out of Season proves that men can write romantic novels. He also cites several examples that demonstrate that the history of literature is filled with romantic stories written by men.

If it were only women writers who had the romantic gift, Connolly goes on, "what on earth was John Donne doing wasting his time about the flea in his sonnet, [and] why did Graham Greene get himself in such a state in The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair ?" But Connolly concedes that certain kinds of stories appeal more to one sex than the other.

On the same page as Connolly's article, Liz Hunt, a Telegraph writer, seems to counter his argument. "Ask any woman to name her favourite romantic novel and the likelihood is that she will mention one of two titles: Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice." At the heart of both novels, "there is a brooding, obsessive, all-consuming passion that every woman -- if she is being honest -- aspires to be the object of at some time in her life." And, Hunt continues, "it is only another woman who really knows how to deliver it because she has been there -- or would like to have been there -- too."

After mentioning some examples of women's yearning and emotions, Hunt concludes that "only a woman can truly capture these emotions in a credible way, because she has experienced them or can imagine experiencing them in a way that a man simply cannot. Men are more used to pursuit and action, whereas women writers better understand that they must keep the romance central. "For women romance is the ultimate reason to turn a page."

Hunt says that what interested her when she first watched Gone With the Wind when she was 15 was not the historical, political events, but to know "if Scarlett would ever understand that Rhett was the only man who understood her and truly loved her". She concludes that women writers are better at details -- and details are essential in creating a romantic build-up: what he wore, what she wore, how they were standing, how they moved, how they touched.

Well, if I am to take sides, I would certainly side with Connolly. This I do out of certainty that the best romantic novels are written by men. Egyptian novelist Ihsan Abdel-Kuddous, for example, was famous all over the Arab world for his romantic fiction -- of which women were avid readers. Another case in point is Youssef El-Sebai, always described as a romantic novelist. It is a pity that hardly any of their works have been translated.

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