Another Evening At The Club

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Alifa Rifaat’s “Another Evening at the Club”: A Story on Gender and Class Relations in Egypt “Another Evening at the Club”, by Alifa Rifaat is a short story that focuses on gender and class relations in Egypt. It reflects how women, no matter their status, are trained to be submissive and how greed and opinion of others can drive a relationship. The story takes place in Egypt, as the reader meets the main character, Samia, a young girl marrying Abboud Bey, a rich man much older than her. The story is about the loss of a ring Abboud Bey offered to her, and how it will affect the characters of the story. Rifaat conveys this theme through her use of contrast and characterization. The relation described in the story shows contrast between male characters and female characters. That relation is a relation of submission. Women show signs of deference toward men. The three women of the story are Samia, a young girl recently married, her mother and Gazia, Samia’s servant. The story begins with a flashback, telling the reader how Samia first met her husband Abboud Bey. The passage illustrates that the actions made by Samia and her mother are led by the men of the story. First, during the meeting of Samia and Abboud Bey, Samia waits for signs of her father, Mahmoud Barakat, before doing anything. “When the two men had taken their coffee, her father had looked up at her with a smile and had told her to sit down, and she had seated herself on the sofa facing them, […] looking through lowered lids at the man who might choose her as her wife.” (54) Here, the beginning of this sentence may evoke the impression of a dog’s behavior toward his master. The master tells the dog to “sit” and the dog, well trained, obeys without complaining. Like the dog, Samia has been “trained” her whole life to obey to men, her only role consisting of being beautiful, happy and carefree while
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