She habitually holds her “breath and pretend to be asleep, waiting for his finger to reach out” for her while she asleep.” While living with her uncle, Firdaus is exploited for manual labour within the household as she is required to wash “the floor, the dishes, and the clothes.” Additionally, Firdaus is constantly sexually abused by her uncle while living with him her role as a niece also entails the function of a sexual slave. Just as her father prioritized his own wellbeing over Firdaus’, so too did her own mother as she “used to abandon alone and go to father to keep him warm.” After the death of her parents, Firdaus is sent to Cairo to live with her uncle, where she felt she was “being born a second time,” implying that she was entering a phase similar to her childhood under her parents. In the winter, her “father used to shift straw mat and pillow to the small room facing north,” and then occupy her corner in the oven room.

Her first masters were her abusive parents. Throughout the novel, El Saadawi characterizes many of Firdaus’ relationships within a master-slave complex, illustrating Firdaus’ transfer between masters throughout her life. In her novel, El Saadawi inverts notions of honour, liberation, and respectability through Firdaus’ participation in prostitution and through her critique of the institution of marriage. Prostitution enables Firdaus to become her own master without being forced into a life of servitude Firdaus’ sense of empowerment that results from sex work explicitly critiques Egyptian patriarchal society, as sex work was not a respected or recognized form of labour. Firdaus adopts prostitution - a form of sex work - as a tool for liberation as it defies the patriarchal institution of marriage in Egypt at that time. She is a victim of the conservative, indigenous traditions of Egyptian society under Anwar Sadat’s post-colonial government. Firdaus lives in an environment where men dominate women within a variety of institutions, including marriage, religion, politics, culture, and economics.

The novel is a first-person account of the life of Firdaus, an Egyptian peasant girl, starting from her childhood of neglect and cruelty to her eventual imprisonment and execution.

Woman at Point Zero is a feminist novel written by the Egyptian author Nawal El Saadawi published in 1975.

Woman at point zero as a feminist novel