result the physical mark of virginity is displaced from its biological place into the body and produced as a body called female. This physical mark is displaced onto the social space where the female body is permitted to move surrounded by a social virginity that marks its borders. As a result Moroccan women characters’ performance covers all three meanings together, so that Moroccan women are expected to bleed on their marriage night and they are supposed to perform a “public virginity”, as Yamani right says: “with a certain body style, the body moving within a defined social space” 22. Each border mentioned above is enforced through a set of regulations that the woman is not supposed to violate. As a result, crimes of honour are committed, according to Moroccan women writers, when the above borders are crossed. In almost all novels women are beaten because they are spotted talking to men. In this case, a woman moves with a body and in a space where she is not supposed to be. Through a very elaborate system of prohibitions, girls learn their limits/hudud* at a very young age. Moroccan culture, women writers remind us, guards itself against possible violations by devising sanctions less violent than death such as physical abuse, spatial entrapment, the institution of gossip and reputation. “Because you are a girl, and people will talk if you do this", is rhetorically how women came to acquire their gender. With the sweep of history in mind, writers like Trabelsi and Hadraoui raise questions and reach some conclusions about the attitudes which society holds towards women, their role, and their status. As a result generations of children have been socialized to accept inequalities and double standards. With Hadraoui, it becomes particularly important to present a revisionary analysis of pudeur– a concept that sheds light on the plight of women curbed and bound to fit the world of men: “les hommes, says Maïlouda, n’utilisent le mot pudeur que pour les femmes”.23 (p. 11). Moroccan women writers do not evade their feelings. Their writings reveal all the problems of modern Moroccan women with their pains, conflicts and contradictions. They shed light on the lives of those women who seek self expression, self affirmation and social options in a male cultural world that does not accept them. They explore the vulnerability of those women who refuse to conform to traditional roles and who suffer from the uncertainties of the future. Women are presented, as freed from feminine stereotypes and clichés, but have a strong physical presence. No longer prisoners of silence and invisibility, constricted in their emotional expression, they are given a new life and a new focus. After centuries of being the beloved, woman becomes the lover. In many cases, an interesting reversal of gender-bound representations occurs. As a matter of fact, women writers violate many codes and subvert power and pudeur. They openly address sexual issues and violate the linguistic or language norms that are politically correct or proper language for a woman. It is worth pointing out that Moroccan women writers of Arabic expression also treat sensual and sexual themes, but they do it through metaphors or symbols to avoid going too far from the
22
Yamani, p. 150. Hudud means frontiers in Arabic. 23 “Men, says Mailouda, always associate the concept of propriety with women” *
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