Suffering wives: Miller’s Linda and Mahfouz’s Amina

The theme of suffering female characters has been the interest of both the drama and the novel of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among those who are interested in the matter are the Noble Prize winners Arthur Miller and Naguib Mahfouz in Death of a Salesman (1949) and Palace Walk (1956). Both of Miller’s Linda and Mahfouz’s Amina have greatly suffered at the hands of their tyrannical husbands Willy Loman and Al- Sayyid Ahmad Abd-Elguaad respectively. The main aim of this paper is to study the sources, forms, and consequences of the sufferings of both Miller’s Linda and Mahfouz’s Amina, and to place their sufferings against the current beliefs of the age in which they lived. The reason behind choosing these two characters is that they look like each other in many ways. First, they are reliable, trusted wives and mothers who are dedicated to the welfare of their families. Second, they face the same inherently patriarchal cultures and suffer the same misogyny. Third, they are different from other tragic wives like Shakespeare's Desdemona, who are created to meet Aristotle's tragic requirements.