Frontier and Freedom in Dreams of Trespass

This English assignment analyzes Fatima Mernissi’s book 'Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood.' The analysis focuses on the concept of 'frontier' as presented in the text, arguing that it symbolizes the limitations and constraints imposed upon women within the harem. The student explores how Yasmina, the protagonist, grapples with these boundaries and her quest for freedom. The assignment also delves into broader societal implications of Mernissi's work, highlighting the historical and cultural contexts surrounding women’s oppression.

Running head: ENGLISH
English
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Author note:

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The book Dreams of Trespass: Tales of Harem girlhood written by Fatima Mernissi
describes the story of a girl of the Moroccan Harem (Mernissi, 1995). The girl who is the
protagonist of the story questions everything she observes and at first it may seem that the
questions that the girl is asking has no importance at all because it is just the things a child is
interested to know about the world. However, it can be observed after some time that her
questions are about the harem life and the frontier or boundary is the main unit that is slowly
shaping her life as well as her insight (Mernissi, 2015). She did not get the answers to her
questions, what she observed that in a harem questions are not asked because someone wants to
know something; it is asked to understand the happenings of the place. As the story evolves, it is
seen that frontier becomes a big problem in her life and it changes everything. After a certain
time she wants to find out how the frontier works and as the story proceeds, she ends us having
an inconsistent relationship with all the boundaries or frontier she is covered with in her life.
Slowly with time, looking for the frontier becomes her occupation and while discovering the
frontier her life became disordered. The writing style of Mernissi depicted the harem as a frontier
because the women had to take permission or justify themselves with proper reason in case they
wanted to step in or out of the harem (Bourget, 2013).
The writer portrayed the character of Mernissi’s mother with fluency and this can be said
because she was the one to dream that she would live alone with her husband and children. She
thought when everyone stays at a bounded place life becomes miserable. The book has many
frontiers, the one between the Christians and Muslims, the other one for the dressing of women,
another for the children and lastly hearing of radio (Bourget, 2013). Harem is not at all a good
place, for not only what the author wrote in the book about it but in any individual perspective
also, harem does not sound a good thing. Harem is mainly a place many wives of a single man

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live together, precisely; it is a place, where a woman is bound to share her husband with other
women (Ayadi, 2014). Stuck in a harem means that the woman has lost her freedom and is
surrounded by many frontiers, which she is unable to break. The author has presented the
character of Yasmina to be a strong one who seemed to believe that every individual has many
frontiers in their life and harem according to her was the forbidden place (Moruzzi, 2016).
According to Yasmina’s perspective as seen in the story, harem may take away many freedoms
but it provides freedom to someone else. The frontier affected each of the lives of women living
there but who sets the frontiers is still unknown or who is the one to decide what frontier must be
implemented (Benmessaoud, 2013). Similarly, in life, people come across many frontiers but the
person who started it is still unknown.
In the book, the author used the character of Yasmina to define what a harem is and
clearly depicts the fact that harem is a place where the husband is the owner and his instructions
are needed to be followed (Magliaro, 2014). The book clearly depicted within the character of
Yasmina that a woman’s life is always covered with sorrow, as a woman who is working at
home is not paid but men are paid and this increases the status of men in the world and in
personal spaces as well (Alfano et al., 2014).

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Reflection:
After reading the story, I found that harem is a place where the women used to stay along
with other wives of their husbands. The place had many frontiers and the women had no option
than to accept the frontiers and live life as it is. They did not have the right to ask any questions
and all the questions that they have were not at all acceptable by others. The women had no life
of their own and they ended up living a life full of boundaries where they cannot even ask their
husband to stay with them alone. The harem was a forbidden place and once the women started
living there they inscribe the fact in their head that they are forbidden. The author has carefully
marked the matter of frontier in the book. This can be said because after reading the story I got a
very clear notion about the fact that women had no options for their own, they were kept covered
by frontiers because women have the ability to change the rules of the world and turn every
frontier down. I understood that the frontiers are set for women to stop them from revolting and
when the women got power, they will break every frontier.
The story also made me understood a very good thing, which is that many ‘powerful’
countries used the concept of harem to dominate women. Since the world came into existence,
there is a constant dominance towards and I truly feel that everyone must try to abolish this kind
of practise so that everyone is equally treated irrespective of his or her gender. The frontier in the
world will always stay, as there are people who want the barriers to exist so that the women can
be dominated as usual. It is very important to let women live their life their way similarly what
the men does with their life. In the book, Fatima has clearly depicted the story of women in her
own words and I completely agree with her views about women because they are not a
possession and without them, the world will truly not exist. Women are a powerful entity and

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they are the one to suffer and sacrifice more since a very long time. Lastly, the concept of
frontier is still a concerning factor in a woman’s life.

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References:
Alfano, L., La Tegola, D., Carabellese, F., & Ciliberti, R. (2014). “Dreams of trespass”: from the
accusation of sexual abuse to the restoration of the “ruptured” family relations. ITALIAN
JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY, 5(2), 54-62.
Ayadi, H. (2014). Women’s Political Strategies: The Power of Telling Silence in Maghrebian
Folktales.
Benmessaoud, S. (2013). The Challenges of Translating Third World Women in a Transnational
Context: The Case of Mernissi’s Dreams of Trespass. The Translator, 19(2), 183-205.
Bourget, C. (2013). Complicity with Orientalism in third-world women's writing: Fatima
Mernissi's fictive memoirs. REsEaRch in afRican litERatuREs, 44(3), 30-49.
Magliaro, K. (2014). A Life Sentence: Imprisoned Muslim Women (Doctoral dissertation,
Towson University).
Mernissi, F. (1995). Dreams of trespass: Tales of a harem girlhood. Basic Books.
Mernissi, F. (2015). The meaning of spatial boundaries. Provocations: A Transnational Reader in
the History of Feminist Thought, 350.
Moruzzi, N. C. (2016). In Memoriam Fatima Mernissi, 1940–2015.