Behind The Veil Of Femininity
By Gladys Matar كلاديس مطر

Ms. Matar sought to delve into the state of mind of the Arab woman.

This work, published by Ward House, with an introduction by Abdel-Kabir Alminawi: Morocco’s renowned author and critic.

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BOOK REVIEW
By Dr. Abdelkebir Minawi
Marrakech, Morocco, November 2006

In Behind The Veil Of Femininity, is considered to be part of the ongoing cultural project that Ms. Matar is working on relating the feminine issues. This book embraces most of the topics that concern the author as a writer and a cultured woman who is a high profile activist within a civilized nation know by its geographical and cultural richness as well as by the complexity of its problems. 

Ms. Matar believes that behind each door lie feminine obsessions, like a smoldering fire underneath the ashes, where the trap of contemporary culture is creating a similarity between man and woman, under the name of “development.” 

Along this line, Gladys Matar reviewed, once again, through one of her book chapters, the concept of being a “spiritual lesbian.”  She delved deeply into why women use this “tricky game,” as a solution to escape from their psychological crisis of conscience. She believes that this might come from the conflicting intentions of women renouncing their self-esteem, which is to say “hating their weakness,” versus their need for this weakness itself. 

In both cases, women are apt to fall into the extremity of her behavior while the man shadow appears from behind the scene, offensive, brutal, out of any communications and suppressive in some way! 

With such an analysis, M. Matar, concluded that  a sane Arabic woman is the infrastructure of her society, and a sane behavior can't be developed but through an efficient, active, dynamic and creative womanhood. 

Therefore , the author believes that democracy and freedom of expression will heal Arab women from her potential spiritual lesbianism that is existed one way or another. 

 M. Matar also is dealing in this book with concept of honor and dignity in its relation to the masculine common sense. she wrote that dignity is , in depth, respecting the laws of nature and not disdaining them. and the honor or " principal of man" is when he assumes a very translucent approach of the world, life, and humans as a group and not when he quickly hides a woman knee shown unintentionally. 

Dr. Abdelkebir Minawi 

Marrakech, Nov. 2006