Masculinity and Family Bonding in Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace Walk and Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding.

This paper investigates the ambivalence of masculinity in Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding (1946) and Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace Walk (1956). Welty and Mahfouz’s writings are social presentations of their countries’ history and culture. As for Welty’s writings, they have been often read as feminist interrogations of history. This paper contends that Delta Wedding and Palace Walk should be examined as tales of the nature of masculinity in some countries. Masculinity in their writings is questioned and subverted; masculinity, rather than being settled, normal, and heroic is here uncovered as harsh, promptly imitated, limited to outer shapes and appearances. Welty and Mahfouz employ the fictionality of masculinity to uncover different behaviors of men represented in Fairchild and Ahmed Abdulgawad.  In addition, this paper examines the impact of war on the life style delineated in Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding (1946) and Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace Walk (1956). The present paper centers on female characters who adjust to the absence of their husbands, whether because of wars or because of their self- centered behaviors. Wars are the catalyst for societal change within the novels, and women must adopt to the new social changes that are infringing upon their lives. The paper explores each person’s reaction of particular female characters within the novels. The female characters in Delta Wedding speak in different ways of responding to the changeable social standards brought usually by war and societal standards imposed by individuals. As for Mahfouz’s Palace Walk, female characters are kept silent, because of their fear of being recognized as rebels by their husbands or parents.