A Spinster's Memoirs

عن الكتاب

when Ahmed Kafafi authored A Spinster's Memoirs in 1996 many arched their eyebrows and asked" "what do you know about spinsters?" At that time no one realised that the traditional imge of a spinster had already undergone a radical change. The stereotypical depiction of a spinster was that of a black-clad old maid knitting behind a small window through which she people from her own seclusion to shudder at the shadows of males passing by. But decades marked by social upheavals, and particularly by those which accompanied the transition into the free market economy, made that imge redundant. Now many attractive, hip, self-sufficient female professionals have become not even selective but over-finicky when it comes to choosing their life partner. This has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of unmarried women in Arab world. Having achieved independence, economic and otherwise, several women are now reluctant to compromise on their acquired right in a male-dominated equality. Many women, therefore, have opted to remain unmarried even when they have to face the social stigma of being dubbed "spinsters".