The Women’s Swimming Pool: Summary and Main Themes

In “The Women’s Swimming Pool” by Hanan Al-Shayk, a picture is painted of a girl’s journey to Beirut from her rural town 1982. The political and social ramifications of her world create the frustration and loss inherent in the binds she finds herself in inherited from her family and society.

In this story it is clear that women where the girl is from are quite disadvantaged and held back by their religious beliefs and customs in stark contrast to the bustling city where “bared arms”, “tight pants”, and “girls’ hair,” color the city of Beirut. At her rural origin, she is restrained to the task of working in the tent “amidst mounds of tobacco”. It is here that her strongest tie and relation is to that of her grandmother, her only family left, who “has welded the girl so close to her that the village girls no longer dare to make friends with me”. Her family ties turn into burdens, holding her back from the joys of youth and friendship. In her town, her grandfather was “the celebrated religious scholar” and yet the grandmother is weaving tobacco, highlighting the inequality found among the sexes, with the women left to the duty of menial labor. Their beliefs ingrained so strongly that even “In this heat the girl still had to wear that dress with long sleeves, that head covering over my braids” . No matter the pain it caused, the customs were to be upheld. This pattern is portrayed again as the grandmother is hurting her knees on the pavement in order to answer the Islamic call to prayer, “her knees that knelt on the cruelly hard pavement” revealing “her tattooed hands that lay on the dirt.” The tattoo matching the one on her chin, a marked woman, almost as if taken by the customs so ingrained in her like the very tattoo it symbolized.

The girl convinces her grandmother to visit the city that is home to her beloved sea. It is here that her “friend Sumayya had sworn that the swimming pool she'd been at had been for women only.” It is clear that the belief systems of the girls people allowed for no intermingling but rather a segregation of the genders as this was not socially, religiously or politically acceptable, as well as the hoops women had to go to in order to enjoy swimming, whereas men could just hop right into the ocean. The consequences “If any man were to see you,” her grandmother exclaims, “you’d be done for, and so would your mother, and father and your grandfather she was frightened she wouldn’t go to heaven”. There is deeply ingrained shame and “evil” power attributed to the sight of woman's body, and strict religious consequences for such a sight. This places extreme limitation onto the freedom of women in the girl’s position, as demonstrated by the difficulty in even finding this one certain swimming pool.

When they arrived “it was soon all too evident that we were outsiders to the capital”. The culture of the girl is that of the rural south, not the progressive and liberal beliefs of those in the urban city of Beirut, and as she realizes this she “cries inwardly because she was born in the south”  where it was more traditional and religious, with not much freedom or opportunity to offer the young girl. “She felt how far removed we were from these passers by;” the alienation and seclusion of tradition is felt deeply by the girl.

Amidst the strain already felt in being in this new and wildly different place, when the girl leads the grandmother to finally go find the pool, it is apparent the lack of awareness of such a thing is to the people of Beirut, highlighting their lack of similar religious practices and concern. When asking just about everyone they saw and passed by where the women’s swimming pool was, “nobody knew where it was” . The people of Beirut are on different planes of existence it seems, having no need to know such things as it did not affect their lives personally. Once the girl finds the pool, and shortly after finds her grandmother praying in the streets, she feels like her grandmother was “destroying what lay in my bag,”  spoiling her dream and the sweet freedom the cool waters were to have brought.

The girl’s burden, religious entrapments and upbringing held her back from the sweet, salty spray of opportunity and liberation. All the while the urban sprawl bustles by, unphased and unrelatable.

Analysis of The Women’s Swimming Pools by Hanan Al-Shaykh

Stories of all sizes and sorts tell a tale, many times with a meaning that is deeper than the Pacific Ocean. The Women’s Swimming Pools, by Hanan Al-Shaykh would be one of those stories, as it is centralized around the inequality that follows women along with the strictness of traditional role, while on the surface it is merely a girl who yearns to go to a pool. This theme is very personal and important to me as I am a woman and the misogyny and unfair treatment towards us is still very much alive, despite efforts to lessen these behaviors. This short story is based on that message and how it is brought to life through the characters and their roles in the plot.

Written in first person, this story is deeply rooted in Lebanon around the 1990s. The protagonist, who we think is Hanan herself, is a young girl who works on a tobacco field along with her grandmother, as we read in the exposition. Our two main characters are round and dynamic individuals, who rightfully transcend into complex and realistic beings. Right away we saw varying traits in between the young girl and her grandmother who “has welded the girl so close to her that the village girls no longer dare to make friends with me” (1167). It is clear that her grandmother is very protective and restrictive against the girl, who wishes not to be, which makes the grandmother our foil in the story, as she contrasts with the girl. The girl has a vision of setting out to go to the swimming pool which is in the sea itself, but is held back by her grandma, insisting that “If any man were to see you, you’d be done for, and so would your mother and father and your grandfather, the religious scholar- and id be done for more than anyone because its I who agreed to this and helped you” (1168). It would hold the same weight as a sin or likely dishonor, and her family would be humiliated, simply because she was showing skin. Another part that resonated with this quote was that the inequality between men and women is obvious. However, she still agrees and takes the girl to the city of Beirut, a more modern and loose-lifestyle city.

Continuing on, after the hassle of finding the pool throughout the many obstacles faced, the girl is faced with a decision and an internal conflict: to go on to the pool and quench her soul’s thirst of being able to set foot in the freshness and freeing waters of the sea, or to join her grandmother at the time of prayer as it is called for in traditional Islamic religion. In the climax of the story, it comes down to tradition versus secular; following through with the imprinted views of her whole life or finally being able to break away and make a new view for herself. At the falling action and ultimately the resolution, the girl joins hands with her grandmother, which could signify the maintaining of tradition while exercising the right to her many freedoms.

A very crucial component of this story was in fact symbolism. Symbols can exert more meaning and definition to the characters and story as a whole. Furthermore, an emphasized symbol that exemplifies the story’s theme is the young girl who seems to pose as the breaking away of traditional views onto a more modern viewpoint. The grandmother stands for said traditional views, which could contain Islamic beliefs, religious ways, and traditional roles for Muslim women. Another symbol would be the black clothing that women are forced to wear in all weather- and in the story, blistering temperatures. The clothing symbolizes the liaison between women and freedom, as in Middle Eastern countries, women cannot show skin because it is a sign of indecency in the eyes of their creator. That being said, sweat brought upon by wearing these garments is another repeated symbol. It symbolizes that the girl is tired, she sweats physically and metaphorically. The metaphorical sweating is contributing to the fact that the girl tires of the restrictions held by everyone and everything. Why can’t she go to the sea? Why can’t she have the same rights as a man? Why does she have to be subjected to less?

Connecting it with the larger and realist picture, women have been deemed as less and have been repressed by society, based on sacred religious beliefs and the traditional role of men being the dominant gender. Almost a century ago, women were just granted the right to vote here in the United States, while men were able to. Women were not allowed to receive an education because they were deemed as “housewives” or incapable of having intelligence. To this day, women do not receive the same salary for the same job occupation in regards to their male colleagues. There is a tireless list of the disgusting and inhumane conditions that women have been through, are going through, or will eventually go through. Women in general are held to a much higher standard in anything, whether it be morals, relationships, careers, dress code, manners, behavior, etc. This resonated with me because the constant effects of all of these issues have trickled down into my day-to-day life, making me feel that I should always feel less and never equal or more than a man. I cannot take a walk at 9 p.m. in my neighborhood for the fear of getting assaulted as opposed to a man, who does not think his safety is at risk. I cannot rely on my parents for sexual education because I can get pregnant and I will automatically become a single mother, as opposed to my brother who is offered contraception and is told to be careful. I cannot curse or act our because it is not “ladylike”, while in men it is normal and not made an issue of. All of this grooming in young girls and young female adults is an urgent matter that needs to be addressed correctly.

In conclusion, literature and other types of media can help bring across a point to a much broader audience, with the use of the various literary devices and other mechanisms. The Women’s Swimming Pool by Hanan Al-Shaykh ingrained a very important and impactful message in such a short number of pages. It was very transparent with her strong background and experience, as well as the style of conveying a simple story that retains many useful clues and contextualization.