Isra is meant to blindly and submissively serve her husband Adam, without thinking about herself. This theme of abuse is developed as the novel depicts a disturbing sexual scene from Isra and Adam’s wedding night. “Blood rushed down my thighs, and I took a deep breath. I tried to ignore the burning sensation between my legs, tried to forget that I was in a strange room, in a strange bed, with a strange man. I wished my mother warned me about this night, about the powerlessness a woman feels when another man strikes through her skin, about the shame that fills her when she is forced to give herself up, forced to be still.” This type of patriarchal philosophy and belief about male-domination of sexual relationships is appallingly common in cultures that are misogynistic. In Quiverfull: Inside the Patriarchal Christian Movement, Kathryn Joyce sheds light on this horrifying phenomenon. “A submissive wife understands that, as the Bible commands that husbands and wives have authority over each other’s bodies, she owes her husband enough sex to satiate his appetite so that he is not tempted by another woman. In this way, a woman withholding sex from her husband is not only defrauding him of that which is rightfully his but is inducing him to sin” (54). Although Joyce is specifically referring to fundamentalist Christian patriarchy, the patriarchal attitude regarding sex is applicable to different religious and cultural beliefs. The male dominance system of patriarchy exhibited in the wedding night episode of Isra is defined accurately by Carol Christ: “Patriarchy is a system of male dominance, rooted in the ethos of war which legitimates violence, sanctified by religious symbols, in which men dominate women through the control of female sexuality, with the intent of passing property to male heirs, and in which men who are heroes of war are told to kill men, and are permitted to rape women, to
Isra is meant to blindly and submissively serve her husband Adam, without thinking about herself. This theme of abuse is developed as the novel depicts a disturbing sexual scene from Isra and Adam’s wedding night. “Blood rushed down my thighs, and I took a deep breath. I tried to ignore the burning sensation between my legs, tried to forget that I was in a strange room, in a strange bed, with a strange man. I wished my mother warned me about this night, about the powerlessness a woman feels when another man strikes through her skin, about the shame that fills her when she is forced to give herself up, forced to be still.” This type of patriarchal philosophy and belief about male-domination of sexual relationships is appallingly common in cultures that are misogynistic. In Quiverfull: Inside the Patriarchal Christian Movement, Kathryn Joyce sheds light on this horrifying phenomenon. “A submissive wife understands that, as the Bible commands that husbands and wives have authority over each other’s bodies, she owes her husband enough sex to satiate his appetite so that he is not tempted by another woman. In this way, a woman withholding sex from her husband is not only defrauding him of that which is rightfully his but is inducing him to sin” (54). Although Joyce is specifically referring to fundamentalist Christian patriarchy, the patriarchal attitude regarding sex is applicable to different religious and cultural beliefs. The male dominance system of patriarchy exhibited in the wedding night episode of Isra is defined accurately by Carol Christ: “Patriarchy is a system of male dominance, rooted in the ethos of war which legitimates violence, sanctified by religious symbols, in which men dominate women through the control of female sexuality, with the intent of passing property to male heirs, and in which men who are heroes of war are told to kill men, and are permitted to rape women, to