Review: All’s Well by Mona Awad

As a former Dramatic Literature major, I was very much looking forward to Mona Awad’s  recently published novel All’s Well (August 2021), which revolves around Miranda Fitch, a Theater Studies professor at a New England university staging a production of All’s Well That Ends Well, one of Shakespeare’s lesser known plays.  Miranda is a former professional actor whose career was ended by a fall from the stage while playing Lady Macbeth.  After some hip surgeries, she is still dealing with chronic pain and with doctors who don’t take her seriously. Her colleagues also think that she is exaggerating her symptoms. One of her closest friends even tells her that perhaps her illness is in her mind.  As the novel begins, she is also dealing with mutinous students who are upset that she has chosen to produce All’s Well, rather than Macbeth as they had wanted.  The mutiny is led by Miranda’s nemesis, a student named Briana who always gets the leading roles because her parents are major donors to the Theater program.

At a bar one night Miranda meets three men who call themselves “The Weird Brethren” (reminiscent of the three witches in Macbeth). These men tell her that they will give her the ability to transfer her pain to someone else just by touching them.  A few days later, while trying to grab a script from Briana, she touches her on the wrist, leading to Briana becoming very ill with symptoms much like those that Miranda experienced.

While dealing with the serious subject of chronic pain and how doctors are often dismissive of it–especially female pain– Awad’s novel is also extremely funny at times. The scene in the Dean’s office in which Briana accuses (a now suddenly healthy) Miranda of being a witch and using sorcery to make her ill is particularly well done.  The entire novel is told from Miranda’s point of view which leaves it unclear to the reader which of the events are happening in reality and which are distortions of Miranda’s mind. 

Humsafar and Shakespeare

This essay was originally published on The South Asian Idea in March 2012

Since last September, one TV serial has taken Pakistan by storm, becoming a major topic for conversation and forcing people to reschedule social occasions so that they don’t clash with the program’s time slot. Entitled Humsafar (Companion), the drama has made stars out of its leading couple, Fawad Afzal Khan and Mahira Khan.  The play is a typical melodrama, centering around the relationship between Ashar and Khirad and the intrigues that drive them apart, intrigues created by Ashar’s controlling mother, Farida. Yet somehow, this hackneyed plot line has had the entire nation hooked for six months.

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To briefly summarize the plot: Ashar is the son of a rich man living in Karachi and working in his father’s company.  His cousin, Khirad, meanwhile lives a middle-class life with her mother in Hyderabad. Khirad’s mother finds out that she has cancer and calls her brother (Ashar’s father) and asks him to help her. Her brother brings her to Karachi and gets her treatment, but it is too late. As she waits to die, she begs her brother to get her daughter married so that she is assured a secure future. Her brother agrees, telling her that he will marry Khirad to his own son.  Ashar agrees to honor his father’s promise, but his mother, Farida, is totally against the marriage, believing that Khirad is beneath her son’s standard. Farida has also hoped that her own niece, Sara, will become Ashar’s wife. Sara loves Ashar and believes that she will eventually marry him.  However, under threat of divorce, Farida is forced to accept the marriage. While her husband is alive, she pretends to accept Khirad but as soon as he passes away she begins plotting to get rid of her. Her plot involves making Ashar believe that Khirad has been unfaithful to him. Ashar is made to witness a scene in which Khirad is alone in the kitchen with another man who is holding her dupatta in his hands. Farida immediately accuses Khirad of infidelity, and though Khirad begs Ashar to believe she is innocent, he rejects her. Farida than throws Khirad (who is pregnant, unknown to Ashar) out of the house in the middle of the night.  Khirad writes a letter to Ashar, telling him that what he saw was orchestrated by his mother, and that she is pregnant. However, Ashar doesn’t read this letter until much later.

Khirad gives birth to a daughter, Hareem, and the story moves ahead four years.  Hareem has a congenital heart condition, and Khirad comes to Ashar to tell him that he has a daughter who needs open-heart surgery.  She herself shows no desire to reconcile with him, but simply wants him to do his duty towards his child.  Ashar takes the responsibility of getting the child treated, and mother and daughter move into Ashar’s house. Ashar begins to fall in love with Khirad again, but Khirad decides that once Hareem is well, she will leave her with her father, and go back to Hyderabad, believing that Ashar can provide her daughter with a much better life than she can. When she leaves, Ashar discovers her letter of four years ago and learns the truth. He rushes after Khirad to bring her back. Meanwhile Sara has realized that she was manipulated by her aunt and that Ashar will never love her. She commits suicide. Ashar returns and confronts his mother, who subsequently has a nervous breakdown. Ashar and Khirad reconcile.

As the drama grew more and more popular, many editorials and op-eds highlighted the “regressive” themes of the story.  The critics argued that the drama shows three women all fighting over one man.  They also criticized Ashar for being so easily beguiled by his mother’s plot and for not even giving his wife a chance to tell her side of the story.  They pointed out that Khirad is portrayed as religious and conservatively dressed, with her head always covered by her dupatta.  On the other hand, the vamp, Sara, dresses in Western clothes, practices yoga, and is successful in the corporate world. The evil mother-in-law, Farida, is shown running an NGO but clearly her real fulfillment in life comes from controlling her son.  While all these criticisms are true, I would argue that the critics are missing two major points:  that this plot line plays on very old literary and dramatic tropes, and that it accurately reflects Pakistani society today.

I would answer those feminists who find Humsafar regressive by pointing out that the serial shares many elements with Shakespeare’s Othello. Of course, Shakespeare’s tragedy takes place in the 16^th Century, an era that was  much more patriarchal than our own, while Humsafar is set in contemporary times. However, one can account for this by pointing out that Pakistan is a deeply conservative and patriarchal society, which in many ways is comparable to the Europe of 400 years ago. Like Othello, Ashar is manipulated into believing that his wife has been unfaithful to him. In Othello’s case, the “proof” of his wife’s betrayal is the presence of her handkerchief in someone else’s room while in Ashar’s case the proof is his wife’s dupatta in the hands of another man. In both stories, the male lead does not question his suspicions and is driven into a jealous rage. The differences in the two plots lie in the motivations of the manipulator as well as the reactions of the innocent wife.

Re-reads: The Merchant Of Venice

In honor of William Shakespeare’s birthday (April 23, 1564), I am cross-posting an essay I wrote about rereading The Merchant of Venice after many years.  This essay was originally posted on The South Asian Idea in August, 2017

In March 2017, a public prosecutor in Lahore, Pakistan, offered to acquit 42 Christian prisoners accused of murder if they converted to Islam. This prodded a re-reading of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, which also features a forced conversion—that of the Jewish moneylender, Shylock, to Christianity. 

Written between 1596 and 1599, The Merchant of Venice centers around Antonio (the titular character) and his financial dealings with Shylock. Antonio’s friend Bassanio needs money in order to woo Portia, a wealthy noblewoman. In order to raise this amount, Antonio asks Shylock for a loan of 3000 ducats. The moneylender agrees on the condition that if Antonio defaults on the loan, Shylock will be entitled to a pound of his flesh. Antonio accepts these terms, since he has several ships coming in to port soon. However, Antonio’s ships are wrecked and he is forced to default. Shylock then demands his bond. At this point, Portia disguises herself as a man and acts as Antonio’s lawyer. She cleverly uses the terms of the contract against Shylock, since the moneylender is entitled to a pound of flesh but not to a single drop of blood—making fulfilling the bond impossible. Shylock is then charged with attempting to murder a Venetian citizen–as a Jew, he does not count as a Venetian– and his estate is confiscated, with one half going to Antonio and one half to the state. Antonio then offers to renounce his half of the estate, on the condition that Shylock become a Christian. The moneylender has no choice but to accept.

Though the play is classified as a comedy, it is problematic for modern audiences. Post the Holocaust, it is difficult not to feel deeply uncomfortable with the anti-Semitic portrayal of Shylock as greedy and fixated on money. The fact that he is forced to abandon his religion also seems deeply unfair given contemporary global norms. This discomfort with the play has led some to call for its removal from school curricula and for it to be taken off the stage. However, a close examination of the play shows that Shylock is by no means a two-dimensional villain, unlike Barabas in Christopher Marlowe’s Jew of Malta (often thought to have inspired Shakespeare’s play).

Early in the play, when Antonio first asks Shylock for a loan, the moneylender recalls how the merchant has treated him:

You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help:
Go to, then; you come to me, and you say
‘Shylock, we would have moneys:’ you say so;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold: moneys is your suit
What should I say to you? Should I not say
‘Hath a dog money? is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats?’ Or
Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness, Say this;
‘Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn’d me such a day; another time
You call’d me dog; and for these courtesies
I’ll lend you thus much moneys’? (Act 1, Scene 3)

Antonio routinely abuses Shylock, simply because of his religion. Yet now that he needs him, he has come to politely ask him for a loan. Shylock points out the merchant’s hypocrisy and asks why he should oblige him. Later, when he is asked what good Antonio’s flesh will do him, Shylock responds that it will serve as his revenge. In one of the play’s most famous speeches, he states:

Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction. (Act 3, Scene 1)

In this speech, Shylock argues that Jews are just as human as Christians and experience all the same sensations and emotions. Just as Christians seek revenge when they are wronged, he will do so as well. By having Shylock make this speech, Shakespeare humanizes him and gives him a motivation for his hatred of Antonio and his relentless pursuit of his bond. Shylock is not pure evil. Rather, he is driven to seek vengeance for the ill-treatment he has received from the majority group.