Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal El Saadawi is very short and doesn’t have much to keep track of. I’m not sure any characters even have names. After a dense several hundred page novel with dozens of characters to keep track of, it was very nice to read something short and light. Although it wasn’t that light for how little happens. Because sexism.
The protagonist is an unnamed girl, turned student, turned doctor, turned woman in mid-20th century Egypt. These identities overlap, but there is also a clear distinction between them and eras of her life. She reaches puberty and deals with sexism and unwanted sexualization. In retaliation she goes to med school where she learns to see the human body like a machine – one where the body’s quality and sex have no correlation (take that, childhood!). But then as a backlash to the human = machine mindset, she has to learn to see patients as people.
A scene that stuck with me was a man who asked her to treat his dying mother. She basically said: everything is fine, it’s normal to die at this age.
She later marries this man. He lured her in under the guide of an equal marriage and supporting her career, then revealed he’s a man child who just wants to be mothered. It was kind of refreshing to see a guy be so honest instead of equivocating – Yes, I said those things, but I was lying so you’d have sex with me and take care of me.
She circles back to the childhood sexism she tried to escape with a career and then escapes again with divorce.
She gets kind of famous as a physician.
She meets a man who might really support her as a woman and doctor (not like that honest guy). Even if he doesn’t work out, I trust the protagonist can get through it and end up okay because all the experiences of her life made a woman you can root for and trust.
As for what happens after the book, you can choose to follow the hard parallels between the author’s life and the unnamed narrator. Or you can take it as the fiction the author said it is.