Becoming Woman and Gender Typologies 213
of Gul-raaneh and Iskender, and it completely depends on the attitude of the
other since becoming is never alone. Reshideh, in place of the lioness (e.g.
her ego and death derive), discharges immanent energies of polymorphosis
as three active syntheses of the positive unconscious: Libido (“my beauty”),
Numen (the heroic body without organs as “my country”) and Voluptas (as
motherly compassion).74 In becoming-woman, she becomes at least three
women in one, and no one can guarantee the lioness will never wake up as
the fourth one under any threat. If the lioness is completely destroyed, there
is the risk of absolute submissiveness inviting despotic male dominance. Con-
versely, when the lioness is always awake we have the dominant woman as
nemesis: Her becoming is interrupted and her energies of polymorhosis disap-
pear, and complete separation of the sexes follows as a consequence. In accor-
dance with Deleuezian concepts of the unconscious and consistency, Energies
of polymorphosis and the lioness are incompatible with each: they cannot be
simultaneously active in a person.
Conclusion
The three types of western women suggested in the personality of three char-
acters in Pickthall’s Valley of Kings, namely, Carulin the Virgin, Androgynous or
Hermaphroditic Jane, and Hilda the Ripe Fruit, foreshadow the separation of
the sexes in Europe in the early Twentieth century. When Iskender attempts to
kiss Hilda, she is declared the Forbidden Fruit leading to symptoms of castra-
tion and homosexual desire within Iskender. Next, when Hilda wants to marry
the Emir, the latter is forbidden the fruit according to the Western idealisation
of the relation of the sexes and the Christian view of marriage as sacrament.
In Veiled Women, Pickthall undertakes a double task with his English heroine
Barakah’s disappointing and dehumanising harem experience. First, he decon-
structs the Western romantic idealisation of marriage, the worship of the sexes
and Oedipal desire. Secondly, he symptomatizes local idiosyncrasies, supersti-
tions and the general decadence in the family life of Muslims in Egypt.
Pickthall’s oriental heroines are resistant to the separation of the sexes,
so that we have all Ripe Fruits, and the typology they suggest is in fact three
subtypes of the Ripe Fruit. They can be restated as follows: the Submissive
74 See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans.
Robert Hurley, Mark Sheem and Helen R. Lane. (London: The Athlone Press, 1983), 68–112
for the three syntheses of the unconscious as connective (Libido), disjunctive (Numen)
and conjunctive (Voluptas).