Originally written for Ethnic Literature at Santa Monica College, taught by Dr. Catharine Edelmann
Within the Categories of Oppression, gender is one of the most common categories used today, but this is not a new challenge. There has been discrimination between the genders dating back to the beginning of Western Civilization and Religion. Despite the fact that Paganism is the oldest existing religion, and that it holds women as an important part of daily life, most western religions diminish the role of women. We see this lack of respect for gender in texts about life from ancient civilizations, and the remains of this thinking in modern writing and existence. The novel The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, written in 1988, tells the story of a shepherd boy from Spain who travels to the Pyramids of Egypt in search of a treasure he sees in a dream. Throughout the book, there are only three women, all of whom are static characters who are given less storyline importance than their male equals, despite how vital their existence is to the main character. In each of our women — the Merchant’s Daughter, the Dream Teller, and Fatima — we find characters who are forced to submit to the patriarchal idea of who they should be.
The first female character in the story is a Merchant’s Daughter, with whom our main character is in love. Within the single page where we directly hear about her, we learn very little: she is the daughter of the merchant, she does not read, she has dark hair and dark eyes, she is interested in the boy and his life. We learn nothing of her interests outside of the boy, nothing of her Dream, not even her name. Despite this lack of knowledge we have about her, she is the shepherd’s driving force for most of the book, for he wishes to return to the village where he met her and marry her. Even once he decides to search for his treasure, for most of his journey he does so in order to become more impressive to her so they can marry: “With the girl with the raven hair, his days would never be the same again” (8). This girl is the underlying goal of the main character for most of the book, but she is reduced to a prop of his desire. Outside of his desire and her interest in him, she does not exist. This reduction of importance can be seen by comparing her to how the readers hear about her father. The Merchant has no purpose in the book other than for the boy to sell his wool to, and yet, we get more dialogue, more personality, and more background from the Merchant than we do his daughter: “The merchant was the proprietor of a dry goods shop, and he always demanded that the sheep be sheared in his presence, so that he would not be cheated” (6). While we do hear about the daughter a few more times in the book, it is only to hear about the main character’s desire of her as an object for him to acquire. He hopes she has not found love in others, even though they might have been better for her than him: “He had to prepare himself for his meeting with the girl, and he didn’t want to think about the possibility that some other shepherd, with a larger flock of sheep, had arrived there before him and asked for her hand” (13).
Next in the book is a Dream Teller. The main character has the dream for a second time, when he is a few days away from the Merchant’s Daughter, and decides to visit the Dream Teller before he meets his girl. This character is essential to the boy’s Personal Legend, as she is the first one to tell him that he should be in search for a treasure and where to find it: “‘you must go to the Pyramids in Egypt… There you will find a treasure that will make you a rich man’” (17). Despite her literal interpretation of his dream, which should have been enough of a push for him to pursue his dream, the main character did not believe her and deemed her a Gypsy who wanted to extort money from him. It wasn’t until a King came to him and gave him the same instruction, that he actually believed it was his Personal Legend to find his treasure. Our Dream Teller is also implied to be greedy and manipulative for what she asks as payment, and before he believes the King is who he says he is, the boy believes it is the Gypsy’s manipulation to get actual payment from him: “The boy remembered his dream, and suddenly everything was clear to him. The old woman hadn’t charged him anything, but the old man—maybe he was her husband—was going to find a way to get much more money in exchange for information about something that didn’t even exist” (23). The fact that the boy doesn’t believe his dream (an omen from Goddess-centric Paganism) or a Dream Teller, until the King, a man, tells him about his fortune, reiterates the idea that in this story (and countless others), a woman’s voice is unimportant and not to be trusted unless her words are validated by a man.
The third woman we meet in the book offers another instance where the character is only important in how she exists for the Shepherd. Fatima is the first woman to have a name, but she only exists in the story as someone for the main character to return to when he feels like it. Under the influence of the patriarchy, she believes her Personal Legend is to wait for her love and do her chores: “‘Now, I too will be one of the women who wait. I’m a desert woman, and I’m proud of that. I want my husband to wander as free as the wind that shapes the dunes’” (101). Fatima is the boy’s driving force from this point on in the book; he finds his treasure and pays his debts so he may return to her, and yet again, her existence is reduced to someone whose life revolves around the main character. She only exists to the readers when he is thinking about her, and otherwise all she is to the boy is an obstacle of love for the boy to overcome so he may reach his Personal Legend. She represents and reinforces the idea that a woman’s purpose is to stay home and tend to the house while her husband follows his dreams: “She went out to do the chores she had done for years. But everything had changed… From that day on, the desert would represent only one thing for her: the hope for his return” (126). The idea that a woman should be fulfilled with her life as a waiting housewife is one that has existed and restrained women for countless decades. From the time this book is set to now, women are expected to be complacent and happy doing their chores and waiting. Fatima’s character only acts as another example of a Man’s journey being the most important.
The main messages in this novel have spread across the world: it instructs everyone who reads it to find and follow their Personal Legend; it inspires and does deserve the praise it receives. However, when one looks at the more understated messages, they seem to say that some Personal Legends are more important than others, that some people deserve to follow real dreams, and others may follow only the dreams society says are valid. From a less critical point of view, reading this makes me believe I can follow my dreams and achieve them, since the world wants me to succeed and will help me in the hardest times, as the King in the book tells the boy. But when I read between the lines and see the other ideals the book is promoting, it makes me feel like my dreams aren’t worthwhile or achievable, simply because I am a woman. These messages are found all throughout male-centric literature, and are damaging to every girl who reads them and is told her dream isn’t the right one. Changing the way we write female characters is an important step to changing the power balance in the world. If what we read is what we believe, reading that “woman only exists to aid man” will continue to be accepted as truth.