Guard your reputation, Madam, for a woman’s reputation is more precious than her fortune and her learning.
The woman who loses her fortune loses nothing.
The one who loses her health loses but a small thing.
But she who has lost her reputation has lost everything... even honor.
• Have an opinion of your own in the things that concern you: in the rearing of your child, in marital problems, and in the household budget. But beware of clinging stubbornly to your opinion, and of digging in your heels when you know you are in the wrong.
• Do not argue violently with your husband, even in the matters you know better than he does...
Try to persuade him by the gentler way; and if he insists on his opinion, the days will teach him that he was wrong.
• Beware of raising your voice in his face, for a woman loses the loveliest thing in her if she loses her softness and her delicacy. Far better for you to remain wronged of your right than to let your temper turn harsh — for then you would have thrown away your most precious quality...
Dear reader...
...Here is another letter to “The Woman's Voice,” from the woman of letters “Jihan Gazawi Aony,” in which she has been severe to the bone — because, as she says, she loves this magazine as a mother loves her daughter, and true love relies on sternness, not on leniency and gentleness. And “The Woman's Voice,” while it thanks the writer Jihan for this sternness, and for having turned aside from eulogy and praise, cannot but draw the respected writer’s attention to this: that the magazine, in the keeping of its editors, men and women alike, is the noblest thing they possess — this treasure of letters, which they take care to distribute among people with the most generous distribution ever given to precious treasures... So let the good writer’s mind be at ease; and let her be assured, too, that “The Woman's Voice” outgrew its swaddling clothes long ago, and that what it needs — if it needs anything at all — is the alert woman to share the work with it, more than it needs coddling...
And we draw her attention to the fact that, in answering our questions, she relied on one particular issue of the magazine... And here is her opinion...
1 — She reads first the articles, then the poetry, then the children’s section, then the letters that carry a literary stamp, then the stories... She does not read the reportages or the society news, because in her view these belong to the daily papers.
2 — She prefers to read Julia Tu'mah Dimashqiyah, because she is a writer of authentic gift, then Salwa Mahmasani Moumina and Rose Ghorayeb, whose articles are marked by balance and maturity.
3 — She proposes, among women and men of letters: Bint al-Shati', Salma Sayegh, Falak Tarazi, Taha Husayn, Fouad Suleiman, Suhayl Idris...
4 — She proposes adding some articles on psychoanalysis and studies of certain personalities, and then adding a section for literary criticism and for women’s society.
5 — She regrets that Michel Trad’s poetry is in the colloquial, and believes that had it been in classical Arabic she would have savored it more; and she is captivated by the poetry of Fadwa Tuqan.
6 — She encourages “The Woman's Voice” to continue with the “Love Letter,” for this kind of writing is of the very heart of literature... As for Woman in Society, Intellectual Activity, the Kitchen, and Fashion, she believes these are sections that ought not to be given whole pages in a magazine of such refinement as The Woman's Voice.
7 — As for the story: “The Woman's Voice” sometimes hits the mark and sometimes misses — so she says.
8 — She asks of us that we measure an article not by its length and breadth, but by its substance and its vitality.