Women and the Trauma of War in Beirut Hellfire Society: A Gender Study

Abstract

This article examines the traumatic effects of the Lebanese civil war on women in Rawi Hage’s novel Beirut Hellfire Society (2018). It explores women’s madness and gender identity disorder as two effects of war trauma and examines how indulgence in orgiastic acts of self-annihilation and sexual transgression is a means of countering this trauma. The article also depicts sexuality as one cause of women’s exclusion in war making their bodies simultaneously vulnerable and defiant to all forms of sexual assault exacerbated in times of war. The gender studies approach that focuses on women identities in real wars is used to analyze the women characters in this novel. It aims to show how these traumatic effects and the civil war repercussions pertain to the gender hierarchy of power and the gendered social constructions prevailing before and not during the civil war.