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Money
The state of a man’s fingernails represents their social class and sophistication, which determines Firdaus’s perception of them as a whole and whether she wants to let them have sex with her. When Firdaus is raped by Bayoumi, exploited by the policeman, or preyed on by lower-class men, she detests their blackened, dirty fingernails, because men dig those dirty fingernails into her body during sex. Her disgust for their fingernails represents her disgust for them as a whole. On the contrary, the men that Sharifa brings Firdaus and the wealthy man who picks Firdaus up in the rain have clean, manicured fingernails. Although the sex is still exploitative, Firdaus does not feel the same sense of revulsion for the men themselves, and sometimes even tries to find pleasure in the act of sex with them. When Firdaus works independently as a prostitute, she rejects men with dirty fingernails and only sleeps with men with manicured fingernails, which suggests that although it is still sex work, she has gained some sense of agency and lets her own tastes influence the business she does or does not conduct.
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Fingernails Symbol Timeline in Woman at Point Zero
The timeline below shows where the symbol Fingernails appears in Woman at Point Zero. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 2
...Her world is “silvery” and silken. At night she has sex with men, but their fingernails are clean and manicured, unlike Bayoumi’s, whose black and dirty nails raked across her body....
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...bed day and night, “crucified,” while rich married men come to her. They dig their fingernails into Firdaus’s body, and when she lets out a muffled cry of pain they ignorantly...
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...feels the familiar weight bear down on her body. The policeman digs his dirty black fingernails into her skin. When he finishes, he tells her he has no money tonight; he’ll...
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...her in his bed. Firdaus feels his “weight press heavily down” on her, but his fingernails are clean and white, and his sweat does not smell bad.
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...at it. When men approach her, she looks them over and rejects them if their fingernails are dirty or she simply doesn’t like them. If she accepts a man’s offer, she...
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