52 pages • 1 hour read
Eloise Jarvis McGrawMara, Daughter of The Nile
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1953A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Shift from Self-Interest to Social Consciousness
Mara, Daughter of the Nile tracks the awakening conscience, both political and interpersonal, of the eponymous heroine, who moves gradually from cynical self-interest to empathy, idealism, and self-sacrifice. At the start of the novel, Mara has been enslaved her entire life, most recently by a jewel merchant and his wife who starve her and whip her for trivial infractions. Never having had friends or a family of her own, the 17-year-old Mara feels no emotional ties or loyalties to anyone around her. A partial exception is Teta, a bitter older woman also enslaved in the household, who is, if not a friend, at least Mara’s partner in suffering. Though gifted with great charm, Mara uses her skills to manipulate people, such as a local baker whose wares she steals to feed herself and Teta. Her ambitions are initially focused on gaining freedom and wealth. When the dangerous Nahereh offers to free her if she successfully spies for him at the royal court, she has no initial qualms, as notions of political justice and injustice have no place in her own fortunes as another person’s “property.” Her difficult origins explain her cynical position that the powerful care nothing for people like her and she therefore rationalizes her decision to use the powerful figures in her life just as they use her. She therefore resolves to play “both ends against the middle” (84) and manipulate the warring factions to her own advantage.
By contrast, although the characters Nekonkh and Sheftu are from vastly different backgrounds, they both care deeply about their country’s future. Because both of them are free, their stakes are quite different from Mara’s. Sheftu, a noble, is the personal friend of the deposed king Thutmose, whose political ideals he shares, while Nekonkh, a river captain, is deeply troubled by the worsening plight of Egypt’s poor and by the queen’s financially ruinous building projects, both of which he witnesses every day while sailing on the Nile. Gradually, through Mara’s dealings with these two characters and with the Canaanite princess, Inanni, she develops empathy for the downtrodden people who suffer at the whim of the high-handed Queen Hatshepsut. She also learns that political oppression is not an inevitability but an injustice that can be corrected. When the gentle, homesick princess tells her of the generosity and noblesse oblige of Canaan’s rulers, she realizes that not all royals are unethical and that even the rich can act for the country’s good.
Moreover, as she insinuates her way into two opposing camps (the royal court and the Inn of the Falcon), Mara discovers her own power to do good. For the first time in her life, she feels a responsibility to help others and her “country,” and patriotism is an entirely new concept for her. Her feelings of love and empathy for her “friends and kin” (257)—Sheftu, Nekonkh, and Inanni—along with her newfound power to help them, make her realize that there may be thousands more who are also deserving of her help. Relating the personal to the national, she finally learns to identify with a larger community and to develop a political conscience. By shifting from cynicism and selfishness, Mara evolves into a fully social and political being who is ready to sacrifice her own life to save her friends and her country.
Culture Clashes Versus Cultural Assimilation
McGraw portrays ancient Egyptian culture as sweepingly homogeneous and conservative, with strict standards of beauty, dress, and decorum known to nobles and servants alike. The enslaved Mara, who travels 350 miles from her northern city of Menfe to Thebes in order to spy on the king, already knows precisely how to adorn herself to pass as a courtier. In Egypt, both men and women line their eyes with kohl, and clothes are both elegant and austere. As the narrative states, “All clothing should be white. In Egypt, even a slave knew that much” (64). Politically, Egypt leans close to a theocracy; the monarch, or pharaoh, is held to be a manifestation of the god Horus and is widely revered as all-powerful and divinely right.
Princess Inanni, the sole non-Egyptian in the story, initially draws Mara’s disdain for her “vulgar,” brightly colored wardrobe and “tasteless jewelry,” which clash with the Egyptian fashions. Although Inanni is considered elegant and regal in her native Syria, her clothing marks her as a laughingstock in Egypt, as does her full-figured physique, which is held to be the standard of voluptuous beauty in her own land. For her part, Inanni pities Mara for her “half-starved” figure and scorns the sleeveless Egyptian garments as shameless and “wicked.” Homesick for the rolling hills and relaxed customs of her pastoral homeland, Inanni is terrified by the vast spaces and teeming citadels of Egypt, which she finds alienating and unnatural. Though a princess in her own land, she feels like a rustic commoner in these surroundings, especially during her audiences with her supposed fiancé, Thutmose, who hardly bothers to conceal his disdain for her. His sister, Queen Hatshepsut, has arranged the betrothal as a cruel joke, knowing that the Canaanite princess will seem backward and absurd to the king and his followers. Thus, the narrative’s clash of cultures has been cynically orchestrated by the devious queen and her courtiers as a means of breaking her brother’s spirit, while planting a spy (Mara) in his court.
However, the queen’s stratagem backfires. By installing a visitor from a strange land in her court, she also ushers in new perspectives and ideas that ultimately help to undermine her rule. The homesick princess, elated to find someone who speaks her language, quickly bonds with Mara and soon becomes her confidante and protector, offering her a safe place in which to follow her own conscience. From Inanni, Mara learns that not all kingdoms oppress their poor as ruthlessly as Egypt’s ruling class does, for Inanni’s own father ensures that all of his subjects have enough to eat in times of famine. Hearing this, Mara realizes that a change of leadership in Egypt might well give rise to a more equitable society. Insisting that a nation’s heart and soul reside in its people rather than in a “divine” ruler, Inanni awakens Mara to a life-changing truth about the people of Egypt, and as the narrative states, Mara realizes that the people of Egypt are “her friends and kin, the only ones she had. They were Egypt” (257). Emboldened by this broadening insight, Mara defies the queen and her threats of death and torture, winning Sheftu the time he needs to liberate Egypt from Hatshepsut’s calamitous misrule. The queen, seeking to humiliate her brother by yoking him to a “barbarian,” therefore sows the seeds of assimilation and dissent and reaps her own destruction.
Individual Influence on National Politics
In some ways, the ancient, exotic world of Mara, Daughter of the Nile is not far removed from modern times, for in both eras, relatively few citizens take an active role in politics unless it is forced upon them. In the novel, this dynamic is mostly a result of the top-down regime of Egypt’s theocratic monarchy, which allows few individuals outside the royal court to have much sway in the country’s governance. Nevertheless, some of its characters, notably Mara and Inanni, find themselves drawn into the nation’s intrigues against their will. In each case, their personality traits and idiosyncrasies figure profoundly, demonstrating the effects of individual character on world events, even in a conservative, heavily stratified society like that of ancient Egypt.
Mara begins at the lowest of these strata as an enslaved teenager in Menfe, a northern city far from the corridors of regal power. It is precisely due to her low status and obscurity that Nahereh, the brother of the queen’s architect, draws her into his plot to spy on the young king. By dangling freedom as a reward and death as a threat, he believes that he can control her completely. However, he does not account for her extreme resilience, cleverness, and growing moral compunctions. All of these factors come into play in her meetings with Sheftu, another noble who seeks to use her for his own political ends, knowing that she is enslaved and therefore at his mercy. Serving an identical role for both men as interpreter and spy, she gains the power to choose a side—and this is where her sense of conscience comes to determine the highest affairs of the state.
Inanni, though a princess, begins the story with hardly more power than Mara. She, too, has been chosen by the royals for her very insignificance—in her case, as an insult to her prospective bridegroom, the captive king, who is predictably appalled by her “dumpiness” and backward ways. Also like Mara, Inanni has a tender heart, and she helps to draw out Mara’s nobler feelings, reminding her that the welfare of Egypt’s common people should figure in any political decision. These two women, ensnared against their will in political gamesmanship, join forces to tip the balance of power in favor of Thutmose—not for themselves or for their masters, but “for Egypt.” Defying their imposed roles as powerless females, Mara and Inanni exercise their own agency and ultimately triumph over a rigid power structure, changing the course of history.
