Abstract:
This study approaches two novels from a feminist and psychoanalytic point of view. I
have examined Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho and Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El
Saadawi. I claimed that the two novelists depicted working in prostitution for the characters as
liberating and empowering. My research is focusing on how the sex industry is empowering
women; through evidence from the plot, I have found that the characters gained financial,
emotional and physical liberty from the patriarchal society. Working as prostitutes enabled the
two characters to have better understanding of their bodies and sexuality to some degree based
on the contexts of the two characters. My paper is important because it takes a different attitude
towards interpreting the depiction of working in the sex industry. Usually critics focus on the bad
experience that characters went through in the novels while I took more of a positive
interpretation.
