This paper examines private, domestic, and marital oppression against women in Nawal El Saadawi’s The Fall of the Imam (1987). It argues that the novel presents violence against women as a deliberate patriarchal practice, one that men use to secure their authority and to erase women’s independent identity. Through close reading of the novel, the paper first looks at how patriarchy shapes women’s private lives and teaches both sexes to accept male superiority. It then turns to the figure of the Imam, whose religious and political power makes him the clearest symbol of this system, and shows how the novel ties the idea of manhood to violence and to men’s ownership of women’s bodies. Finally, it examines the honor code, exposing its double standard: women’s sexuality is watched and punished, while men’s is left unquestioned, and even this unequal rule bends according to class and power. The paper concludes that the novel reveals a society in which women are valued as bodies rather than minds, and in which oppression at home is inseparable from oppression in public life.