Sexual and emotional autonomy
The issue of sexuality is central in the book, but not in the normal way. Instead of a woman learning about sex from a man, this story features a woman whose man doesn't really teach her much about sex, and certainly not about herself or about womanhood. So, a spirit arises to do the task, in the form of a snake. But, since the snake is female, the story is not about what men have to offer women sexually, but rather, it serves as an argument for sexual and emotional independence.
Femininity and shame
The Djinn accomplishes something for the wife that she had never been able to accomplish on her own: freedom from shame. When the woman is teleported throughout the universe in her astral projection, she gains perspective on her situation, and by learning about the deep well of feminine energy inside her, she realizes that her world has been designed to keep her controlled by shame. Instead of allowing that shame to dictate her behavior though, she learns to masturbate alone and to have fun, without fear for what others would think.
The serpent energy
The novel demonstrates the symbol of the snake perfectly, because the snake leads the human to do something they consider to be shameful (in the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian creation myths, a snake tempts Eve to sin), and in yoga, snake spirits are commonly used in Kundalini yoga and Tantric yoga for the same purposes the wife loves the snake in the story. The novel is a drama about how the wife will handle her new private life in light of her dominant, sometimes oppressive husband. The answer seems to be that once she encounters her inner "serpent energy" she is permanently changed.
