Women's Submissiveness in Bapsi Sidhwa's The Pakistani Brid (original) (raw)
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Deplorable Condition of Women and Patriarchal Domination in Bapsi Sidhwa's The Pakistani Bride
SMART MOVES JOURNALS IJELLH, 2020
Abstract Parsi writers have contributed a lot to Indian English Literature. The Indian Parsi novelists express their feelings in the form of art. The novelists reflect the psychological dilemma of the minority community and its identity crisis through their works. Being a Parsi writer, Bapsi Sidhwa sees a kind of mental migration when she hybrids from her native land, and pours her feelings and thoughts in to her novels. She is known for her exploration of women’s inner psyche who aspire to live in modernity, inept to break traditional quality intrinsic in them. Most of her writings contain a pinch of migration and male dominance taste when one chews them. The expatriate writers face multi- cultural situation which merges with their personal anguish due to prejudice. They project the cultural confusion and confrontation of a multi racial society. The quest for identity, aspiration for belongingness and love for native land is found as a part of non-erasable conscious in all expatriate writers. This paper reveals the socio-cultural background and the authoritative patriarchal Pakistani society in the novel The Pakistani Bride The novel portrays how the institution of marriage and patriarchy deplores and represses an orphaned girl’s self-identity. It also pinpoints the problems of a little girl Zaitoon as an alien in an alien land or culture. It enforces deportation as a pathway to sculpt for belongingness of her ‘self’. At the end, Zaitoon succeeds by rejecting the alien culture and tradition. Key words: Culture, Patriarchy, Quest for Identity, Inner Psyche, Self
Transcending Patriarchal and Cultural Construct in Bapsi Sidhwa’s The Pakistani Bride
Theory and Practice in Language Studies
This study aims to show how patriarchal civilizations physically, emotionally, and socially oppress and enslave women. Sidhwa has shown Pakistani gender-based class system quite effectively in her work. She discusses marginalized and double-colonized Pakistani women as victims of patriarchal culture who confront a variety of national and household challenges, and overcomes patriarchal and cultural constructs in order to be in peace with society and culture. This paper ‘Transcending Patriarchal and Cultural Construct in Bapsi Sidhwa’s The Pakistani Bride’, attempts to show how women in patriarchal cultures and societies suffer many issues in their lives and how they repress their needs, longings, and emotions in order to find a comfortable position in their households as well as in society at large.
Gendered Subjectivity and Oppositional Agency in Bapsi Sidhwa's the Pakistani Bride
IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2022
Subjectivity is gendered. From the moment of its birth the human infant comes under a regime of gender under which one cannot be a subject without being male or female. Gender, Judith Butler asserts, is performative. It is created by acts which are really socially established ways of being a man or a woman. The "reiterative and citational practice" of gender norms constrains the gendered subject. A woman is "interpellated" as woman so that she internalizes the feminine norms like submissiveness, domesticity and passivity. Similarly, it is normative for a man to be dominant, aggressive and cruel on his women to ensure submission to his will. He has to "disavow" any marks of effeminacy or weakness within him. The gendered subject is constrained to repeat the norm because any deviant behaviour faces social abjection. In this scenario where the subject is socially or culturally constructed and social power, as Michele Foucault points out, does not flow simply from top to bottom but from all the sources familial, cultural and political, how is it possible to theorize oppositional agency? It is possible because the internalization of social norms usually engenders resistances within the subject. It is upto the gendered subject to heed these dissenting voices within her/him and become an agent by deflecting the norm. In Bapsi Sidhwa's The Pakistani Bride the male characters Qasim and Sakhi fail to impress because they mechanically perform the normative assignments of gender in spite of subversive tendencies within them. But Zaitoon, the girl from the plains who married a Kohistani tribal, realizes the inequities of the norm in her changed social position and runs away from her tyrannical husband. She ceases to be the victimized woman of feminist discourses and becomes an agent. I propose to analyze the complicacies involved in gendered subjectivity and the need to subvert gender norms through oppositional agency in my study of the novel in this essay.
From "Other" to "Self": A Pakistani Female's Existential Quest in Bapsi Sidhwa's the Pakistani Bride
Journal of Languages, Culture and Civilization, 2022
This study attempts to highlight the patterns of existential feminism as they appear in Bapsi Sidhwa's novel The Pakistani Bride, analyzing domestic abuse, which has been a significant impediment to women's advancement and success. This research also emphasizes the existentialist feminist theory that asserts that women are the products of civilization and are constantly expected to appease men, depriving them of all forms of autonomy and turning them into objects for men. This study attempts to illustrate all the scenarios where men are free from all the traditions and rules set by society and exploit the image of marriage. The injustice and abuse of women in Pakistan's tribal regions, as well as their battle for independence, are discussed in this study. A leading existential feminist named Simone De Beauvoir labels males as "Self" and women as "Other." The exploitations of women's lives are examined in this research using the concepts of "Self" and "Other." Nowhere in the novel does a woman exist as an independent "Self." In being the subject, man even forgets his relationship with his object (Woman). Women are punished for acting upon their own will and are neglected. The reason for this study is that the existential experience of the female "Self" in Pakistani fiction has frequently gone unrecognized. Researchers have seldom investigated the dimensions of a woman's life concerning her independent "Self," which she ruthlessly denied. This study digs into this area of a woman's existential Quest.
2017
Pakistan and Afghanistan share a common border near Kohistan mountain terrain. Many tribal communities found in this region are highly orthodox, barbaric and inundated with religious fanatics. Kohistani is one such tribe. Patriarchy is rampant in its social structure and restoration of male honour is one of the most important motives of their lives. Women in such tribes have been devoid of basic human rights since ages. They lead a parasitic life devoid of self-esteem, self-identity and is only expected to self-abnegate. Many writers are challenging such orthodox approach of the religious fundamentalists who deny human rights to a major section of a society named women. Bapsi Sidhwa is one such writer who has blatantly exposed the inhuman practices prevailing against women in Kohistani community of Pakistan by so called preservers of religion and civilization. The present paper tries to examine the status of women in the Kohistani community. It also tries to analyse the reasons whic...
Post-colonial literature is evidently the mirror document of values of the related era. Specifically the main concerns or the core aspects of postcolonial writings have been gender related. The relative positioning of gender in the social circumstances as and when the document registered in the time-period renders some thought banks for the readers. The question of women stance in the society has always been there and unfortunately never been answered wholesomely. To some extent the plight of the weaker sex has been exposed to the thread by the postcolonial writers. We can name it as postcolonial feminism in other sense; it would be a subset of feminism but not in mythical nous. In the present paper, diasporic writings would be the basic focus of attention; Bapsi Sidhwa marvel-novels portraying feminism. They, no less, have laid out the continuum of female condition through and through. The family patterns of the colonies have been described in an intricate crisscross way. Postcolonial writers contest misconceptions of the world related to the female portraits globally. This paper unfolds these misconceptions step by step and present them as gems of postcolonial literature.
University of Chitral Journal of Linguistics and Literature, 2021
The stringent patriarchal system and the intricacies of social conditioning, through coercion and ideological indoctrination concerning gender values, are peculiar to the Kohistani culture. It must be explored before the emancipation of women in Kohistani tribal society. Bapsi Sidwa's The Pakistani Bride portrays a girl Zaitoon's life; a female subjected to patriarchal circumstances. She is treated, to some extent, the same way as in Simon de Bouvier's "The Second Sex", However, the peculiarity of Kohistani culture perhaps make it worse. The paper explores the deep causes of female subjugation and Othering in society. Moreover, the paper also advocates the female strengths and individuality implemented in contemporary Kohistani culture by tracing its tenets according to Muted Group Theory (MGT).
An Analysis of Western Male and Female Character Ideologies in Bepsi Sidhwa's `The Pakistani Bride`
2024
The study aimed to critically analyze the Eastern female ideologies construed in the novel 'The Pakistani Bride' by Bapsi Sidhwa. The study used mixed-method approach for the analysis of the text. By using the technique of purposive sampling, the sample of 45 clauses was taken from 'The Pakistani Bride'. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistic especially on the transitivity analysis, the critical discourse analysis of the sample text was carried out. The results of the analysis revealed that gender disparities exist in the novel, but the nature of the disparities was different. The transitivity analysis of the text of 'The Pakistani Bride' revealed that power disparities existed between male and female characters. The female character was on oppressed, subordinate and subdued side. The male character, on the other hand, was dominant and authoritative. The Women were treated inhumanly, brutally, and were being considered children of the lesser god in 'The Pakistani Bride'.
Portrayal of Power Dynamics in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Novel ‘The Pakistani Bride’
2021
This research paper spotlights Michel Foucault’s concept of power in BapsiSidhwa’s Novel ‘The Pakistani Bride’.The paper draws our attention to the fact that ‘power is everywhere’ and ‘comes from everywhere’ as stated by theFrench PostmodernistMichel Foucault. The work will portray that it is the power that controls one's brain, body,conduct, and the choices that one makes. The accepted practices and norms are the result of power. The paper exhibitsthe traces of power concept especially the normalizing power in the novel ‘The Pakistani Bride’ and how it is used asa form of social control by taking few incidents from the novel.
Women as a Victim of Patriarchal Construct in the Pakistani Bride and Water
2020
Bapsi Sidwa an ambassador of Pakistan Literature is not only a story teller but an artist who has very enigmatically related the plight and exploitation of women in the patriarchal society. When we talk of 'Feminism' we refer to the movement which has played an important role in projecting the suppressed status of women in the patriarchal society. The term also signifies the emergence of the power of the women over the constructs of male dominance and a movement to acquire the equal rights of the women with men in all walks of life, social, moral, economic legal and so on. Men establish their masculinity and feel elated and victorious as aggressors whereas women endure the pain and barbarity with humiliation and subjugation. But Sidwa talks about the emancipation of women just as she has done in her real life so the women in her fictional world. Her characters are intelligent, beautiful, strong willed, courageous and modest and not rebellious. The parental, societal and psyc...