Voicing The Silences: Women In Contemporary Pakistani Fiction In English

Abstract

Indigenous women of Pakistan have long been struggling with the patriarchal norms. Categorization of their existence in the conventional oppressions connotes diversified victimization. Grappling with such assorted repressions and articulating the subsequent silences, women writers of Pakistan and the social activists are incessantly engaged to empower women from societal peripheries. The selected fiction exposes how the indigenous woman is controlled and exploited on the name of religio-cultural rhetoric. The present article outlines the historical developments in changing the social positioning of women after independence by highlighting the urgency of raising women consciousness in the academic sphere to form an alliance for collective identity. This article evaluates Ice Candy Man (1988), My Feudal Lord (1994) and Trespassing (2003) to explore the changing images of indigenous Pakistani women after partition. It aims to highlight the struggle and resistance of female characters against the patriarchal propriety of Pakistani society. The study is significant to highlight the struggles of women writers to articulate the silences of assorted exploitation buried under the hegemony of socio-historical discourses. The study concludes that through female characterization the women writers organize specific academic movement of awakening that provides situational analysis to relate with the turbulences of the fictional world to correspond the real challenges.