Khawateen Digest, an Urdu magazine, is one of the important repositories of feminine culture in Pakistan from many decades. This work attempts to explore Khawateen Digest for representation of women and provides a focus on the traditional and patriarchal female images. It endeavours to analyse issues of women as discussed in Khawateen Digest from the feminist perspective of Millet (1970) and Weedon (1987) who opine that women's social roles in patriarchal societies are defined by men. Moreover, at times, the use of language for secondary sex is not only exploitative but also sexually abusive in the respective magazine. The analysis centers on magazines as linguistic and semiotic constructs. The linguistic and semiotic content of the magazine has been encoded from a masculine and patriarchal perspective and the researcher has tried to decode it from feminist linguistic (Cameron 1998) perspective. Hence, this article is an effort to highlight the exploitative, demeaning, belittling, subjugating, subordinating, controlling and marginalizing representations of women through the analysis of linguistic and semiotic content of KHAWATEEN DIGEST.
Gender stereotyping is an age old phenomenon used by patriarchal societies to maintain the hegemony of men over women. In this connection, literature serves as a powerful tool that the male society uses to promote sexism by representing woman as inferior Other of man. This research employs Mill’s feminist stylistic framework to determine how male and female authors differ in representations of women in their works. For this purpose, feminist stylistic analysis of Mueenuddin’s (2009) ‘Saleema’ and Shahraz’s (1998) ‘Zamindar’s Wife’ has been undertaken. Using qualitative method, the analysis has been done on the phrase/sentence level by adopting purposive sampling technique. The results indicate that sexism and gender bias against women dominate in Mueenuddin’s writing who has tried to maintain the male status quo unchallenged. In comparison, Shahraz has portrayed an unconventional and bold female character, yet her writing, too, is not totally free from gender stereotypes because escape from ‘internalized patriarchy’ is not easy. The study is significant as it validates and reinforces the previous studies that intervene on behalf of women by exposing and fighting the sexist attitude present against them in literary works. Future researchers can investigate the same data by analysing the text at the discourse level as proposed by Mills to further explore the issue.
Purpose of the study: This study investigates the identity crises and power relations drawing upon Michel Foucault's theory of power tracing the impacts of power dynamics. The study investigates how power dynamics operate in the novel; what is the nature of these power relations; and how the mode of resistance emerges and in what ways by keeping the concept of power and identity by Michel Foucault. Methodology: This part follows the qualitative method in which Sorayya Khan’s City of Spies is analyzed through Foucault's theory of power. The theoretical background of this research is drawn from the concept of Power which is running in all works of Foucault. Main Findings: This study has examined the novel from a Foucauldian perspective, which posits that Power is everywhere and it comes from everywhere. For him, it is Power which/that shapes everything whether it is Truth or Identity. Foucault sees power as all-around invisibility that exposes rather than encloses like the panopticon. The society he believes works as a panopticon in which the power effectively induces in the subjects a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. Applications of this study: This study can be applied to power dynamics literature. Novelty/Originality of this study: The current interpretation of the novel only sees it as a bildungsroman i.e., as a journey of a girl around the political reality of her era. This present study strives to change it by investigating through the lens of power dynamics and its consequent effect on consciousness leading to an identity crisis. The present study will strengthen the interpretation of the novel as a political novel and will illustrate the effects of the political on the human psyche.
This research investigates the atmosphere of anxiety and fear as prevalent in the novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Muhammad Hanif. To execute the current study the researcher applied Freud's theory of personality development and psychoanalysis. The major character of the novel General Zia ul Haq exercised his strong power and controlled the Government of Pakistan by the takeover of the military forces till his death in an air crash near Bahawalpur. The various conditions expose the level of anxiety he was suffering from. General Zia ul Haq's rising tone and anger well portray his psychological condition while giving orders to his Generals on different occasions. The study also exposes and makes it clear that ordinary people living in society are dragged by the drastic, unfavorable and most stressful conditions to face fear, stress, depression, and anxiety.
This study investigates the role of patriarchy in the marginalization of women and as a result turning them into subalterns who can’t speak for themselves and have no voice of their own. Tagore as an Indian writer is one of the strongest voices for women as his writings depict that he wants to emancipate women and to make them aware of who they are and also that education is important for both genders either male or female. For this purpose in this paper three stories have been selected from the short story collection of Rabindaranath Tagore; Subha, The living and the dead and the Exercise-book to depict the plight of the suppressed and weak women in the patriarchal Indian society and how they got manipulated by their husbands and also by their society. This study is qualitative in nature and it employs the Subaltern Theory by Spivak (1988) for the analysis of selected data. Through the analysis it has been concluded that the three protagonists of the selected stories are subalterns as the society they are living in exploits their rights of being a human being because they are women and weak. Their silence depicts their miserable lives in a patriarchal society. For the further studies, it is suggested that the analysis of male and female subalterns can be done and also the comparative study of subalterns in the male and female writers would further help in the understanding of the theory.
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