Oppression of Women in Pakistani Society: A Corpus-Based Study of Patriarchy in Sidhwa's The Pakistani Bride

Abstract

This paper deals with a corpus-based analysis of patriarchy in The Pakistani Bride, a novel written by Bapsi Sidhwa. The primary concern of the study is the adjectives used for the sketching of the Pakistani patriarchal society. Computer technology is widely used these days for the corpus analysis of literary texts such as novels, plays, poetry, etc. For this study, the text of the novel was collected from the internet and used for the corpus compilation. The corpus was analyzed using a corpus tool, AntConc. All the adjectives used in the text were analyzed and explained, highlighting the theme of patriarchy in the novel. The findings of the study suggest that patriarchy is a major theme of this novel, and adjectives play a crucial role in the description of gender discrimination, social constraints, and oppression of women.