Representations of Women in Daniyal Mueenuddin’s Saleema and Qaisra Shahraz’s Zamindar’s Wife: A Feminist Stylistic Study

Abstract

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.