A POST COLONIAL STUDY OF CULTURE AND GENDER IN SIDHWA’S THE PAKISTANI BRIDE

Abstract

There has been a geographical explosion of literature in English. After the Partition and decolonisation of the Indian Subcontinent in 1947, the writings in English split up into distinct national canons. Writings in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have diverged from each other because of their different cultures and identities. Redistribution of the sub- continent into sovereign postcolonial states had its effect on literary cultures, giving place to national traditions, geography and history, multi- lingual and multi- ethnic socio- economic order, politics and aesthetics. The writers in postcolonial era focus on ethnic identities rather than racial divisions, male dominance rather than European colonisation. Bapsi Sidhwa is the author of four internationally acclaimed novels, and is one of the most prominent English fiction writers of Pakistan. The Pakistani Bride shows how female emotional demands are crushed by violence. Despite Zaitoon’s predicament Sidhwa has shown that through struggle, there is hope even for women to see the dawn. The Pakistani Bride is a woman’s lyric cry in prose against the existential fate and societal abuse. Sidhwa has fashioned complex metaphors to orchestrate the multiple agonies of a woman, a successful portrayal of pain and suffering in the character of Zaitoon. She has written dramatically of a particular culture, marriage, loyalty, honour and their conflict with old ways. The present paper is a humble attempt to touch upon the cultural and gender issues in this novel from a post-colonial perspective.