| Once read in dialogue with each other, the short stories of 1930s Delhi author Ismat Chughtai and the poetry of 1980s Pakistani poet Kishwar Naheed explore similar themes of gender, agency and subjectivity. I argue that portrayals of gender in women-authored Urdu literature integrate into works of self-representation that aim to move from the concept of Woman as a male-defined cultural and ideological Other, towards the concept of women as more heterogeneous and plural subjects. The project uses the term “zenana” to examine the gendered experiences of women. The phrase “zenana” refers to “women’s quarters” and it has long been understood as a passive sphere of domesticity, with women’s interactions not considered worthy of engagement as they are separate from the political sphere of public life. The project argues for the redefinition of the term “zenana” from a tangible passive space to a dynamic critical concept which simultaneously contains and produces the “woman’s experience”. In accumulation, reading these texts as engaging critically with the zenana results in an analytical concept combining gender, self-representation and culture. |
