The Power of Sexual Aesthetics and Sisterhood: Cultural Feminism in Bapsi Sidhwa's The Pakistani Bride.

Abstract

Culture bans any discourse on sexuality as a desire to control power. Bapsi Sidhwa, as a cultural feminist from the tiny minority of Parsis in Pakistan, rejects the phallocentric systems of language and seeks to wake people up to the importance of women’s sexuality. The Pakistani Bride is a novel not only of women as objects of male control but also of women as subjects of their own feelings. The image of the female body is the key to Sidhwa’s feminist project novel The Pakistani Bride and she seeks to create change via highlighting woman’s uniqueness and feminine qualities free from male dominance. Sidhwa too highlights sisterhood as a source of women’s consolation and salvation and affirms that women need a powerful means to revolt against the male-supremacist cultural norms. She attempts to reclaim women’s identities through her characters’ female bonding that constitutes a real challenge to institutionalized phallocentric ideology.