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
Brideis 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.