Breaking the Chains of Gender Stereotypes in Ismat Chughtai’s A Life in Words: Memoirs

Abstract

Patriarchy in the grab of orthodoxy has imposed a chain of restrictions on women to restrict their freedom and capability. Stern norms in the name of gender have been constructed in the so-called civilised patriarchal society to confine women within the boundaries of home. She is forcefully expelled from important tasks such as decision making process owing to patriarchal belief that women lack wit and reasoning. Simone de Beauvoir in her work The Second Sex explicitly points out that gender is  merely a social construction which differs from one culture to another and the gender roles are merely based on irrational beliefs, “One is not born, but rather becomes a women” (301). Women are restricted to their household chores as they are assumed weak creatures that cannot perform works which include power and rational thinking as they lack both these qualities. Women are prevented from confronting and acknowledging their own proficiencies and capabilities as no chance is provided to them so that these set-stereotypes false. The paper based on Ismat Chughtai’s A Life in Words (2013) highlights how through the medium of writing, she has voiced the ever-silenced issues of Muslim women and has thus become a voice for numerous voiceless suffering women. From a culture which considered “the education of women worse than prostitution” (ALW 72) she set an example to all women in general and the Muslim women in particular by becoming the first Muslim women of her area to graduate. The paper in the course of discussion also focuses on the various facets of violence against women and how through education, awareness and empowerment women challenge the stereotypical notions to create a congenial space for themselves.