FBD CC # 4 - |IO| Princess & Doll ❤️ - Page 47

mtlb k ye k why are coming on and off like this?? .. 😕

na aon? *rasied eyebrow*

it is also the face of a woman who never forgot who she was, who was glad to be a woman, who, if offered the choice, would be a woman again and again. I refer to Ismat as an unexplored territory because there is [still] so much that there is to know about her. She was an "unselfconscious feminist." Ismat was doing all the things that we imagine feminists or women who are truly liberated [would] do but she didn't think she was doing anything extraordinary. That was the way she was. This was before the word 'feminist' was part of the vocabulary." (Tahira Naqvi, Writer and devoted translator of Chughtai's works)

. Her diction also closely relates to the social and cultural aspects of life in middle-class Muslim families of Uttar Pradesh. And along with the linguistic patterns characteristic of this group, there is also the colorful, robust, and completely unrestrained vernacular employed by the servant class and women who made their living at menial jobs and were not "begums." On every page of her work dialects come alive and idioms explode, so that each paragraph becomes more than just a collection of sentences conveying an idea; it represents a way of life, traditions, a whole philosophy. Class consciousness, clothing styles, cooking habits, foods, elements of social exchange, cust

.oms regarding such important events as birth, marriage and death are presented for our scrutiny. For example, we can see the practice of matchmaking at work in the story (Aunty Scorpion). It would be incorrect to assume that the tradition of matchmaking has died out; in India and Pakistan there are still households where the practice follows a somewhat similar, if not identical, route. It is also seen in the same story how a Muslim shroud is prepared, how the cloth is squared ,measured and ripped by hand, without the use of scissors. And in the story (The Veil) there is a woman whose loyalty to the institution of marriage has tragically consumed her whole life, a phenomenon deeply ingrained in the very fiber of South Asian culture.

. In "The Veil" the notions of pride and arrogance, and the superficial customs that can rule lives are touched upon. It is layered with societal pressure, false traditions and ego that have the potential of destroying a person. In "Aunty Scorpion" we get an insight into the character of a woman who is made cynical and embitter by life which is reflected in her language and hatred for her brother and his in-laws, but the skillfully written story does not let characters to be read simply.

We also learn of tradition and practices of the people of the sub-continent, particularly women, for example, in "Aunty Scorpion" we see the practice of match-making and preparation of a shroud which is measured and ripped by hands without the use of scissors.

We can most certainly say that the themes used by Ismat Chughtai are universal and the stories she wrote still have their realistic existence in the world till date. The lives of women to be entrapped by men, the ego of men, the insensitivity of men towards women, the follies of women as results of their decisions being made by men are themes that can be found in most of her works, all of which fall under the heading of feminism. Her work is said to be the "living document of traditional linguistic patterns, in all their colloquial, idiomatic and dialectal richness", however, she only wrote about the concerns of middle class woman, a fact which is lamented by many critics but there are others who say that if she experimented with something else she might have lost her touch with the genre that became her forte and "sets her apart from the other writers". The themes of her stories come from her being deeply rooted in her rich cultural and tradition, and from the tabooed topics that exited in the everyday life, which made her a rebellious 5writer. We can see the seditious behaviors of Chughtai in her female protagonists