Social and Physical Entrapments of Women in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy Man and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

Abstract

The study highlights the social and physical entrapments of women in two novels: Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy Man and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Both writers belong to two different cultures. Bapsi Sidhwa is a Punjabi, Parsi, Pakistani novelist while Arundhati Roy is an Indian Author. Regardless of their different cultures, they have discussed similar issues faced by women of their contemporary societies. This case study adopted exploratory research framework to gather data and undergo its content analysis from the text of two selected novels. The findings explicate that woman exploitation can be observed evidently among different societies irrespective of any culture, religion, caste or creed. In both novels, women are represented as shallow creatures and they are utterly victimized physically as well as emotionally. They are raped and beaten brutally by males being their unbidden masters. Sidhwa and Roy enlighten the plight of women in their novels, though slight elements of unjust maltreatment of the male characters can also be seen at many places.

An Insight Into the Postcolonial Feminism Using Abdullah’s Short Story “Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust”

“…The genre of story writing become eminent all around the world likewise Pakistan and other South Asian countries. Additionally, there are multiple male and female writers in Pakistan who write in English and raise their voices against the injustice, social oppressions, the notions of patriarchy, and exploitation of working class in the postcolonial settings (Nair, 2020;Tanvir & Amir, 2018;Lodhi, Khalid, Mehmood, Rasool, Akbar & Amir, 2019). Shaila Abdullah, a prominent contemporary Pakistani female writer is the author of novels and numerous short stories.…”