Many of Manto’s stories derive conflict from one source- the partition of India. In his stories, Manto explores the theme of communal conflict and many of his characters face extreme situations of ruthlessness, which are generally expressed through murder, rape or other forms of violent conduct. Women are most of the times the victims of the onslaught of communalist madness that Manto brings to the fore but there are times when they rise up against the hypocrisy of gender beliefs and show defiance in different forms. They at times are righteous and not easily dominated. Today in my presentation I will examine the defiant positions that women take up in different ways in stories of Manto in times of conflict.
I will be looking at four stories
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The four stories are Colder than Ice, Mozail, The room with the Bright Light and The Wild Cactus.
First up is Colder than Ice. Here, we have Kalwant Kaur as the wife of Ishwar Singh. In the beginning itself Manto describes Kalwant Kaur as, “ A big woman with generous hips, fleshy thighs and unusually high breasts. Her chin suggested great strength and resolution.” Immediately, the reader is alerted to the fact that she is a femme fatale, an attractive woman who charms men with her irrepressible aura of charm and mystery. These lines reveal certain strength about her character; she is a woman who is defiant and not dominated. But if she is not being oppressed like the other women then what is the conflict she is facing? Later on in the story, when she is aroused and Manto says and I quote, “Kalwant Kaur began to boil with passion like a kettle on a high fire. But there was something wrong.” The something wrong was that Ishwar Singh was not getting aroused despite all the attempts from Kalwant Kaur. She was at once disgusted and saddened. She then says, “I am Sardar Nihal Singh’s daughter I will cut you to pieces.” This is testament to her position of strength over Ishwar Singh who
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The first story I will talk about now is The Wild Cactus. In the Wild Cactus, there are three women and all of them very different personalities. Shahina is similar to Kalwant Kaur from Colder Than Ice in the sense that she is also a femme fatale, in a truer sense of the term. I will look at Nawab’s stature, in the story. Nawab, the lover of Haibat Khan is used as an object of consumption. She is objectified as good enough to only satisfy men’s desires and she feels the need to develop a strong relationship with someone. So despite the fact she is not treated harshly her conflict is borne out of her desire to do justice to both her personal and professional space. Nawab knows nothing of the outside world and she is a conformist, one who adheres to what is expected of her. Manto writes and I quote, “There was a physical sincerity about her. She used to give herself completely, without reservations, to the men who were bought to her. She had come to believe that it was a woman’s duty to make love to men, tenderly and without inhibitions.” Soon, she was in deep love with Haibat Khan and in this state she can be described as a damsel in distress. A damsel in distress is essentially a young woman who is troubled. Nawab is troubled by Haibat Khan’s
In a world where the vast majority of cultures are patriarchal, in response to traditional structures, women often find themselves at war in their minds, hearts and in their own actions. 'Yellow woman' and 'The story of an hour' are examples of how women struggle in a male domintaed society. In these two stories, the women fnd themselves wrestling with thoughts and emotions that our society consider unacceptable. The following statements ,ay be asked and considered of these women:
The author's views on women may never be fully revealed, but it is clear that he believes in male superiority and that insurgent females ought to be suppressed. Like Wealhtheow, females should only exert minimal power and influence, but they should always keep the drinks coming.
How does one compare the life of women to men in late nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century America? In this time the rights of women were progressing in the United States and there were two important authors, Kate Chopin and John Steinbeck. These authors may have shown the readers a glimpse of the inner sentiments of women in that time. They both wrote a fictitious story about women’s restraints by a masculine driven society that may have some realism to what women’s inequities may have been. The trials of the protagonists in both narratives are distinctive in many ways, only similar when it totals the macho goaded culture of that time. Even so, In Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing we hold two unlike fictional characters in two very different short stories similar to Elisa Allen in the “Chrysanthemums” and Mrs. Louise Mallard in “The Story of an Hour”, that have unusual struggles that came from the same sort of antagonist.
...literature I couldn’t help but compare my lifestyle to the woman in the stories. Women today are no longer looked upon only to supervise over their home and family, they are not forced into marriages, and they are not blamed for all the world’s problems. Today’s society is not a patriarchal one; in fact today men and woman appear to be equal to one another.
In the modern world women work, vote, run for office and the list goes on. In most aspects, women are equal to men. However, this was not always the case. In centuries past, women were not viewed as being equal to men socially, intellectually, or politically and were thought incapable of accomplishing anything of value. Consequently, many cultures held the view that women were possessions whose only purpose was to be subservient to men. The view of women as mere objects is evident in various works of literature throughout the ages. Two classic works of literature that exemplify this are The Thousand and One Nights and Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji. Despite being set in different eras and within different cultures, The Tale of Genji and The Thousand and One Nights share the common theme of viewing women as mere objects. Women only serve to fulfill the desires and expectations of men, differing only in that Shahrazad, the female protagonist of The Thousand and One Nights, manages to rise above the limited expectations of a male dominated society.
In the novel She and in the stories of The Arabian Nights, both Haggard and Haddawy explore the expanding gender roles of women within the nineteenth century. At a time that focused on the New Woman Question, traditional gender roles were shifted to produce greater rights and responsibilities for women. Both Ayesha, from Haggard’s novel She, and Shahrazad, from Haddawy’s translation of The Arabian Nights, transgress the traditional roles of women as they are being portrayed as strong and educated females, unwilling to yield to men’s commands. While She (Ayesha) takes her power to the extreme (i.e. embodying the femme fatale), Shahrazad offers a counterpart to She (i.e. she is strong yet selfless and concerned with the welfare of others). Thus, from the two characters emerge the idea of a woman who does not abide by the constraints of nineteenth century gender roles and, instead, symbolizes the New Woman.
As you can see from both of these short stories, the women today have come a long way from what past centuries have expected women to be, now we can only learn from the past and not constrict the roles that certain genders have in our society. Women today are strong and independent.
Like the soldiers in the Chinese folktale, the women figures in The House on Mango Street are in a plight. Their condition is horrifying, filled with “restrictive gender roles, and domestic
Overall these stories all represent the same theme of women doing something that changes another’s life, corruption of the media, and women being discriminated by their gender. As a reader these stories have been my favorite through this term and as a young woman in society with large goals I feel as if women equality is a constant struggle, not only in other countries but in the united states as well.
In a nation brimming with discrimination, violence and fear, a multitudinous number of hearts will become malevolent and unemotional. However, people will rebel. In the eye-opening novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini, the country of Afghanistan is exposed to possess cruel, treacherous and sexist law and people. The women are classified as something lower than human, and men have the jurisdiction over the women. At the same time, the most horrible treatment can bring out some of the best traits in victims, such as consideration, boldness, and protectiveness. Although, living in an inconsiderate world, women can still carry aspiration and benevolence. Mariam and Laila (the main characters of A Thousand Splendid Suns) are able to retain their consideration, boldness and protectiveness, as sufferers in their atrocious world.
Throughout history women have always had to stand behind their men (whether it be rules, tradition, etc.). In almost every history context, whether it about wars or people, they have almost been written by men for men. It is not even until this century that women in this country have gained new grounds for the equality that we hope will be as substantial with men’s equality. Despite women’s hopes for equality, there is always old traditions that are so hard to be break that they sometimes keep women in inferior positions. In these two novels, Fantasia and So Long a Letter ,we will explore how the women in these novels deal with modernity and the ways in which it conflicts with some of the traditions of their society.
... She argues that while some situations may appear quite similar, they should not be treated as identical, as they have been, because they have very different, historically specifically explanations (64). It creates a false sense of commonality through oppression and overlooks that “beyond sisterhood there is still racism colonialism and imperialism” (64). Mohanty is not arguing that people of different identities and different backgrounds cannot join together to organize against a particular injustice; for example, she uses Indian women uniting against police brutality (65). However, she is arguing, “the analysis of these group identities cannot be based on universalistic, ahistorical categories” (65). So, while these women of different background can unite, it is always important that remember analyze the differences and not attempt to lump the women into “Women.”
The term gender-solidarity refers to a bond among a particular gender. In this article the focus is on unity among the females from all castes and classes in the novels of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Some of the characters of the novels find this phenomenon a part of their lives because all of them face the same biasness in the family, society, and everywhere.
Right from the ancient epics and legends to modern fiction, the most characteristic and powerful form of literary expression in modern time, literary endeavour has been to portray this relationship along with its concomitants. Twentieth century novelists treat this subject in a different manner from those of earlier writers. They portray the relationship between man and woman as it is, whereas earlier writers concentrated on as it should be. Now-a-days this theme is developing more important due to rapid industrialization and growing awareness among women of their rights to individuality, empowerment, employment and marriage by choice etc. The contemporary Indian novelists in English like Anita Desai, Sashi Deshpande, Sashi Tharoor, Salman Rusdie, Shobha De, Manju Kapoor, Amitav Ghosh etc. deal with this theme minutely in Indian social milieu.
The major cause of the theme of betrayal in Manto’s stories is the frenzy caused during the partition. Partition caused communal conflict and mass dislocation. There is violence all around, accompanied by inhumane practices such as riots and rape. Ironically Manto himself was a victim of dislocation and the frenzy of the partition. During the time of the partition he began to drink excessively. He was met with extreme poverty and depression. Manto in his writing has been extremely blunt and has written about the bitter reality of the time. Perhaps this is why his main characters were mostly deprived and lonely people including prostitutes and beggars. Also his description is vivid which in turn reflects his state as well. He penned down most of what he observed around him from a very neutral perspective. In most of Manto’s stories the characters do not completely meet their closure. Death is the ultimate end. This notion is important in the way how loyalty between characters plays its part to meet this final end - death. In ‘The Assignment’ the story ends with Santokh Singh remaining loyal to his ancestors yet betraying Mian Sahib. Manto has written talking of the partition "were the times when philosophy, argumentation or logic had lost their meaning;they were nothing but an exercise in futility"(Manto 103). As mentioned previously madness and betrayal go hand in hand. When people live as if there is no tomorrow, when people have literally nothing to lose there is chaos. This chaos leads to bestiality which is very much evident in stories like ‘Bitter Harvest’. When there is bestiality people lose control, people lose rationality.This lose of rationality leads to irrational decisions which eventually lead to betrayal. This is s...