Women In The Quilt Theme

Women have often been called upon to make sacrifices and suppress their personal desires.They have often been left on the margins of the social set-up as far as their personal desires and fufilment of those desires is concerned. Women are not a minority in our society but their “lives, experiences and values have been treated as marginal” and men’s experiences have been assumed to be central to society. One also needs to contest the often stated view that in India women have always enjoyed a place of respect and dignity, that they have been respected as ‘devis.’ It needs to be seen that “the respect and privileges which accompany the position of a ‘devi’ are not only anti-individualistic,” they are also anti-humanistic and “deny women a personhood”.

Being poor, she is married to the Nawab who is rich and of ‘ripe years’ but ‘very pious.’ Since Begum Jan’s family is not well-off, they see in her marriage to the rich influential Nawab, a favourable economic option. After the marriage, he “deposited her in the house with all his other possessions and promptly forgot about her ! The young delicate Begum began to wilt with loneliness”. This highlights how the institution of marriage commodifies a woman and reduces her to an object of only business transaction. The Nawab spends most of his time with the “young, fair and slim-waisted boys” whom he keeps at his place and whose expenses he meets. The Begum spends “sleepless nights” and becomes a picture of “melancholy and despair”. Begum Jan desire for her husband’s love and company, but the Nawab does not have even a single minute to spare for his wife. Her youth withers away and she loses all desire to live. At this crucial point, out of utter desperation she recklessly turns to Rabbo, her maid, for the satisfaction of her sexual desires. In the story Rabbo is shown as constantly massaging parts of her body: “Rabbo used to sit by her side and scratch her back for hours together – it was almost as if getting scratched was for her the fulfillment of life’s essential need. In a way, more important than the basic necessities required for staying alive. Rabbo had no other household duties”. This focus on

Begum Jan is just a social stamp of approval for the Nawab. Beyond that, the Nawab totally “forgot about her”. Such inequality in marriage is symbolic of the subjugation and oppression of women. Ismat Chughtai brings out the fact that how no attention is paid to female sexuality. The woman’s needs and desires are not acknowledged even in marriage. Women are conditioned against any expression of their sexuality. The Nawab fails to realize that she has entered this marriage with certain hopes and desires but he totally ignores the sexual needs of his new bride . As he romances with the young boys “in gossamer shirts,” he never bothers to acknowledge the sexual expectations of his own wife, who lay lonely, restricted and neglected. The very fact that he purposefully kept a poor young girl to meet the societal duty of marriage, never bothering about how he would never be able to fulfil her sexual needs.How such inequality and oppression can lead a woman into a sense of complete loneliness and depression is another important aspect that is brought to light by Ismat Chughtai. While the Nawab fulfills his homosexual desires, Begum Jan, look quickly “from the chinks in the drawing room doors… felt she had been raked over the coals !” . Such is her pain and desperation at the Nawab’s being oblivious to her presence. The