Pakistani Women Writings in English: A Study of Women’s Expression and Literary Traditions
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This paper attempts to examine the Pakistani women writers and their contribution to Pakistani literature in English. Furthermore, this study focuses on the developmental outcomes of female writings in English by highlighting the ‘women’s expression’ and literary traditions of Pakistani women writers. In order to have a discernible view, Elaine Showalter’s methodology was used to categorize the development of women’s writing into three major phases: the feminine, the feminist, and the female. Thus, the findings of the current study revealed that though women were marginalized and subjugated before colonization but after colonization, they claimed their identities by celebrating their ‘women’s expression’ and literary style. Additionally, Pakistani women writers have set a feminine tradition, peculiar in its internalized consciousness, characteristics, and thematic features. Feminism is found to be one of the influencing factors in Pakistani women writings because it popularly focuses on the experiences, narrative techniques, and commonalities of women’s struggle. The current study also depicted that women’s writing expression is markedly different from that of men. It further, inculcated that women writers are considered to be more sensitive and emotional that is why their writings tend to be more melodramatic and autobiographical. Hence, women writers are true representation of their gendered community and mostly their writings portray female characters and their issues in the domestic and public sphere which ironically highlight women subjugation in a patriarchal society. Hence, the paper investigates women’s role, position, and degree of influence in literary field from a feminist perspective.
Keywords: feminism, gender roles, literary traditions, Pakistani English fiction, women’s writing, women expression
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