RE CONFIGURING “GENDER COMPLEMENTARITIES” AND THE LANGUAGE OF FEMININE DEFIANCE IN SHAMSUR REHMAN FARUQI’S THE MIRROR OF BEAUTY

Abstract

“Gender integration” and “feminine desire” have often been opposed by different theorists. This research employs Judith Butler’s philosophy of gender performance to analyze the novel Shamsur Rehman Farooqi’s The Mirror of Beauty. This paper highlights the character of Wazir Khanum who is the protagonist of the novel and contends that Wazir Khanum appears as a character who has transcended the gender bipartite through her language of defiance. In the novel, the reader’s outdated concept of gender is defied. The novel portrays that the women of India, Muslims or Hindus, were not considered as a product; rather, it is the narrative of the West which is trying to fix a wrong depiction of the Indians, envisaging them to be everything the West is not. In the novel, the heroine, Wazir Khanam who challenges all these conservative tales and does so in a grand style is presented to the reader as a figure that challenges all conventional narratives and gender discourses through her language of defiance. The article is built around the theoretical framework of Judith Butler’s representation of women in a patriarchal world as subalterns. Butler’s Gender Trouble (2004) significantly states that women have traditionally been treated as subalterns as far as their political representation is concerned. Therefore, the most important goal of feminist theory has been to make such language changes that symbolize women, especially as far as their prominence in a dogmatic sphere is concerned. Taking this as a challenge Butler has given a detailed account of gender bipartite and ‘gender complementarities’.