Abstract:
Ismat Chughtai is a well-known feminist author in twentieth-century Urdu
literature. She is given a special place in South-Asian Feminist Studies because of the
way she interweaves the discourse of female sexuality with certain stylistic patterns.
In her short story, “The Quilt,” the voiceless woman character, Begum Jaan, holds on
to her choice regarding her sexuality despite living in a time and a society immersed
in patriarchy. The unconventional and ‘unladylike’ choice of homosexuality would
not be well-received if openly expressed. Chughtai still writes about this choice in a
very suggestive manner through the powerful metaphor of the quilt in “The Quilt”.
The metaphor speaks louder than the protagonist herself, thus becoming a means to
voice the choice of the woman in the story. This also attributes the metaphor with the
quality of a living character in Chughtai’s narrative technique. Through this
technique, Chughtai has contributed to the discourse of female sexuality in the Urdu
literary subculture of her time. Taking the twentieth-century definitions of metaphor
and a theoretical frame of Simone de Beauvoir’s discussion on female sexuality, this
paper takes into account this short story, “The Quilt,” to examine, in a qualitative
approach, the nature of the choice made by the female protagonist Begum Jaan and
how the metaphor is used to voice her choice in the story.
