Feminist Stylistic Analysis of Umaira Ahmad’s Novel “Meri Zaat Zarra-E-Benishan”

Abstract

Feminist stylistics aims to identify and analyze the gender aspects and issues that are encoded linguistically in a text. It is important to analyze the text linguistically because it has such embedded meanings which our mind deduces in a way that we don’t even know it. We are unaware of it and our mind keeps on making images, unknown to us. Feminist stylistics identifies the intricate messages that can be deduced from text and also the way a reader is influenced by such messages. The purpose of this study is to show the sexism present in Urdu literature. In the present study, the novel Meri Zaat Zarra-e-Benishan is selected which is written by Umaira Ahmad. It is the story of a girl, Saba and the difficulties she faced in her life. The text reveals the way females in Pakistani Society have to endure difficulties and survive. The novel is analyzed from Feminist stylistic aspect. The study is concerned with the analysis of how language and linguistic structures are exploited or subjugated with reference to male or female and the related gender terms and values that are present in the text. Text is analyzed at three distinct levels of word, sentence and discourse to flag up the gender issues embedded within the text. The analysis on one hand leads to the grammatical and lexical study of literary and non-literary text at word and sentence level and on the other hand it leads to the discourse level.