Munazzah Younas

· 21 Nov 2021

Follow Following

Feminism In Post-Colonial Period

#feminism #Postcolonialfeminism #culturalfeminism
Right from the start of this universe, men and women are two important entities of this universe. Their collaboration, coordination, relation, regulation, dictation and assimilation is what makes life possible on this planet. Now, according to the rules of the game, if both are equally important and purposeful, they both should be given importance accordingly and equally. Since the birth of the universe, men were given the pivot role of a breadwinner but he took it all wrong and at times, scary stories of suppression, violence and tyranny on women were and are loud and clear. There was a time when they were deprived of the basic facilities of life and were used only for reproduction.


Feminism:

Feminism is a movement started for the better rights of women. Its main purpose was to preserve the normal status of women. It has many types i.e social feminism, rational feminism, liberal feminism, Marxist feminism and cultural feminism. All of the types basically want to empower women and to make them equal members of this society. To transform them into a productive part of the population many women like Mary Wollstonecraft, the suffragettes, and Eleanor Roosevelt played an important role in establishing and shaping feminism.
This movement has a long history but officially it is divided into three waves:  

The first wave started in the late nineteenth and twentieth-century and it mainly focused upon the rights of women to vote for an active part in politics and hereditary. Its main objective was to break the claustrophobic shells of inequalities.

The second wave of feminism started in the 1960s and its main goal was to liberate women from the bandits of patriarchy. Its main agenda was to give women their legal and social rights.

The third wave of feminism basically was a renewed effort for the failures of the second wave of feminism but its roots were quite distinct from that of the first and second waves. Its school of thought was psychoanalysis, Marxism, sociology, philosophy etc.

Postcolonialism:

The word postcolonialism refers to the historical era or condition of things that follows Western colonialism; it may also refer to the ongoing endeavour to recover and reinterpret the history and agency of people who have been subjected to various types of imperialism. Although postcolonialism suggests a future free of colonialism, new kinds of dominance or subordination, including new forms of global empire, may emerge as a result of such developments. It's important not to mistake postcolonialism with the assumption that the world we are living in now is free of colonialism. The study of multiple trajectories of modernity as interpreted and experienced from a variety of philosophical, cultural, and historical viewpoints has been a focus of postcolonial theorists and historians. They've been particularly interested in interacting with the Enlightenment's unclear legacy outside of Europe, as represented in societal, political, economic, technical, constitutional, and artistic discourse.

Postcolonial Feminism:

Postcolonial feminism arose as a reaction to feminism that was only concerned with the experiences of women in Western nations and colonies. Postcolonial feminists also aim to mainstream Western feminism the concepts of indigenous and other Third World feminist groups.
Postcolonial feminism refers to the women of those nations once colonized by another nation. On the one side, the postcolonial feminist theory works to disrupt the discourses of postcolonial theory and liberal western feminism and, on the other hand, to guard against the theorization as a monolithic, single figure of the 'third world woman.' Many world critics have noted that the sorrows and misery of postcolonial women are far greater than the women who have been colonized. Some of the main issues of postcolonial feminism are the theorization of the female subject's conflicting position in colonialism and decolonization, the recurrent embedding of gendered difference in a wider understanding of ethnicity, nationalism, class, and caste, etc. Postcolonial feminists claim that women should also be characterized by social groups and ethnic identities, not just by their gender. Feminists in Postcolonialism also believe that men and women view elements of colonialism and postcolonialism differently. But they also vigorously maintain that gender was not necessarily a basic marker of distinction.

Reviews from the Literature:

The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is considered a striking Caribbean book, lying between the world of capitalism and the West Indies after emancipation. In the post-colonial period, however, many commentators frequently appear to ignore the marginality of women because white Anglo-American feminists often emphasize the rights or equality of white women, while postcolonial critics tend to concentrate on those of men in the post-colonial domains. Therefore, Gayatri C. Spivak, the post-colonial feminist critic, offers a theoretical model for analyses of post-colonialism from a feminist viewpoint. “Epistemic abuse”, according to Spivak, denotes that, through the colonial rhetoric of science, universal reality, and religious salvation, colonizers attempt to reject or reshape the indigenous culture of colonies.

If we analyze the Wide Sargasso Sea from a feminist point of view, from the very beginning of the book, we can see Antoinette suffering from male domination and oppression. Antoinette's husband tries to leave her just after hearing some sentences from an unknown person claiming to be the illegitimate Creole child. He does not go for any excuse, treats her, and throws her away like a piece of paper. This novel also serves Westerners' orientalist views towards the Creole people. Rochester's character in particular reflects the "Othering" mentality towards Antoinette and the Creoles of the Caribbean. Antoinette, a postcolonial woman, conveys the question of Spivak, "can the subaltern speak?" She attempts to raise her voice against all the oppressive powers. The termination of her relationship with her husband often conveys the impression that Europeans are unwilling to consider the subaltern. In postcolonial terms, Spivak sees Bertha’s “otherness” as “an allegory of the general epistemic violence of imperialism, the construction of a self-immolating colonial subject for the glorification of the social mission of the colonizer”.


In My Feudal lord by Tehmina Durrani, the imperialistic approaches of patriarchy and the struggle of women in Pakistan is the sole representation of patriarchy in Pakistan. My feudal lord describes the hardships faced by women in Pakistan due to patriarchy. Gender inequalities and male dominance are discussed to the hilt in this article to the core. The ratio of their manipulation and violence can be judged by the number of cases filed in security agencies book logs. Women oppression and the need for rights for women are explained here.

In the novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, social feminism is depicted. We can see that this novel of Khaled Hosseini has many female characters who are stressed and suppressed by male dominance and patriarchy but the good thing is despite their manipulation they are still challenging the wrongdoings of patriarchy. Mariam and Laila are the main characters whose lifestyle is discussed in A Thousand Splendid Suns.

In The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, female characters highlight the atrocities on women in Geliea. Throughout the world women rights are manipulated and they are oppressed throughout the world. They are brutally treated and are represented as a piece of object that is showcased. She also criticized the submissive nature of women to men and is of the opinion that their submissiveness further worsens their situation. The only purpose of women described is to raise the children and her husband. The struggles and evolution of women are described here.

Cultural feminism rose in the United States of America to depoliticize radical feminism and it was a term coined by Brooke Williams. Cultural feminism is the negation of radical feminism and is only surfaced to raise the idea of separatism, women empowerment and institution building. Cultural feminism is a phenomenon that shifts life from “politics” towards “lifestyle". It is a type of feminism in which the member of the same gender pulls you out from this oppression and questionable attitudes. All other forms of feminism i.e socialist feminists, black feminists and radical feminists negate cultural feminism because it rejects their old ideas and they say that cultural feminism is making the feminists moderate and is weakening the movement.

One of the main businesses of feminist critique in the last part of the 18th century was to alter the literary tradition. When Virginia Woolf wrote her essay A Room of One's Own in 1929, so many women authors were inspired. In her Sexual Politics, Kate Millet, one of the influential female authors of second-wave feminism, analyzes that the male writers have sketches of women in history and literature. Women were started from the masculine point of view in the literary works of male writers. Millet has found that what she terms sexual politics is repressive, subjugated, and unequal, and controlled by the sexual roles of women. Her idea of sexual politics is similar to the Orientalism of Edward Said, where he reveals the misrepresentation of Westerners from the East to the West.

The negative impacts of men dominancy and the identity crisis of women are somewhat related to Sylvia Path's 'The Bell jar'. One can also see that the feminine character of women is somehow absurd and cannot stand alone with their own ideas and perceptions in Virginia Woolf's writings as well as shown in her novel To the Lighthouse. Both the female characters i.e Esther and Lily are trying and struggling to synchronise their ideas with the established norms and perceptions of society. As we can see that despite different locations their plight is almost the same. Their habitat is under the bell jar where they had to modify their ideas according to society. Virginia Woolf's and Sylvia Path's characters gradually grow to understand their own strengths, desires, identities and abilities.


In Pakistani Urdu literature, we can take the example of Umera Ahmed's novels, Peer-e-Kamil and Meri Zaat Zarra-e-Benishan. In both novels, we can see how the societal norms suppress women. The patriarchal and imperialistic approaches of society towards women is truly unacceptable and is highly heinous. Here we can observe that despite the movements like cultural feminism there are still women in this society who are submitting to their oppressors and they do not want to change their plight. They bear and are told to bear these pathetic struggles and oppression because it's their destiny. Could you believe the level of moral illness? These novels criticize the cultural and social norms of the society which serves as tasty food to the ones who tend to manipulate these norms to enhance their dominance over man. That's why the writer condemns the role of women and their submission and says that almost all the problems of women are due to their own fate because they themselves provide males with the reason to overpower them.

Conclusion:

The portrayal of women in formerly colonised nations and in western places is the focus of postcolonial feminist theory. While the duty of a postcolonial feminist is significantly more difficult than that of a postcolonial thinker in combating the first colonial discourse that seeks to depict him as inferior. She is a victim of "double colonisation," as she is oppressed by colonialism and patriarchy at the same time. Not just as a colonised subject, but also as a woman, she must fight colonial power's domination. Her colonial brother is no longer her partner, but her oppressor in this tyranny. He even uses her in his fight against the coloniser by distorting her in nationalist discussions. Not just that, but she also endures at the hands of coloniser nations' Western feminists, who misrepresent their colonial equivalents by enforcing seclusion on their racial, ethnic, political, and social particularities, and thereby function as potential oppressors of their "sisters."
Women are the most important part of society. Their existence is the reason for everyone’s existence. They could be sisters, wives, mothers etc, but in every role, she tries to give a hundred percent to society and yet she is treated as a by-product. If women choose not to marry, let her live the way she wants. As long as they do not interfere with other people's personal space, their own personal space must not be interfered with. Objectification and manipulation must be stopped. They must be treated with equal dignity regardless of the fact whether they belong to the Western or Eastern culture. Women must be offered jobs so that women could access their troubles more easily and live a convenient life.