Women, Tradition and Transformation A Feminist Reading of Kamila Shamsie's Fiction

The culture of Pakistan deeply entrenched in patriarchy and male chauvinism has given rise to constructs of ideal femininity as devotion, endurance, loyalty and self sacrifice. Literature is one of the most important means of perpetuating such images which seek to marginalize women and to ensure male domination. The study of Pakistani fiction is a fertile ground for a feminist critic seeking to unearth the political dimensions of characterization and to undermine patriarchal marginalization of women. In this research "Images of women" critical approach is used to analyse and evaluate how Kamila Shamsie, an eminent Pakistani female writer has depicted female characters in Salt and Saffron and Broken Verses. This study is an attempt to ascertain how a Pakistani female writer, rooted in a patriarchal culture in which women are silenced and marginalized to the domestic sphere and also having a liberal and modern exposure through a foreign education, represents women in her fiction. Does she remain bound to or does she rebel against the gender stereotypes embedded in her consciousness by the traditional male dominated culture of Pakistan?