analysis the use of the child narrator in chughtai's lihaf
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Answer:
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Explanation:
Ismat Chughtai’s celebrated masterpiece ‘Lihaaf’ or 'The Quilt’, published in 1942 in the Urdu journal Adab-e-Latif, revolves around the interwoven themes of marriage, subjugation of women, and the oppression and neglect of female sexuality and desire. It is a story about Begum Jan, the beautiful wife of the Nawab who leads a lonely existence despite all material comforts because her husband forgets about her after installing her in the house along with other possessions. Begum Jan is reduced to an object of a mere business transaction, and marriage serves only as an economic and social enterprise. Begum Jan’s impoverished family saw in her marriage to the rich and influential Nawab a favourable economic option, and hence their age differences did not matter. Here, Chughtai highlights the unquestionable obligation in society to get married. Precisely this obligation made the Nawab marry Begum Jan despite his “strange hobby”. Preoccupied with young boys “in translucent kurtas” and “fitting churidars”, the Nawab condemned the Begum to a life of confinement and subjugation. He completely neglected and dismissed her presence in his life and he would not even allow her to go out. Dejected and desperate, Begum Jan who was withering away finds solace in the arms of her maidservant Rabbu. In her short story, Ismat Chughtai creatively uses the 'Lihaaf' both as an object as well as a metaphor. Metaphorically, the 'lihaaf' conceals and puts a cover on the reality. Thus, Begum Jan becomes a 'lihaaf' for the Nawab’s own proclivity for ‘fair complexioned, slender-waisted young boy students.’ The lihaf also becomes a cover for Begum Jan's suppressed sexuality. As an object it becomes a cover for Begum Jan’s and Rabbu’s nightly activities. It prevents the narrator from seeing what actually is happening inside but at the same time it makes her imagination run wild. It appears as a swaying elephant at night. Moreover, the child narrator becomes the ‘lihaaf’ or cover for the narration of a story dealing with forbidden subjects. Thus, the lihaaf looks quite innocent to the narrator in the morning, but as the night advances it is the same lihaaf that fills the narrator with dread as it hides an unspeakable reality from her. Finally the narrator decides to unravel the mystery of the elephant inside the lihaaf, but what she discovers remains a mystery. Thus the lihaaf cloakes as well as provokes. Chughtai's 'Lihaaf', therefore, is an outright response to the socially rather patriarchally constructed images that believed only in male desires and a woman's submission to them. 'Lihaaf' not only acknowledges the existence of sexual desires in a woman, or portrays a subsequent sense of loneliness arising out of its repression, but offers an exploration of an alternative sexuality to a woman in a sexually repressive patriarchal world