AN ODYSSEY DE ADEPTE TO AFFECTEE: EASTERNISM IN QAISRA SHAHRAZ’S THE HOLY WOMAN.

Abstract

This article aims at exploring how Qaisra Shahraz’s heroine, Zarri Bano, standing at the cross-roads of the forces of obscurantism, operating in the name of religion and globalization, negotiates her way. ‘The Holy Woman’(2001) by Qaisra, depicts various aspects of Pakistani rural society such as conservative and realist, the old and the new, the patriarch and the feminist. ln ‘ the Novel' the writer has skillfully delineated the fear from Islam (lslamophobia) of the orientalists, competing the fundamentalist stances, and engrossing the readers in debating a necessary change for gender equation. The purpose of the study is to pinpoint the laborious and industrious life of Pakistani women under a patriarchy. The research is qualitative in nature that analyses the protagonist's sufferings and compulsions. The study is significant in the sense that it brings forth the life of Pakistani rural women in a male dominated society. It is found that the novel, Written about the oppressions in the life of a woman, portrays the story of a young girl who is universityeducated with feminist stances, surrenders herself to a feudal lord, her father, towards the end. The protagonist of the novel is not a mutineer; yet she puts herself in troubles to snatch her identity and find her say in the male dominated society. The protagonist, Zarri Bano exemplifies how females, bridled by traditions, settle their way to self identification by mingling the modern with the traditional.