Cultural and Religious Perspectives on Gender based Notions of Widowhood in South Asian Literature

Abstract

This study aims to discuss the status of widow in comparison to the status of a widower, specifically about their right to re-marry, as portrayed in literature as a cultural reference and the Qur’Én as a religious framework. As cultural reference the novel The Story of a Widow by Musharraf Ali Farooqi and the short story The Eternal Vine by Ismat Chughtai have been selected for the study respectively. The novel and the short story take into account the presumed status of the widows and widowers in South Asian society. For the purpose of this study, comparative analysis of the novel and the short story under discussion is done using the comparative model proposed by Tilly in integration with the comparative model proposed by Walk.4 The article uses the Theory of Intersectionality proposed by Crenshaw5 as the reference theoretical framework. The aim is to see how the male category is portrayed as the privileged one having a right to remarry even at an old age to a young girl while the female category is portrayed as the submissive category having no right to remarry at all. The evidence from the texts is studied in the light of Qur’Énic verses about widows as reference from the category of religion.