Restrictive Gender Roles and Individual Autonomy: A Study of Pathan Daughter by Nabeela

Abstract

Abstract The present study is a critical review of how gender roles and autonomy are connected in the novel by Nabeela Gul titled, "Pathan Daughter" and the choice to make this work a feminist and postcolonial interpretation of the literary work. This work is aimed at locating the ways in which patriarchy and structures of female subjectivity are constructed, by considering the societal and cultural context of the Pashtun society. This work aims to observe and discover how and how the female protagonist of the work applies morality and ethics to have her own autonomy. This work incorporates the notions and views of the prevailing authors and theorists, like Simone de Beauvoir (1949), Helene Cixous (1975), Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak (1988), Chandra Mohanty (1991) and bell hooks (1984) and Kandiyoti (1991) so that the contextualization and the focus of the novel, Pathan Daughter is placed within the framework of feminist literary tradition and feminist consciousness. This work also involves textual analysis work to delve and bring out the way in which the text portrays issues like gender oppression, patriarchy and subjectivity, daughter and mothers, and morality and ethics. The possibilities of this work are to create and establish a new channel of research and development among the authors and scholars of the feminism literary theory and the feminine subjectivity and beyond. Keywords: Gender role, Feminism, Patriarchy, Postcolonialism, Pashtun society, Autonomy, Indigenous feminist discourse, Moral agency, Nabeela Gul