“You are a woman. You are inferior to your husband. You are not worth the dust under his feet.”
The quote from Shazaf Fatima Haider’s novel ‘A Woman on a Suitcase’ highlights society’s expectations of what a woman should be. The story explores the oppressed woman through the character of the protagonist, Seema. As Seema is evicted by her husband the third time, with the suitcase in her hand, she has two options: either to obey and submit to her husband or to leave forever. The novel is not just a story of a failing marriage; in fact, it discusses identity, resilience, and the courage it takes to defy tradition.
The novel reflects a narrative that is not just a personal struggle but a critique on the broader level of women whose freedom and autonomy have been curtailed by patriarchy. Ma Jee or Seema’s mother-in-law is seen as a character who falls prey to male chauvinism and patriarchy, passing down the same lessons she had once endured. The generation gap between Seema, her mother, and Ma Jee is evident in the stance Seema takes for herself in the face of the docile and compliant women she is related to.
As a quote in the book says: “We must be like brocade curtains, shielding everything from the world outside.”
The brocade curtain metaphor, beautiful yet concealing, depicts women’s role in maintaining appearances while enduring emotional turmoil.
The first time Seema is thrown out of the house is when she cuts her hair short without her husband’s approval. She invites her husband’s wrath. Ma Jee also reprimands her. Cutting the hair isn’t just a personal choice, but rather an act of rebellion against the system that demands her subservience. The second eviction occurs when Seema returns 45 minutes late from a friend’s dinner party. This time, the mother-in-law admonishes. Finally, Seema’s unrestrained outrage over her husband sharing their intimate details with his father triggers her third expulsion.
Though the young novelist merits acknowledgement for using her best talents to produce such a piece of fiction, what fails her, from the word go, is a mundane viewpoint that offers nothing and is replete with a popular narrative that glorifies women at the expense of men’s vilification. A novel should not be written as a soap opera targeting a TV audience that is passive in thinking and looks for a ready-made gratification source to relate to. Instead of portraying the world through a feminist prism, the author should have better used her mental faculties to depict the world on merit and look beyond the prevailing picture in order to present a rather holistic viewpoint that is not gender biased and reflects the reality unseen to the human eye. The title ‘A Woman on a Suitcase’ emulates the best as well as the worst Urdu novels, cashing in on women’s helplessness through a jugglery of words and bombastic expressions that primarily appeal to the birdbrained readers basking in the sunshine of popular yet fabricated narrative, which has nothing to do with truth.
The narrative can undoubtedly be qualified as a feminist text in which the woman is idolised and the man vilified. That is the general theory of feminism. When it comes to the downside of the work, the author should have employed a nuanced approach instead of writing a quite bland, run-of-the-mill piece of literature bordering on cynicism on perceived grounds. Gender specific roles must be discussed on merit, as solely deifying women to appease popular taste leads to literary injustice, as it does not portray the truth lurking behind the scenes.
In conclusion, ‘A Woman on a Suitcase’ by Shazaf Fatima Haider is a novel that touches on many issues related to gender, culture, and family dynamics.
Leave a Reply