Athenians told the intractable Melians “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what

they must”. In our world, ‘Men’ are strong who can do everything and women are weak who are

destined to suffer. Feminism rejects this binary opposition between the strong and the weak, the
oppressor and the oppressed and the centralized and the marginalized. It reinforces the

radical notion that all human beings are equal. It is not a pronouncement that women

should have power over men but over themselves. Feminism is not merely a theory; it is a way of

life, a struggle, an idea. According to Mary Wollstonecraft “it is a vindication of the rights of

women”.

Realizing the significance of the portrayal of women in literature, feminists deem it vital

to combat these promulgated stereotyped images and question their authority and their

coherence . They examine the ways in which literature underpins or undermines the economic,

social , political and psychological oppression of women. It especially concerns

and highlights a crucial distinctions between the supressors ,the male ,and the supressed ,the female.

The goal of feminist theory is that neither male nor female is taken as normative, but both are seen as
equally conditioned by gender construction of their culture. This strong emphasis on femininity that
influences its representations in literature and culture is a way of questioning which is the contrary view
that there is some natural, given essence of the feminine, that is universal and unchangeable.

Daniyal Moeenudin’s ‘In other rooms, other wonders’ is a true representation of diasporic lilterature
which is composed on eight interlaces short stories. These overlapped stories are projecting the contrast
between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, rich and deprived , bourgeiouse and proletariats ,masters and
servants, unquestioned and questioned and above all between male and female.

Viewing it through the lens of feminism, the epigraph with which ‘In Other Rooms’ Other Wonders’
opens is a translation of a Punjabi proverb ‘Three things for which we kill -- Land, women and gold’
exposes that the one dimension of the book is to unravel the mechanisms of patriarchal ideology,
gender stereotypes, the cultural distinction in men and women which perpetuates sexual inequality
between the two sexes.

In the stories Daniyaal Moeenuddin expounds on the idea that in the patriarchal society all women are
suppressed and oppressed by men in various ways. They are in full control of men like puppets. In the
very first story ‘Nawabdin Electrician’, his wife is not named. No identity is given to her except
Nawabdin’s wife. Nawabdin never calls her by name. In ‘Saleema’ again saleema is never called by her
name by Rafique ,the driver, who is having an illegitimate relationship with her. He calls her as ‘little girl’
and ‘girl’ instead of calling her name. This shows the denial of giving individual identity to women in this
male dominated society. It infact reiterates the idea that women lack individuality.

Bressler defines Feminism in these words:

“As a social movement, feminist criticism highlights the various ways through which women in
particularly have been oppressed, suppression and repression.’’

This oppression is evidently torched in Nawabdin Electrician, where his wife ‘sat primly at his feet on
the Chorpoy’(Page 19).Food is always served him first. In ‘Provide Provide’ Zainab pressed and massaged
chaudhry Jaglani’s feet. This is a very stereotypical image of women created by chauvinists as the
colonized, innate brutes, inferior, inhuman, and dummies created by the colonizers, which are far from
reality. The women is ‘other’ like the colonized other, she is objectified and marginalized defined only by
her difference from male norms and values, defined by what she lacks and that men have.

The patriarchal ideology suggests that there are only two identities a woman can have. If she

accepts her traditional gender role and obeys the patriarchal rules, she is a ‘good girl’, if she does

not, she is ‘bad girl’. The woman in the story Nawabdin Electrician’ is an epitome of girl like Cinderella,
she is subservient, serves her husband and family. She is ‘’always in the same posture ,making him
tea ,fanning the fire in the little hearth.’’ The animal imagery in the story is used to postulate the
inhuman treatment of her .He calls her ‘my chickpiece’ .Saleema is called by Hassan ‘my duckling’ and
above all Zainab was sold by her brother Mustafa to Jaglani just like an animal. He says to Jaglani that he
can simply discard his sister if he won’t find her useful just like a purchased thing or an animal. At
another moment in the story of ‘Provide Provide’ Choudhary Jaglani while forcing Aslam to divoce
Zainab says that . The traditional gender role dictates man to be strong and all

powerful . This shows that men do not consider women as individuals who are having ambitions,
feelings and sentiments just like men. At another moment Zainab’s destiny is also decided by his brother
when she leaves her husband. She is not autonomous to decide her future. She is caught in the web of
patriarchal society. This shows how males have become owners of females who are just like puppets in
their hands. The aforementioned instances clearly indicate that women are objectified and
commodified. They are stereotyped as inferior. Shakespeare speaks of stereotypical Renaissance
thinking in Romeo and Juliet when Sampson (one of Capulet servants) remarks,

And therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall; therefore I

will push men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall. (Romeo and

Juliet, p.4)

In the story, Nawabdin Electrician, her wife is confined to her husband’shouse, completing her
household chores as if she is claustrophobic. Ironically this refers towards the imprisonment of women
in the labyrinth of patriarchal society. Not all the women of the stories are curtailed and restricted to
the walls of their home. Zainab ,Husna and even Saleema transgress to come out of their home. This
indicates women’s agency in the stories. Just like men they go out to work and earn and exhibit that
they are not inferior to men. Inferiority in women is not biological essential, as patriarchs call it. It is a
traditional gender role, enunciated by chauvinist society. As in Milton Paradise Lost, different gender
roles for Adam and Eve are illustrated where he says:

(…)though both

Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;

For contemplation he and valor formed;

For softness she and sweet attractive grace;

He for God only, she for God in him:(IV,295-99)

These stories by Danial Moeenuddin are written in 1970s of Pakistan, which is an era of metamorphosis
marked by its economic unstability caused by the emergence of industrialization and urbanization. It is a
time when the distinction between urbane and crude is blurred both in its concrete and abstract
form .This era is notorious for moral depravity. Monetary pursuits engulf everything including morality
As witches in Macbeth say,here‘‘Fair is foul and foul is fair’’. This is evidenced in the stories of Daniyaal
Moeenudin where women like Saleema uses sex as a ‘ weapon’ to climb up the ladder of social class.
She ’had been so plainly mercantile transactions that she hadn’t learned to be coquettish in her love
affair’(40).She seems unscrupulous in having affairs one after the other. After her break up with the cook
, Hassan,she “angles for one of the drivers.’’This also raises questions against the biased attitude of
patriarchs. Saleema’s reputation is tainted here but not of the men who are the partners of her
illegitimate relations. Husna , Saleema , Zainab and Helen try to come out of their social class just for
materialistic means. Temporary luxuries they enjoy but those are destined to come to their end.For
instance for Helen to be in paris is her childhood dream.To live in Paris she thinks that dhe has attained
her goal of life. At the end of the story she says,’’I can’t believe Paris is over’’ and ‘’few tears squeezed
out’’ Saleema" and "Provide, Provide" tell the stories of women who attempt to use their bodies
to better themselves and suffer for it. Nearly all the characters in the stories are ambitious to
improve their social class but they meet only with ruthlessness in the end. once Helen says that
Sohail is gentler in America, explaining, "It's easier to be gentle in a place where there's order."It
refers towards the lawlessness and chaos of Pakistan found in 1970s and 1980s. The stories of ‘In
Other Room, Other Wonders’ are situated in the rural setting of Dunyapur. This rural land of Punjab is
painted with the hand of the painter who has objective to bring us in the world of ‘’suspension of
disbelief’’ rather to intoxicate us with the beauty of nature found in the world of Wordsworth. Broadly
Speaking rural area is no more imbued with innocence ,beauty and purity rather it is contaminated and
plagued with corruption. This corruption in well articulated in the attitude of nawabdin towards the
robber whe he pleads for help and says, .once upon a time the rural people were known
for their soft hearts but now they are like hard nuts to crack. Masters are exploiting servants and
servants downwards, the people they are having in control.

Feminist theory focuses on the use of language, analyzing the way in which meaning is

produced. According to French Feminists the language as we commonly think of , is a decidedly

male realm. Drawing upon the ideas of psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, they said that language

reflects binary logic that opposes such terms as active/passive, masculine/feminine,

son/daughter, intelligent/ sensitive, reason/emotion. Because this logic tends to group with

masculinity such as qualities as light, thought, and activity, French feminists said that the structure

of language is phauocentric: it privileges the phallus and, more generally, masculinity by

associating them with things and values more appreciated by the (masculine-dominated) culture.

Language systematically forces women to choose: either they can imagine and represent

themselves as men imagine and represent them (in which case they may speak, but will speak as

men) or they can choose to remain silent and voiceless .The woman in

Nawabdin Electrician is a silent woman, a

voiceless being, who does not contradict in the text and obeys ‘her lord’ without any

grimace. Faiz Ahmed Faiz persuades women like Nawabdin’s wife to speak, when he says;

Speak for your lips are free

Speak for your tongue is still yours; (Translation )

Daniyal Moeenuddin has aptly defined the annihilation and suppression of a woman in

male-dominated society. Through the characters of voiceless wife in Nawabdin Electrician through the
characters of discontent souls in Saleema, Zainab, Husna, Lily and Helen and he conveys that all of
them were unsuccessful in their attempts to improve their lot in the end .The text also conveys that the
relationship between man and woman is a vertical one; man is a master and
woman is a slave. Its an archetypal image which is portrayed here. The women presented here are the
metaphor of all the women who are voiceless, deprived, unpriviledged and unsuccessful regardless of
cultural and geographical boundaries.