Ismat Chughtai Essay

Ismat Chughtai one of Urdu’s most accomplished fiction writers, represents the 20th-century women writers of Urdu, enlightened, bold, critical, progressive and feminist.

Chughtai penned her early pieces in the late 1930s but was not much known in the literary circles until 1942, the year ‘Lihaaf’ was published. Urdu literature of that era showed a marked tendency towards Marxism and Realism. The idea of feminism in its true sense and spirit had not quite arrived in the subcontinent in the 1940s, but much of what she wrote, with a touch of progressivism, was about the social, psychological and sexual problems faced by women. Traditional feminine sensibility of the 18th and 19th centuries demanded women to be virtuous, modest and obedient. Chughtai stressed upon the real feminine emotions and sensitivities that is hardly ever understood in an orthodox, male-dominated society such as India’s. Never before in the history of Urdu fiction were such thoughts expressed so articulately and vividly as did Chughtai in her writings.

With a number of collections of short stories to her credit, such as ‘Kalyaan’, ‘Choten’, ‘Do haath’, ‘Aik baat’ ‘Chhui mui’ and ‘Thori si pagal’, Chughtai is ranked among Urdu’s most influential short-story writers of the latter half of the

Most of her work deals with themes directly related to women and their status and role in Indian society. She portrays the struggle of women against the oppressive social institutions of her time and her deep understanding and perception of the female psyche are clearly reflected in her writings. Women’s are treated as men’s property which they can use it any time they want to and ignore any time they wish to. The power of women is not less but the way they are been portrayed has lessen their power. She began writing when any attempt on women writing was seen as intellectual