Season Of The Rainbird Analysis

This paper will analyze two major aspects relating to the South Asian society. The first point will show that how female characters fall victim to the gender roles assigned to them and how these roles are subverted to shape the community in traditional and religious ways that promote patriarchal hegemony based on obedience to the Islamic Law. Characters are represented at two extremes: the very religious ones (Maps p. 145- 171) and atheist ones, (Maps p. 444) as Shamas and Kaukab. But they share some common things too, for example they are all parents like Chanda’s parents and Kaukab and Shamas. The novel unveils the stories about segregated community of Pakistan living in Dasht-e-Tanhaii (210). It deals with the impossible love of which is

They are not allowed to interfere in worldly matters, because their roles are devised by men. For example, when Mansoor’s wife try to interfere on the issue of television, Maulvi Hafeez says, “You‘d better go into another room, my dhi” (Season: 1993 55). These women are restricted and supposed to remain in their houses to perform their household duties; to serve their husbands and feed the children (p.53). In Brick Lane, Monica Ali has also painted Nazneen a typical sort of woman who is carrying the weight of culture over her head. Similarly, Aslam has also portrayed Kaukab a subjugated and submissive sort of woman. These novels unveil the cultural conflicts through feminist perspective and patriarchal hegemony. Women are disgraced at the hands of men due to male privileged society (Season: P 229). In Maps and Season, Kaukab and Zebun both of these women fall under the category of what Spivak has called them subalterns; suppressed women, thus they cannot speak (qtd in Loomba 231-233). It is worth mentioning that in male dominating societies women are kept uneducated which becomes the cause of their empowerment. As Nazneen has learnt only two phrases; ‘sorry and thank you’ (Ali: 19). And in Season of Rainbirds, all female characters are superstitious whose ideas are based on false notions. Zebun is the representative of such

As in Season of the Rainbirds Aslam throws light on the love affair of Azhar and Elizabeth where Elizabeth Massih is punished for her immodest act but Azhar is not denounced due to male dominance which is proof to an unequal social structure prevailed in the Pakistani Muslim society. The issue of Azhar and Elizabeth reaches the climax after the sermon by Maulana Hafeez on Friday. Elizabeth’s clothes are torn and she is dragged naked in streets out of Azhar’s house (p.229). Nadeem Aslam’s both novels; go side by side in terms of feminist concerns like oppression, subjugation and physical violence. In Season of the Rainbirds, Burkat is giving divorce to his wife Suraya because according to Canadian rule, he can keep only one wife, but in Islam men are allowed to marry more than one wife (Season p. 59). So their diasporic identity divides them apart, neither they can maintain present nor past (Season 110). On the other hand, in Maps there is another character with the similar name ‘Suraya’ who lived in Pakistan but unfortunately she had been divorced by her husband who was drunk. However, her husband repents and therefore does not want her wife to marry someone else therefore consults the clerics of the different sects to have reconciliation with her wife. But her husband says: “I d’ feel humiliated