Beyond the Threshold: Emancipation or Entrapment?

The Feminine Archetypes in Pakistani Women Fiction Writers

Abstract

This paper discusses the concept of feminine archetypes
with reference to the fiction produced by Pakistani women writers. The
reality of spaces of women, as seen by patriarchy, is summed up in famous
adages that state “it is a man’s world; woman’s place is in the home.” On
the basis of “man’s world” and “woman’s place”, the paper focuses on
home and the role of a woman therein. There are indeed several roles, but
the focus in this paper will be on the role of a wife or ‘lady of the house’.
What is expected of a wife usually sums up what is expected of a woman
by the others. The expected role is that of the feminine archetype that has
been focused on more and is portrayed mostly throughout literary texts.
For this research, complete works of Pakistani women fiction writers,
writing in six languages, have been studied. The number of writers is
twenty-six.