Docile or Not-So-Docile Women:A Foucauldian Reading of Ismat Chughtai’s “Gainda,” “Gharwali” and “Chui-Mui”

Ismat Chughtai is one of the most celebrated South Asian women writers from the past century. Hence, most of the scholarship based on her few female characters from a select few stories largely deals with analysing the nature of female desire and sexuality. In this paper, we have extended the focus from sexual repression to the analysis of the power-paradigm in the space called zenana (domestic space)and its role in producing docile bodies. By using a Foucauldian framework in her lesser-explored short stories, namely, “Gainda” (transl. “Gainda”), “Gharwali” (transl. “The Homemaker”), and “Chui-Mui” (transl. “Touch-me-not”), we aim to explore the themes of surveillance, norms, and punishment and how these play a role in training individuals to be obedient to power structures and institutions. Moreover, we want to explore whether they always produce homogenised bodies or if there is a space for individual agency.