INTERSECTIONALITY IN POST-COLONIAL SPACES: A FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF FATIMA BHUTTO'S THE RUNAWAYS

Abstract

Women's portrayal in fiction has been a vital concern for scholars, authors, and critics for decades in almost every world society. This qualitative study aims to uncover how the female characters in The Runaways are silenced, marginalised, or othered, and reflect colonial and patriarchal legacies in these experiences. Plus, women's roles are portrayed in the novel in resisting their subjugation and navigating their path to post-colonial feminist liberation. Spivak's (1988) and Beauvoir's (1956) theories of post-colonial feminism provide the underpinning for this study. The previous studies, Iftikhar et al. (2022), focused on the defence mechanism, Rabbi et al. (2023) focused on the alienation from a psychoanalytical lens, Sarwar et al. (2023) focused on Freudian psychoanalysis, and Sani et al. (2024) analysed The Runaways, investigating its application of Stuart Hall's theory of representation. The research gap is to analyse the novel's thorough post-colonial feminism. Integrating women's oppression, marginalisation, and otherness emergencies through female protagonists' firsthand experiences improves the critical understanding of the novel. Female characters as agents of resistance can help challenge universal objectification. The study concludes that the characters of Anita (Layla) Rose, Naya, and Zenobia are silenced by internalised shame, emotional suppression, and social surveillance structures rooted in colonial dominance and patriarchal discipline, according to the study. It also concludes that despite being constrained by oppressive systems, the women characters resist through subtle acts of defiance, emotional endurance, and reclaiming their bodily autonomy.