Silenced by Tradition, Resurrected by Resistance: Projection of Subaltern Woman in Banu Mushtaq’s story Heart Lamp

 

Dr. Abdus Sattar ¹

 

¹ Assistant Professor, Department of English, Galsi Mahavidyalaya, Galsi, Purba Bardhaman, West Bengal – 713406, India

 

1. INTRODUCTION

In both Indian and Western contexts, the figure of a woman often remains absent from dominant discourse; not entirely erased, but silenced, distorted, or spoken for. Her identity, formed under the weight of societal expectations and patriarchal norms, is frequently denied the status of subjectivity, rendering her a passive object in the eyes of both culture and literature. Feminist criticism, as a method of resistance and reclamation, interrogates these representations, peeling back layers of silence to reveal the historical and ideological mechanisms that marginalize women. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s seminal essay Can the Subaltern Speak? confronts the same issue by exposing how the subaltern woman, particularly in postcolonial societies, is doubly silenced - once by imperialist forces and again by indigenous patriarchy. Spivak argues that between these two axes, the woman “disappears” - not into oblivion, but into a “violent shuttling,” where her identity is reduced to a figuration of struggle, trapped between tradition and modernity.

Between patriarchy and imperialism, subject-constitution and object-formation, the figure of the woman disappears, not into a pristine nothingness, but into a violent shuttling which is the displaced figuration of the “third-world woman” caught between tradition and modernization. (306)

This dynamic is brought into sharp focus in Indian literary narratives like Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp, where the protagonist Mehrun becomes the embodiment of the silenced subaltern. Her story unfolds as a poignant critique of the cultural, familial, and marital structures that claim to protect women but, in fact, perpetuate their erasure. By examining the ways in which literature reflects and critiques the ideological forces that shape women’s roles, in this story Banu Mushtaq explores how voices like Mehrun’s, once buried beneath centuries of silence, begin to rise in protest.

 

2. Picture of subaltern women in Indian society

Indian society, deeply rooted in patriarchal structures, has long perpetuated a literary tradition wherein the identity of the woman is systematically effaced. Within the mainstream canon, woman is often rendered as a silent, shadowy presence , a voiceless figure confined to the margins. This homogenized and reductive portrayal begins to fracture with the rise of feminist thought, which challenges the paradox of representing a sentient, thinking being in terms that deny her agency, voice, and subjectivity. Feminist criticism engages with literature through a gender-conscious lens, interrogating the ways in which texts construct, reinforce, or challenge patriarchal notions of identity, power, and representation. Critics within this tradition seek to uncover the silenced voices, marginalized experiences, and gendered dynamics that shape both the narrative and its reception. By interrogating the societal construction of gender roles and identity, feminist critics have begun to unravel and reweave the very fabric of patriarchal culture.

Feminism is a belief that women and men are inherently of equal worth. Because most societies privilege men as a group, social movements are necessary to achieve equality between women and men, with the understanding that gender always intersects with other social hierarchies. Freedman (2002)

In the name of tradition, women are too often cast into the shadows, their voices stifled, their agency denied, while men walk freely in the glow of privilege within the hallowed halls of the literary canon. In a society governed by patriarchal codes, when a man and a woman commit the same act, it is the woman who bears the burden of shame. Justice, too, bends beneath the patriarchal gaze; for crimes equally committed, women are condemned while men walk free, their sins unmarked, their honour intact. Her punishment is not meted out by law alone, but by the whispering judgment of kin and community, who ask not whether the act was just, but whether it will be accepted. Thus, she is silenced, condemned to endure in quiet all that befalls her. Such silencing does more than perpetuate injustice, it emboldens the impunity of men and corrodes the inner strength of women. A society that silences its daughters teaches its sons that their transgressions will not echo, while teaching its daughters that even their truths must be whispered, if spoken at all. In the name of tradition and the rigid codes of society, women are too often consigned to the shadows, forced into roles of submission, adorned in the trappings of artifice, and regarded as second-class citizens in the grand hierarchy of human worth. Within the firm grip of patriarchy, marriage becomes less a union of souls than a gilded cage, where the massive weight of wedding band becomes a symbol of entrapment rather than love.

In Indian society, womanhood is too often cloaked in the presumption of vulnerability, and under the guise of protection, young girls are hurried into marriage long before their hearts or minds are ready. Their consent is a whisper lost in the din of societal expectation. Once wedded, the world they knew begins to wither, their freedom quietly extinguished, their pursuit of education abandoned like a book left unfinished. They are instructed, not gently but insistently, that their sacred duty lies not in the fulfilment of self, but in the tending of hearth and kin, that to serve the in-laws family is the only true religion a woman must know. Thus, the girl becomes a wife, the wife a caretaker, and the woman a forgotten echo of her own dreams.

Society confines a woman’s world within four narrow walls, scripting her existence in the language of limitation. Echoing the famous words of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains” (qtd. in Gyrus 1), one might say that the woman is not merely chained, but born into a cage carefully crafted by patriarchal norms. At every stage of her life, she encounters structures of oppression and suppression, subtly or overtly imposed. This deep-seated tradition is captured poignantly in the opening lines of Mahesh Dattani’s play the Tara, where Tara remarks:

“Not at all. The men in the house were deciding on whether they were going to go hunting while the women looked after the cave.” (328)

Tara’s words reflect the entrenched gender roles within Indian society: man as the provider, destined for the expansive world beyond, and woman as the nurturer, bound to the domestic sphere. Her metaphor situates the woman’s world as confined and stagnant like a well, while the man’s world stretches wide and unbounded like the ocean. In this symbolic dichotomy, the home becomes not a space of comfort, but a site of cultural incarceration.

 

3. Mehrun as Subaltern Woman

Banu Mushtaq was a societal critic, concerning very much about the problems of women in Indian society, basically the problems of early marriage, denied of higher education, adultery of men, silencing of women etc. She emerged as a keen critic of societal norms, her voice resonating with deep concern for the plight of women in Indian society. In her poignant work Heart Lamp, she illuminated the silent sufferings of women, speaking boldly against the injustices of early marriage, the denial of higher education, the unchecked infidelities of men, and the systemic silencing of women’s voices. Through her writing, Mushtaq cast a searing light upon the shadows where oppression quietly thrives.

In her poignant story Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq reveals the silent tragedy of a woman rendered a stranger within the walls of her own home. Through the journey of Mehrun, Mushtaq explores how societal norms carve a woman’s identity, not by her will, but by expectations that dictate what she must be. When a woman dares to transgress these unwritten codes, even by something as simple as returning to her parental home unaccompanied, without informing her husband, she is no longer seen as daughter or sister, but as an outsider.

Mehrun, seeking solace and refuge in the house where she once belonged, is met not with comfort but with cold silence. The warmth of her father, once delighted by her presence, has faded. Her eldest brother, who once called her his pari, his angel, now withholds even a greeting. Even Amaan, who had once championed her education and aspirations, fails to extend a word of welcome. In the very place where love and understanding should reside, she finds only distance, as though her return had disturbed the delicate order dictated by custom.

In this haunting narrative, Mushtaq lays bare the quiet exile imposed upon women who defy the roles prescribed to them, illuminating how easily affection turns to alienation when tradition is challenged. Mehrun stands as a stark embodiment of the subaltern woman, silenced, suppressed, and condemned to suffer beneath the crushing weight of a patriarchal order. Within this society, she is not merely a wife but a possession, one whose worth is measured by obedience and endurance. In the name of talaq, her husband wields unchecked power, subjecting her to humiliation, cruelty, and even infidelity, all under the guise of his masculine privilege. With but a word, he can sever the sacred bond of marriage, discard her, and begin anew, untouched, unjudged.

Raised within a system that instils fear as doctrine, Mehrun has internalized this tyranny. The unspoken threat of abandonment, the constant pressure to endure silently, burrows deep into her psyche. Her anguish, too dangerous to voice, remains repressed, festering in the shadows of her mind. This suppressed trauma, denied outlet or healing, grows into a silent affliction, leading not only to psychological unravelling but, in many cases like hers, to madness or death.

Through Mehrun’s descent, the story unearths the quiet devastation that patriarchy inflicts on the minds and souls of women; a life lived beneath the threat of erasure, where survival demands silence, and resistance invites ruin. Mehrun dares to raise her voice against the stifling traditions that bind women in the name of marriage, a voice long silenced by custom, yet trembling with quiet defiance. She questions a system that weds girls without their consent, where no one pauses to ask if she is ready, if her heart agrees, if her dreams still burn with the desire to be realized. Her yearning to pursue education, to shape a life of her own choosing, is cast aside as though irrelevant, lost beneath the weight of societal expectation.

In doing so, Mehrun challenges the deeply entrenched patriarchal norms of Indian society, exposing the injustice of a woman’s life confined within the four walls of her home. She likens herself to a caged bird, fluttering but unheard, assigned the ceaseless tasks of domesticity and child-rearing, while her husband roams freely, indulging even in infidelity without reproach. In this world, a man’s transgressions are normalized, his freedom unquestioned, while a woman is judged merely for dreaming. Through her resistance, Mehrun becomes not just a character, but a symbol of protest, against the quiet suffocation of women and the double standards that define their lives.

In moments of crisis, the only offering a woman often receives is hollow consolation, words that echo softly but do nothing to alter the harsh contours of her reality. These platitudes, meant to soothe, merely veil the enduring pain, offering no real reprieve, no shift in her fate. Mehrun, too, is met with such empty solace. Her mother, bound by the same inherited resignation, murmurs the familiar refrain: “Everything will be alright.” But beneath these words lies a deeper truth, that in this patriarchal order, a man possesses the power to cleanse himself of every stain, every wrong, with ease. Time becomes his ally, erasing his misdeeds, while a woman is made to carry her scars like birthmarks, etched into memory and reputation alike. Such consolation, then, is not comfort but quiet surrender, a reminder that the world rarely changes for a woman, only asks her to endure more gracefully.

In this story, Mushtaq evokes the deep-rooted traditions of Indian culture, where a woman’s identity is not her own but rather sculpted by the men around her, first by her father and brother, and later by her husband. The roles expected of a woman are not born of her biology but imposed upon her, compelling her to assume identities crafted by the dictates of society. These divisive roles, shaped and sustained by social design rather than nature, are vividly illuminated in Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal work The Second Sex, where she declares that roles expected from a woman is not natural, but constructed. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in the society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature,” Beauvoir (1953). From childhood through marriage, she is compelled to conform to the roles prescribed to her by a patriarchal order, what she eats, what she wears, even how she walks or speaks, all dictated by male authority. In this relentless shaping, the woman gradually loses sight of herself, becoming estranged from her own being, and ultimately succumbing to psychological distress and inner turmoil.

For Mehrun, life after marriage marked a rupture from everything she once knew. She was compelled to abandon the burkha she had worn with familiarity and comfort, and instead don a saree draped below the navel, an attire foreign to her upbringing, and strut around public spaces hand-in-hand with her husband. These gestures, symbolic of a culture she had not been raised in, felt like a performance, not a choice. She had been raised to believe that a virtuous woman’s path was so singular, so sacred, that the house to which her “dholi goes to should be the house from which your dhola comes out.” (103) This cultural dissonance, this clash between inherited values and imposed expectations, plunged her into an identity crisis. She found herself lost between who she had been and who she was now expected to become. The resulting trauma grew so severe that she even contemplated severing ties with her husband in a desperate bid to reclaim a sense of self.

For sixteen years, she had been the doll of desire, an ornament of love and lust, shaped by his whims and longings. And yet, after those long years of silent endurance, even her womanhood was met with scorn. She was no longer seen as a living, feeling soul, but as a hollow shell, a lifeless body whose only purpose was to offer pleasure. To her husband, Inayat, she was little more than a possession, a duty fulfilled. He defended his cruelty with cold logic, claiming he had met all her needs, sheltering her, feeding her, and in doing so, had absolved himself of any further obligation. His betrayals, too, he dismissed without shame, declaring that he would continue to seek the company of other women, for in them he found the delight Mehrun, in his eyes, failed to give.

She had been dice in Inayat’s games of love and lust for sixteen years. And after sixteen years, he had then insulted her womanhood. ‘You lie there like a corpse. What happiness did I get from you?’ he had taunted her. ‘What have I not given you – to wear, to eat? Who is going to stop me? I am with a woman who makes me happy.’ (104-105)

Through Salma’s words, it became painfully evident that Mehrun had found neither solace nor support from her brother Amaan in her in-laws’ home. Instead of confronting the grim realities of her suffering or condemning Inayat’s transgressions, Amaan chose the coward’s refuge, dismissing his brother-in-law as merely “a little irresponsible” and veiling the truth beneath a smokescreen of irrelevancies. He deflected from the unspeakable with idle chatter, discussing the fluctuating price of coffee, the upcoming elections in Kashmir, the sensational murder of an elderly couple nearby, or the Muslim girl from the mohalla who had defied tradition to marry a Hindu boy in a quiet civil ceremony. In Salma’s quiet recounting, the hypocrisy of Indian society stands revealed, its facile morality, its selective silences, and its brutal complicity. A woman suffers not merely because she is married into the wrong house, but because she is a woman in a world where her pain is overlooked, her voice stifled, and her worth measured in silence.

Mushtaq painted a haunting portrait of Indian society, where a woman, in her quiet devotion to kindling warmth in the hearts of others, ends up extinguishing the flame within her own. Mehrun, once a bearer of dreams and aspirations, relinquished her hopes of a brighter future by abandoning her higher education, not out of compulsion, but out of love, for the sake of her parents, her brothers, and even her husband. In choosing to illuminate their lives, she dimmed her own. Each sacrifice drew her deeper into the shadows of despair, as she clung to the fragile promise that one day, her own heart would be rekindled. But those promises proved hollow, and the fleeting joy they offered soon faded. In the end, Mehrun became like a lamp long burned out, devoid of light, surrounded only by unrelenting darkness. Her dreams lay in ruins, her spirit dulled by sorrow, and the world around her oblivious to the quiet tragedy of a woman who gave everything, yet received nothing in return.

Over time, she became a stranger in the very house she once called her own, an ornament without essence, an artificial flower placed to please the eye but devoid of fragrance. Even when a measure of comfort came her way, after the death of her in-laws and the possession of a home she could call hers, it was fleeting, hollow, stripped of joy. Whatever solace she might have found was soon eclipsed by the slow erosion of her dignity. The cruellest blow came when he likened her to his mother, not in reverence, but in revulsion, a comparison that buried her alive in her own skin. After hearing such words, she could not eat with happiness a single morsel of food that felt like a sin, so she sought help from her parents but she didn’t get.

With every denial of support, from both her parents and her husband, the storm within her heart swelled. A quiet agitation gave way to a deeper ache, the hollow ache of abandonment. Loneliness wrapped itself around her like a second skin, for there was no one left to hold her, to offer a gentle embrace or a tender kiss. The one who once gave her warmth had now become a stranger, belonging to someone else in body, perhaps even in soul. Life itself began to lose its meaning. The days stretched on like empty corridors, and existence felt like a burden too heavy to bear. The world outside remained indifferent, incapable of soothing the turmoil churning within her. The darkness inside her grew so vast, it threatened to swallow the very breath from her body. And yet, at the edge of that abyss, it was not faith, nor companionship, but the thought of her children that reached her. Their innocent faces, their unspoken need for her presence, for her love, for a future only she could help shape, called her back from the brink. In that fragile, flickering moment, consciousness returned. Not just to her body, but to her will. She chose to live, not for herself, but for them. And in that choice, a quiet strength was born.

 

4. Conclusion

The narrative of Mehrun in Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp stands as a searing indictment of a society that demands silence from its women, even as it celebrates its men for the very freedoms it denies to others. Her suffering is not unique, but emblematic, a haunting echo of countless women’s lives lived under the weight of expectation, denial, and betrayal. Spivak’s concept of the subaltern woman, caught in the crossfire of patriarchy, finds a powerful reflection in Mehrun’s silenced resistance and eventual psychological unravelling. Yet, even within the depths of her despair, Mehrun embodies a flicker of agency, choosing life for the sake of her children, daring to question the legitimacy of traditions that have failed her, and reclaiming fragments of a voice long suppressed. The literary terrain, through feminist critique, offers not just an exposition of such injustices, but a space for reclamation, a place where the silenced can speak, and the invisible can be seen. At the end, it has been also revealed that the struggle of the subaltern woman is not merely a tale of loss and silence, but also one of emerging resistance. In reclaiming her story, however fractured, she disrupts the patriarchal order that once rendered her voiceless, and in doing so, she writes herself back into history.

 

CONFLICT OF INTERESTS

None . 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

None.

 

REFERENCES

Beauvoir, S. de. (1953). The Second Sex (H. M. Parshley, Trans. and Ed.). Jonathan Cape. 

Dattani, M. (2000). Collected Plays. Penguin Books. 

Freedman, E. B. (2002). No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women. Ballantine Books. 

Gyrus. (2009). War and the Noble Savage. Dreamflesh Press. 

Mushtaq, B. (2025). Heart lamp: Selected Stories (D. Bhasthi, Trans.). Penguin Books. 

Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak? In C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (271–313). Macmillan Education.