THE AUTHOR’S CULPABILITY REGARDING SEXUAL OBJECTIFICATION OF WOMEN IN THE HOLY WOMAN

Abstract

This study aims to assess the novel The Holy Woman (2001) by Qaisra Shahraz for the female author’s own accountability in becoming an involuntary accomplice of patriarchy in the sexual objectification of women. The scrutiny proceeds spanning the dual foci of authorial intention and reader reception as postulated by Dr. Masood Ashraf Raja in The Pakistani English Novel: The Burden of Representation and the Horizon of Expectations (2018).  The authorial intention is one of realistic portrayal of feminine beauty while the reader's reception could be the perception of a sexual objectification of the female characters of the novel. This study focuses on the writer’s seemingly gratuitous references to female physical attraction in what amounts to a proxy performance of the male gaze. This aspect may certainly be argued in favor of the writer’s legitimate attempt to describe the beauty of the female characters. But, the fact remains that on many occasions these characters are described with a hyperbolic sensuous zeal which breaches the dramatic decorum at that point in the narrative. This study examines the phenomenon of sexual objectification of women through the lens of Objectification Theory as formulated in a seminal article of the same name by  Fredrickson et al., (1997).