The Pakistani Bride by Bapsi Sidhwa: A Naturalist Novel with a Feminist Flavor

Abstract
Not as fully or frequently as other works by Bapsi Sidhwa such as Cracking India or An American Brat, The Pakistani Bride has nonetheless been attended to by many critics who have focused, almost exclusively, either on feminist or post-colonial considerations. No study has ever tried to discover the dazzling, thick forest of naturalism and determinism that feeds and nourishes the novel's other aspects, including its feminist worries, probably because too many trees block the view. This study explores the deep naturalism and determinism- biological, social, cultural, geographical, and political that devour men as much as they do women. It comes out with the idea that feminist manifestations are only a by-product, and therefore secondary to, naturalist concerns. Naturalism and feminism jointly inform the approach that supports qualitative research.

1. Introduction
Bapsi Sidhwa (1938- ) is not a prolific writer, but the novels she has written so far have brought her international fame, critical interest, and many internationally acclaimed honors and rewards. The critical success that accompanied, and still does, such works as Cracking India (1988), The Crow Eaters (1982) and An American Brat (1993) has in a way overshadowed the merits of her first-written novel, The Pakistani Bride (1983) including its deep human insight, dramatic intensity and vivid illustrations of character. What has contributed even further to the overshadowing is a cliché neatly packed in one sentence by Anita Desai: “Bapsi Sidhwa is a woman of strong feminist convictions” (Desai, 2007, p.i). No doubt Sidhwa is “a woman of strong feminist conviction”, but is that all Sidhwa is? What follows is going to be an exploration of that question.
1.1. Research Methodology
The study is qualitative and library-based. Books, journals articles, and internet databases are the sources of information, and notes are the means of data collection. The approach adopted combines feminism with naturalist concerns. A tinge of deconstruction looms over the sight as the study tries to show that men are robbed of their free will by the forces of nature as much as women are.
True that this study focuses on Bapsi Sidhwa and makes an attempt to show that she is much more of a naturalist writer than a feminist one; however, there are limitations and delimitations. The adoption of the naturalist-feminist approach logically and naturally conceals those aspects of Sidhwa which will surrender themselves only when other approaches are applied. For instance, environmental concerns revealed to an ecocritical approach are out of the question as much as psychological implications which will reveal themselves only when a psychoanalytical approach is adopted. Moreover, this study emphasizes Sidhwa’s the Pakistani Bride almost to the exclusion of all else that she has written so far. Therefore, the depth and scope expected of the study should be checked so that they meet the natural limitations and the imposed delimitations.
2. Discussion
Feminist concerns have colored the majority of Bapsi Sidhwa’s novels. They have proved to be a persistent presence in the Pakistani writer and reward-winner, but whereas in some of her works, they have appeared only as a coloring, the feminist’s enthusiasm and maybe urgent need to crewing has unfairly lifted this aspect, swelling it up with undue emphasis and attention. The Pakistani Bride (1983) as Sidhwa’s intellectual first-born has certainly received its share, not only of Sidhwa’s care about her sex, but also of the undue critical ado which has puffed the question of womanhood to the brim of explanation. Much of the work on The Pakistani Bride has focused on its feminist concern almost to the exclusion of all else.
This study suggests that in The Pakistani Bride, questions are at stake more powerful and far deeper than the feminist touch of coloring. The feminists' concern is the by-product and only secondary to a powerful undercurrent of naturalism among a few others.
The powerful undercurrent of naturalism is present in the novel, in almost all its manifestations. One is tempted to trace it back to the powerful tradition of Indian mythical stories where according to Tashakori and Vatanparast (2024) “we encounter creatures that suddenly change from… human to animal… doing things that are beyond the natural and innate limits of man” (Tashakori and Vatanparast, 2024: 25). Whatever the origins, in The Pakistani Bride, the human life mixes and mingles with the bestial life so fundamentally that human characters in the novel are identified with animals. Lack of free will is fundamental to the construction of the novel and manifold in its various manifestations. Geography restricts men and women alike as much as society does. Culture presses as hard on both male and female characters as biology does. And men as much fall victim to the urge of the economy as they do to that of political conditions. Men are not less subject to the overwhelming drives and forces around just because they are male. In the face of a leopard, the bitter cold that stings to the bones, and the craggy mountains they prove as helpless as they are vulnerable to the code of honor by which they live, and in this, they are no less exposed, and no more protected that women are.
The questions this study tries to answer include the following.

Is The Pakistani Bride a primarily feminist novel as some critics have suggested?
To what extent can naturalist tendencies push the feminist flavor back to the recesses of a secondary concern?

Indian literature (cleft only recently into Pakistani and Indian literature) has often had a deep influence on Farsi literature, sometimes even to the extent that “a new style … known as the Indian style” (Ettehadi, 2024: 9) has been in fashion for a long time, and that justifies the undertaking of a project like the present study. Secondly, studies centered on Bapsi Sidhwa illustrate her as a post-colonial, feminist writer, frequently enough to efface her other aspects including the powerful naturalist spirit that brings almost all else to life and exuberance. This study will hopefully give her a facelift, trying to introduce a new image of her to the critical world in the light of which her works will take a new shape, making it urgent to do some re-readings and revisions in what has been done so far, and some caution about what is going to be done henceforth.
Much has been done on Sidhwa and her novels including The Pakistani Bride, and yet much needs to be done. The work done has focused on the feminist and/or postcolonial aspects of her writing almost to the exclusion of all else. Here, only a sample is represented to give the reader a preview.
Srilakshmi Movva and others (2023) in an article entitled “Transcending Patriarchal and Cultural Construct in Bapsi Sidhwa’s The Pakistani Bride “have attempted” to show how patriarchal civilizations physically, emotionally, and socially oppress and enslave women. “They have exclusively focused on the Pakistani gender-based system and the double pressure that women face in a patriarchal society already oppressed by colonial requirements.
Gunia Beniwal and Dr. Sunita Rana (2021) in their article, “Women’s Submissiveness in Bapsi Sidhwa’s The Pakistani Bride” fix their eyes on a mixture of colonialism and patriarchal demands as they form, reform, and deform women’s personalities. They emphasize the reinforcing power of “theological and cultural” demands in driving women to be submissive especially due to their being subject to men’s “unfair treatment within the house”. From their viewpoint, men are even if unconsciously in league with the colonists against women.
Shamsa Malik and Nadia Anwar (2020) in “Female Corporeality and the Sublimation of Pain: A Study of The Pakistani Bride by Bapsi Sidhwa” argue that Sidhwa shows how the Pakistani women turn their corporeality-held so long to be a weak point and the root of all their affliction – into a strong point so that it can win them a space of their own in their struggle against men and their patriarchal system.
Dr. N. Geethanjiali and Professor S. Jayalakshmi (2021) in their article entitled “The Cultural Impact in Bapsi Sidhwa’s The Pakistani Bride” have adopted a rather Marxist and autobiographical approach to the novel in so far as they have tried to show that Sidhwa’s real-life experiences and the postcolonial, political and social conditions of the time she was writing the novel have had a constructional role in the formation of the work. They, too, similar to other critics, end up in a feminist-post colonialist study, almost repeating the same old story.
Finally. as the last example, Muhammad Iqbal, Khalida Parveen, and Riaz Hussain (2024) explore the similarity of men’s attitudes towards women in the two societies of Pakistan and India through a Marxist-Feminist study of The Pakistani Bride and Anita Desai’s Fasting, Feasting to show that Capitalism combined with the patriarchal system has cornered women to the walls of their houses, resulting in their stigmatization and deprivation of the most basic economic and social rights.
As the sample shows, Bapsi Sidhwa has automatically been pigeonholed as a diehard defender of the Feminist faith as if she is capable of doing nothing else, which this study is going to show to be false.
3. Conclusion
The enthusiastic dust of feminist conviction that has risen during the last decades has left its mark almost on everything, more particularly on literature and literary criticism. Furthermore, the urgent need to recruit new members to shift the power balance seems to have added fuel to the fire so vastly that little twinkles of feminist sparks have been magnified into blazing suns in the literary sphere to the recession and shrinking back of many other tendencies and practices.
    The same feminist zest and zeal have swept Bapsi Sidhwa’s works almost out of all other merits and claims of which they could boast. The Pakistani Bride for one has been stretched and cut short, as the conditions might demand, by the size of the procrustean bed of the feminist wave. Almost all the critical works centering on the novel have set it as a pseudo-religious mission to carve a fully-fledged feminist statue out of work and ignore all that is there, as bright as day.
    A writer of unshakeable naturalist faith, Sidhwa has depicted her characters as play toys of powerful drives and forces that lead and direct them throughout their lives. In this regard, there is little difference between men and women. A wrathful nature and a vengeful society tear them loose of their free will with equal ease and urge. Men are not less exposed to the blind forces of nature or the destructive forces of their society. They are no better protected than women, against the crashing blows of a code of honor or a demand of custom. They are subject to, and miserable, in the face of, the same forces. However, the mainstream critical practice has turned a blind eye to their suffering in an attempt to uphold and uplift the feminist cause.
    This study is a reserve attempt to bring the strayed train back to the normal rail and claim Sidhwa’s right to exert her multidimensional power of exploring human nature and the nature of life freed from the restricting cobwebs of partial criticism.
4. References
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