ABSTRACT
The models of writing presented by the Muslim reformers, be they scholars, novelists, or journalists, informed and guided a second wave of women writers in Urdu. Thus far, the writing on women’s issues was the triumph of men. They were gazing at the subject of woman that had evolved from an imagined, idealized topic to a novel one [jins-e latif]. Still, it was impossible for them to understand how a woman views the challenges of life, what she thinks, what she really feels. Only women who wielded a pen could express the desires, thoughts, and ideas of their gender. The role of popular Urdu fiction in Urdu impacted the young Muslim girl’s sense of self as she grew up in the 1930s. It was in the 1930s that we find women expressing themselves in Urdu literature in a big way. Khadija Mastur (1927–82) was prolific in that she published five collections of short stories and two novels in the space of a tumultuous life riven by the scarring ordeal of losing her father at a tender age and the upheaval of partition. This chapter is an attempt to take a more complex approach to women’s history and the relationship between gender, history, and the self through the writing of Khadija Mastur.
