Female Characters In Night And Day By Dina Zaman And Mariah

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Males are always regarded as powerful individuals and females as powerless, which do not reflect the changing social status of females in the society today (Bahiyah et al., 2008). The female characters in the short stories that I have chosen portrays how men suppress women in the name of religion and society for their selfish individual needs. The gender issues that have been brought up in the short stories are viewed from the aspects of religion and culture that molds the social constitution of the society. Therefore, in this essay I will address the portrayal of female characters in the short stories Night and Day by Dina Zaman and Mariah by Che Husna Azahari and how they are discriminated and oppressed by illustrating the attempts that are made by the female characters to free themselves from the …show more content…

Even though she appears sensuous, she neither belongs to a group that is neither easily seduced nor seducing. This is mirrored in her decision to stay single even though there have been many suitors after her husband’s early death. Mariah opts for celibacy, but her monastic lifestyle has no place in Islam as celibacy connotes boredom, lonesomeness and deprivation (Muhammad, 1979). Therefore, she chooses to marry again and she has chosen a ‘god-fearing’ candidate. On the other hand, the ending of the story ends with ‘his eyes closed, his dreams realized, the Imam managed a hoarse ‘Thank You, God, for Your Bounty,’ before Mariah’s perfume completely envelop him and his senses’ where she completes him and fulfills his long overdue sexual fantasy. By confining women to pleasure, one turns her into a doll where it reduces the wife to the rank of woman-object whose sole function is the satisfaction of her sexual pleasure. Therefore, the wife is devalued due to men’s sexual desires with the help of the religion this issue is reflected in the short story Mariah by Che Husna

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