Disturbing Content and Misogyny: A Representation of Women and Culture in Harris Khalique’s No Fortune to Tell

Abstract

Harris Khalique (b. 1966) a Pakistani poet is known for his depiction of the indigenous Pakistani culture and political violence. Pakistan is a diverse country and its culture is a collage of subcultures that are beautiful and admired for their uniqueness. However, Khalique’s No Fortune to Tell contains poems that show the ambivalence and misogyny of the author towards the indigenous Pakistani culture and society. He portrays female characters with hateful judgments and their representation is demeaning. The paper contends that poetry is not a vehicle to carry the negative and ugly face of one’s culture worldwide but should also strike a balance to show the other side of it. The paper uses the concepts of disturbing content and misogyny taken from the feminist and cultural discourse. The paper further delves into the British literary critic Catherine Belsey’s idea of textual analysis and unearths misogyny and disturbing content in the selected texts. The findings of the paper reveal that the selected collection is overwhelmingly loaded with misogyny; however, disturbing content also finds expression in it scantily.