Feminist Discourse in Urdu Poetry: A Sociolinguistic Study of Parveen Shakir’s Poetry

Abstract

This study investigates the emergence of feminist discourse in contemporary Urdu poetry through a sociolinguistic analysis of Parveen Shakir’s work, with particular focus on her collection ‘Maah-e-Tamam’ (Full Moon, 1994). The research seeks to decode and deconstruct the linguistic content of Shakir’s poetry in order to examine how patriarchy functions as a ruling ideology and how poetic language offers preferred subject positions to males and females. Drawing on feminist poststructuralist theory, especially the insights of Chris Weedon and Michel Foucault, the study explores how ideologies are constructed through discourse, how the female subject negotiates power relations within an androcentric social order, and how real women may empathise with, and be influenced by, the “literary woman” represented in Shakir’s poetry.

Using a qualitative methodology, the study analyses selected excerpts from Maah-e-Tamam, translated from Urdu into English, and interprets lexical choices, pronominal patterns and metaphoric structures as sites where gendered power relations are encoded, resisted or re-imagined. The findings suggest that Shakir’s systematic use of first-person feminine pronouns, gendered lexemes such as larki (girl), and intimate, emotionally charged images challenges the historically male-dominated Urdu poetic tradition. Her poetry foregrounds women’s lived experiences as daughters, lovers, wives, mothers and professionals, thereby destabilising stereotypical constructions of femininity.

The study concludes that Shakir’s poetic discourse plays a significant role in the development of feminist consciousness in South-Asian Urdu literature. By articulating a distinctly feminine subjectivity and exposing the workings of patriarchy in everyday life, her poetry offers readers new ways of imagining female agency within Pakistani society.