Martyrs or Metaphors? Deconstructing the Feminine in Angels with Pyjamas

Abstract

This paper critically examines Tabish Khair’s nuanced portrayal of women in his short story collection Angels with Pyjamas, with a particular focus on “The Body by the Dam.” In Khair’s narratives, female characters often exist more as symbolic presences than as psychologically fleshed-out individuals. This study argues that Khair intentionally constructs women as metaphors—saints, martyrs, or haunting reminders of communal trauma—thereby highlighting the marginalization and objectification of the feminine within patriarchal and politically volatile spaces. The unnamed female body in “The Body by the Dam” serves not only as a stark reminder of gendered violence but also as a narrative device that exposes collective guilt, moral paralysis, and the failure of the intellectual class to intervene. By engaging with feminist literary theory and postcolonial criticism, this paper explores how Khair deconstructs traditional tropes of femininity to interrogate the complicity of social structures in perpetuating silence around women’s suffering. The study also considers the deliberate absence of female voice and agency as a rhetorical strategy that compels readers to confront the erasures endemic to both communal memory and literary representation.

Ultimately, the paper proposes that Khair’s portrayal of women as metaphors for social decay and spiritual loss challenges readers to reconsider the ethics of witnessing, storytelling, and the politics of empathy in postcolonial Indian literature.

Keywords: Martyrs Metaphors, Feminine, Pyjamas