JOKES, JUDGEMENT AND GENDER: A FEMINIST STYLISTICS STUDY OF OUR LADY OF ALICE BHATTI

Abstract

This paper discusses Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (2011) by Muhammad Hanif in view of Feminist Stylistics, especially stylistic device of Jokes and Humour as elaborated by Sara Mills (1995). Being a dark comedy and a satire, the novel provides a critical analysis of the gender power structure existing in the socio-religious and institutional system of Pakistan. With the help of the qualitative research method and the reliance on the textual analysis, this paper explores the role of humour, which at least on the surface may appear as a playful element, yet still serves as a subversive stylistic tool that reveals the oppressive nature of life as it is experienced by women, specifically, by Alice Bhatti, the marginalised Christian nurse with whom the reader is made to sympathise. In its reconstruction of the main passages of the novel, the paper unveils how Hanif partially intends to use the irony, satire, and black humour as a strategically inherited and carried vehicle to criticize the patriarchal and institutional violence, as well as echo on the resilience and resistance of the female subjectivity in a highly stratified society. In the feminist stylistic studies, the study is able to offer a contribution through deepening the discussion on how linguistic choices in literature, in particular, the aspects of humour can adopt and challenge gender ideologies in postcolonial contexts.