Analyzing Women’s Oppression in Manto’s Ten Rupees: A Functional Perspective towards Silence

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to unfold the communicative function of silence in Manto’s Ten Rupees by employing Jakobson’s Communicative Model (1960). Like other linguistic structures, silence also performs multifold purposeful functions and it consists of intensified meaning within a text (Euphratt, 2008). In a patriarchal society, less privileged characters deliberately resort to silence in discourse and there is a method in the madness. The researcher intends to explore silence as a tool to trace out the implicit practices of oppression as well as a tacit attempt to fight against oppression by the oppressed. The communicative function of eloquent silence of the oppressed character is the core motif of this study. Therefore, the researcher explores the silencing of protagonist and antagonist in Ten Rupees to highlight the performance of communicative functions. The findings of the study explicate the geneses of conflict between individual and society, owing to identity crisis and oppression which are the byproducts of social construction. Hence, identity crisis prohibits the main characters to have a say in the affairs of life and pushes them into a silencing position. The present research is significant as it paves the way to study silence as a tool for communicating women's oppression in literary writings.