Blog Par 3:

Salman Rushdie’s Shame

            Sufiya Zinobia embodies “Beauty” and “Beastly” in Rushdie’s novel Shame because the shame of Pakistan is the disjunction between the powerful and powerless in gender.  Rushdie identifies Zufiya as being a “sort of idiot,” which is the direct result of a fever, but before her idiocy Zufiya is born into shame because she was not a boy.  Her innocence is what houses her “beauty” and her condemnation by her family is her first venture down a dark road as Rushdie states, “a miracle-gone-wrong a family’s shame made flesh” (144).  The shame the Zinobia’s feel in regards to their daughter’s gender does not relate directly to them, but rather the conscience of Pakistan.  Zufiya exists in two ways and this “in-betweeness” is an example McCloud uses in his text to describe the divisions in a country (83).  Zufiya’s shifts from beauty and beast describes the Pakistani women’s shifts from a passive and innocent gender to ones that can no longer suppress the violence denied to them.  Rushdie constructs Zufiya’s “beastly” person from three situations that connect gender with shame as stated, “humiliate people long enough and a wildness bursts out of them” (119).  Zufiya’s beast constructs itself through the girl that was killed by her father, the shame felt by the girl who was raped and made to feel ashamed, and the truth that shame will always outlive women.  The situations that plague women in Pakistan construct a woman of beastly form that can challenge gender images and the dominant gender system.  

I found this interview on youtube, and Salman Rushdie discusses the history and the oppression that women face, concerning the issues of honor and shame.  Rushdie notes, honor is always associated with man and anything shameful or dishonorable falls on the women.  He uses the example of women's dress as being dishonorable and shameful, enticing men to commit shameful acts.  The men have no dishonorable flaws in this nation, and tradition and culture tells them that if they commit shameful acts, they may find a woman to blame or turn the problem around on women.  A point that Rushdie discusses concerns the idea of sin and redemption, a part of many western religions.  If a woman or man sins in this religion, than their soul has the opportunity to be redeemed and forgiveness allows the people to be responsible for their own actions.  In India, there is only honor and only shame, two binaries, good and evil. According to Rushdie, a woman can be dressed from head to toe and one can only see her eyes, but an act of adultery or loss of virginity to a man who rapes her falls back to her 'actions.'  I find the shamefulness to be a way for Indian culture to not be held accontable for their own actions and a way for men to use excuses.  The safest route for a woman to take is to sit at home because going out causes her more grief and leaves her more vulnerable for 'shameful' acts.