The Subjective Turn: Reclaiming Autonomy from Postcolonial Patriarchy in Haider’s A Woman on a Suitcase

Abstract

This paper analyzes Shazaf Fatima Haider’s A Woman on a Suitcase (2024) as a crucial contemporary critique of the structural oppression embedded within the South Asian joint family system. The research argues that the novel’s central tension is articulated through a pivotal spatial transition: the protagonist, Seema Hyderi’s movement from the static, stifling enclosure of the joint family home to the defiant, liminal space atop her suitcase. Drawing upon postcolonial feminist theory specifically the critique of the public/private divide and critical spatial theory, this analysis positions the joint family as the primary mechanism of postcolonial patriarchy designed to enforce social surveillance and fix female identity through corporeal and spatial restriction. The repeated act of Seema’s eviction culminating in her claim over the suitcase is read not as passive victimhood but as a deliberate narrative mechanism for enacting spatial resistance. The suitcase is interpreted as the key material metaphor for the mobile un-rooted self. Its transportable nature directly counters the patriarchal demand for female rootedness and domestic sacrifice. By achieving agency through physical and financial autonomy, A Woman on a Suitcase emerges as a model for reclaiming subjectivity that is predicated on self-determination rather than conformity. The paper contributes to the scholarship on South Asian women’s literature by establishing the suitcase as the key material symbol enabling the transition from patriarchal space to individual agency.