Rushdie’s female characters bear a sexually overdetermined representational burden absent from his male characters

Evidence

Throughout, every woman, without exception, is represented through a system of imageries which ~s sexually overdetermined; the frustration of erotic need, which drives some to frenzy and others to nullity, appears in every case to be the central fan of a woman’s existence. What we have, then, is a real disjuncture between particular episodes which can delineate quite vivid sympathies for the respective female characters on the one hand, and, on the other, a generalized structure of representation in which each of those same characters turns out to be at least dislikable and frequently repugnant. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 574

Both Bilquis and Rani are, howeverwhen all is said and done, and quite apart from the insult and neglect they suffer at the hands of their husbands - paltry, shallow creatures themselves, capable of nothing but chirpy gossip (in ‘the elite actressy manner’), inertia or_, at best, a tawdry affair with the owner of the local movie-house. They are not even remotely as evil as their husbands, and while Bilquis goes increasingly to pieces, Rani at least, in embroidering her shawls, manages to maintain a sort of dignity. Even hers, however, is the dignity of resignation. In general, moreover, what we find is a gallery of women who are frigid and desexualized (Arjumand, the ‘Virgin Ironpants’), demented and moronic (the twenty-odd years of Zinobia’s childhood), dulled into nullity (Farah), driven to despair (Rani, Bilquis) or suicide (Good News Hyder), or embody sheer surreal incoherence and loss of individual identity (the Shakil sisters). Throughout, every woman, without exception, is represented through a system of imageries which ~s sexually overdetermined; the frustration of erotic need, which drives some to frenzy and others to nullity, appears in every case to be the central fan of a woman’s existence. What we have, then, is a real disjuncture between particular episodes which can delineate quite vivid sympathies for the respective female characters on the one hand, and, on the other, a generalized structure of representation in which each of those same characters turns out to be at least dislikable and frequently repugnant. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 574

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the materialist-structural critique thread: Ahmad reads the sexual imagery as a generalized structure overriding even sympathetic particular episodes, a formalist/representational-reductionist move in the novel itself.
• XREF: Ahmad’s feminist-materialist reading of Midnight’s Children parallels the reader’s tracing of how discourse-level framing overrides sympathetic particular episodes. — connects to: Literary prestige is allocated by gendered hierarchy of subject matter — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1047; Women’s seeming illogic masks refusal of a loaded male argumentative game — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1756; Rushdie grants his female rebel only destructive, fever-rooted power. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 594
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 574

Broader Connections

• Literary prestige is allocated by gendered hierarchy of subject matter #expands (0.72) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 1047
• Women’s seeming illogic masks refusal of a loaded male argumentative game #responds-to (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1756