Magnificent to Marginalized: Tawaif in Louise Brown’s The Dancing Girls of Lahore

Author(s) : Farkhanda Shahid Khan

Abstract:

This article explores the journey of courtesans who received lavish treatment, were adored by the emperors for their beauty and artistic skills; however, they have been reduced to the status of prostitutes or sex workers as Louise Brown's work The Dancing Girls of Lahore demonstrates. These magnificent courtesans' artistic abilities—music, dance, poetry, and manners—have become a distant legacy as a result of the strict policies of the colonial masters, who referred to them as exotic others. The article argues that the courtesans’ reduction into subaltern characters of prostitutes is a source of their perpetual exploitation, marginalization, and sufferings in the cultural context of Pakistan. The rationale behind carrying out this research is to speak for the characters who are pushed to the peripheries of mainstream society, exploited by the pimps and the clients, ignored by the state, and are carriers of many fatal diseases. The work is also pertinent while exposing the complex interplay of colonial histories, cultural identities, and gender dynamics at work in the chosen book. The article takes the postcolonial feminism as a theoretical framework and methodology for the textual analysis of the selected book. Conceptual markers of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Leela Gandhi, and Ania Loomba have been used to support the claim that colonial powers have impacted the identities, class, and social roles of the courtesans while reducing them into marginalized characters of prostitutes. This article concludes that despite courtesans’ resistance to regain their lost image, they are helpless in the hands of contemporary powers and face daily exploitation for their survival.