Appropriation and Sexual Obligation: A Feminist Reading of Khushwant Singh’s The Company of Women

Abstract

The patriarchal perspective has continually made women a puppet in a man's hands. The male society assigns women a secondary position in the household. So, man becomes the principal governing factor that appropriates and subjugates women. This paper critically analyses how the men appropriate and sexually obligate women in one way or the other in Khushwant Singh's The Company of Women. Published in 1999, it is Khushwant Singh's fourth novel. It presents the episodes of appropriation and sexual obligation of women- ranging from an Afro-American teenager to a Bai in Bombay by the narrator. The concept of Appropriation of Women by Collette Guillaumin has been applied as a theoretical framework. After a thorough reading of the selected text, relevant sentences and passages have been cited as textual evidence. The research findings indicate that the text understudy affirms the appropriation and sexual obligation of women.