https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.078
Economy of Silence: Financial Control and Domestic Power in the Selected Short Stories of Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp
ADNAN MUSTAFA
BA 4th Year Student
Aligarh Muslim University, Uttar Pradesh, India
Abstract: From historical times, women have played a key role in shaping and maintaining households and kinship structures. They have performed essential functions such as caregiving, emotional support, and household labour. Yet, despite their immense contributions, they have rarely been given due recognition. One reason for this invisibility is that domestic labour is often regarded as a non-economic activity. Society tends to value only those forms of work associated with economic production and financial gain. Although the condition of women has improved in many respects over time, their domestic labour continues to remain undervalued. Financial dependence on male family members often subjects women to various forms of exploitation. This dependency is not merely an abstract condition but an everyday lived reality.
Economic feminism examines how economic systems contribute to gender inequality by undervaluing women’s labour. It argues that inequality is sustained not only through cultural and social norms but also through economic structures that recognize paid market work while treating unpaid domestic labour as natural and therefore unworthy of compensation.
While contemporary scholarship has explored silence as resistance and Banu Mushtaq’s critique of patriarchal interpretations of Islam, the economic dimensions of her narratives remain relatively underexamined. Through selected short stories from Heart Lamp—“The Stone Slab for Shaista Mahal,” “Heart Lamp,” and “Be a Woman Once, Oh Lord!”—this paper investigates how the paradigm of love is used as a tool for exploitation and how financial control becomes embedded within family structures. Although Mushtaq does not explicitly employ economic theory, her narratives reveal how patriarchy sustains women’s dependence through material and social mechanisms. Drawing on the insights of Nancy Folbre, Michèle Pujol, and Susan Feiner, the paper demonstrates how domestic labour is naturalized and excluded from economic valuation.
The analysis also considers how South Asian cultural norms, linguistic structures, and religious beliefs reinforce gender hierarchies. Terms such as yajamana (“owner”) and notions like “the husband is God” position men as authority figures and women as obedient dependents. Through her female characters, Mushtaq challenges these norms and exposes how silence, sacrifice, and servitude are socially constructed as moral duties.
Keywords: Economic Feminism, Banu Mushtaq, Heart Lamp, South Asian Feminism, Nancy Folbre, Gendered Economy
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