https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.059
Shields of Invisibility: Metaphor, Silence, and Lesbian Desire in Ismat Chughtai’s “Lihaaf” (The Quilt) and Suniti Namjoshi’s The Conversations of Cow
ADITI GHOSH
Research Scholar
Department of Cultural Studies
Tezpur University, Assam, India
DR. MANDAKINI BARUAH
Assistant Professor
Department of Cultural Studies
Tezpur University, Assam, India
Abstract: Ismat Chughtai’s “Lihaaf” (The Quilt) (1942) and Suniti Namjoshi’s The Conversations of Cow (1985) interrogate the continuum of lesbian desire through contrasting literary strategies, revealing how invisibility operates as a deliberate and adaptive mechanism for articulating lesbian subjectivity in South Asian literature. Reading these texts in dialogue, this paper examines how metaphor, spatial dynamics, narrative tone, and stylistic choices differently shape the representation of lesbianism across historical and cultural contexts.
In “Lihaaf” (The Quilt), intimacy emerges within a confined domestic setting mediated through a child narrator. The quilt functions as both physical cover and symbolic screen, while suggestion and narrative silence render desire invisible yet affectively charged, producing a domestic gothic atmosphere marked by secrecy and subtle transgression. In contrast, Namjoshi’s novel adopts a playful and satirical mode, using the figure of the cow, associated with purity and obedience, as a site of both concealment and expression. Here, invisibility becomes a strategic and liberatory device that enables resistance within a broader ideological and spatial framework.
By juxtaposing these works, the paper demonstrates that invisibility is not merely concealment but a strategy of survival and subversion in the representation of lesbian desire.
Keywords: Lesbian desire, domestic gothic, invisibility, fluidity, South Asian literature
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