SOURCE: Bharucha, Nilufer E. “From Behind a Fine Veil: A Feminist Reading of Three Parsi Novels.” Indian Literature 39, no. 5 (September-October 1996): 132-41.

In the following essay, Bharucha outlines the limited roles of women as shown in three novels by Parsi writers and the distinctions made between male and female authors.

Parsi women have not been rigourously subjected to the regimen of the purdah, but they share the limited and reductive world of their Hindu and Muslim sisters in India. Parsi traditions are rooted in the patriarchal society of Ancient Iran and these patriarchal moorings have been reinforced by a 1300 year long residence in India.¹ Association with the British during the Raj coated some Parsis with a thin patina of westernisation and emancipation,² but for the majority of Parsi women the fine veil remained, from behind which they looked at the world. As Sherry B. Ortner (1974) has put it: ‘the...