A Feminist Stylistic Analysis of Umm-e-Rumman Syed’s Selected Poems in Beautiful Inadequacies

Abstract

This research attempts to analyze Umm-e-Rumman Syed's Poetry collection from a feminist stylistic perspective to investigate various stylistic elements used for male and female characters. This anthology of poetry book Beautiful Inadequacies is written by an emerging Pakistani poetess, Umm-e-Rumman Syed, and was published in August 2020. This collection of poetry is divided into two parts, "Reminiscence of Adolescence" and "Reminiscence of Adolescence and Beyond," which portray life from age 13 to 17 and from 17 to 20, respectively, in a total of 130 poems (35-95). The present study aims to examine the cruel and unjust attitude of society toward women. The study employs Sara Mills's Feminist Stylistic theory (1995) to examine how women are presented in a text. This study uses textual analysis as a methodology to examine words, phrases/sentences, discourses, and themes of different selected poems from the proposed text. Moreover, the writer has used generic nouns, women as the marked form, endearment and diminutives at the level of the word, metaphors, transitivity choices, presupposition and inferences at the level of phrase/sentence, and fragmentation at the discourse level. The study concluded that different terms are used for women, which shows the lower, passive, dependent nature of women in society and also shows some hope, bravery, resistance, and self-realization. Meanwhile, men are shown as active actors in all their actions.