Negation and Sexual Jouissance in Manto’s “Aurat Zaat (Women)”

While reading Manto’s short stories, one goes through a puzzling experience. It is an inexplicable bitterness that seems uncanny insofar as it is familiar, understood, and yet negated in the form of, as Lacan (1999) puts it in “On jouissance,” “I do not want to know anything about it.” Manto (2014), in his “Why I Write,” talks about the creative process of his writings and calls himself a pickpocket who gives content to his readers by robbing himself of the ideas. The resistance experienced towards the understanding of sexual jouissance and trauma in Manto’s writings is, I think, something he shares with his readers.

Similarly, Manto’s short story “Aurat Zaat (Women),” explores woman as desire of the Other (man), yet negative of her sexual jouissance in relation to this Other. Ashok, the protagonist, is made to watch a film of bold sexual pictures on a projector by his friend Maharaja. Ashok’s prolonged shock and bewilderment makes Maharaja laugh. Ashok gathers himself and asks Maharaja to shut down the projector, but after thinking, he requests Maharaja to lend him the film for some time. He plays the film for his friends to observe their reactions, and finds out that everyone felt either shame, disgust, or aversion.

He then takes the film and shows it to his wife on his projector. His wife screams, jumps, and cries when Ashok forces her to watch. In the end, she leaves the room, and Ashok feels a sudden shame and guilt. He doesn’t eat, cannot muster up the courage to talk to his wife, and leaves in this state the next day for his work. He keeps repeating in his head, “such a shameful act, and it didn’t even cross my mind…” and feels mortified and unable to face his wife and her family. It can be said that Ashok’s guilt isn’t particularly related to watching the film with his friends; it starts when he forces his wife to watch the film. He fixates on this guilt stemming from his own lack and not being able to be the morally good version of himself for his wife and her family.

After avoiding her all day, Ashok returns home. He knocks at the door of his room, and when she realizes that her husband has come home, sudden gasps, screams, and movements start inside the room, and the windows start opening. Ashok enters the room from the back door and bursts into laughter when he sees the blurry bold sexual pictures running on the projector. Ashok’s wife is sharing the fantasy with her friends, but is unable to accept and express it in front of her husband. Understandably, she negated her sexual desires in front of her partner; however, jouissance of lack cannot be negated. It may be an exaggeration to say that in case of women who are not taught to express their sexual desire to their partners in repressed cultures that their movement in finite spaces is not compensating the lack by taking the other sex one-by-one (une par une), rather the open sets overlapping the space of sexual jouissance may take fixated place in fantasy, repetition, or negation, like the self-centered phallic jouissance.

References

Lacan, J. (1999). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: Encore, On feminine sexuality, the limits of love and knowledge. (J.-A. Miller, Ed., & B. Fink, Trans.). New York, NY: W.W. Norton.

Patel, A. (2014). Why I Write: Essays by Saadat Hasan Manto. Westland.