Boundaries of Gender and Culture

The novel’s most persistent theme is the reminder of how Perveen must struggle to be the first female lawyer in Bombay, to fight for her ability to leave an antagonistic marriage, and to simply be Perveen. The cultural norm is for none of the aforementioned to happen. At Elphinstone College, the male students harass Perveen, and the instructors’ attitudes are not pleasant either. The Parsi marriage laws are partial to the husband. And Perveen’s free-spirited ways of thinking are often looked on as stepping outside the cultural norm and shameful. The author creates a likely situation where Perveen must fight for the right to be Perveen in political, professional and personal levels. On each of these levels, Perveen finds some action or words of others that attempt to confine her to what the culture believes is what a young woman...