Negotiating Womanhood in Shazaf Fatima Haider’s How It Happened: A Beauvoirian Approach

Abstract

This paper analyzes How It Happened (2012) by Shazaf Fatima Haider, applying Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist theory to expose the cultural forces that confine and define womanhood. It examines how patriarchal structures in Pakistani society shape women’s lives. This study highlights marriage as a key site of control. Family traditions often commodify women and silence their voices. The character Dadi enforces strict norms like arranged marriages. She represents the internalization of patriarchal values. Younger characters like Zeba resist these constraints. Her rebellion highlights the conflict between tradition and personal choice. Saleha, the narrator, shows the process of becoming a woman under societal pressure. She internalizes expectations that limit her. This paper argues that novel reveals the women’s suffering caused by the constructed social norms. This paper establishes that societies make the traditions and norms that eventually paves the path of patriarchal oppression.