Reading Myth as a Historical Identity: A Structuralist Reading of Nadeem Aslam’s Leila in the Wilderness

Abstract

Nadeem Aslam’s novella, Leila in the wilderness is interpreted to dig out the power structures adopted by patriarchal norms in the guise of myth to subvert and suppress a Pakistani girl, Leila. Myth divorces rationality from women, for myth prefers to take women as its prey to satisfy patriarchal norms. The research illustrates Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of myth through her seminal work, The Second Sex and Ronald Barthes, Mythologies. Barthes considers that language is specially conditioned to create a myth. Leila becomes subservient to the myths that are neither based on reality nor they are a result of psychological or biological complexities, but those myths are attached to her historical identity. Subsequently, the quest of a female to dismantle atrocities regarding mythical hierarchal structures leads to the recuperation of her intellectual and rational being.