and create academic distance between her and reality. All across the world, especially in the Indian sub-continent, the act of writing is for a woman essentially an act of breaking her silence because her repressive patriarchal/racial society has taught her to be culturally silent. The feminine is essentially the marginalized consciousness that operates on the periphery of patriarchal discourse. Such an insight into the marginal self is provided by Tehmina Durrani's My Feudal Lord. Tehmina Durrani, a Pakistani English author, in her autobiography My Feudal Lord describes her traumatic marital life with Gulam Mustafa Khar, an important politician in the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto government, who later became the Chief Minister of Punjab. Professionally a charismatic champion of democracy, on the personal front he was an inveterate wife abuser. This autobiographical novel won the Italian Marrissa Bellasario prize and was later translated into several languages. My Feudal Lord is divided into three parts respectively aptly entitled Lion of Punjab, Law of Jungle, and Lioness. Throughout these sections one can map the progress of Tehmina from an ordinary elitist housewife to an emancipated human being contesting for equal rights and women's empowerment. In Pakistani society, where the Muslim patriarchs dominate, the entity of women is that of inferior beings, both intellectually and socially. Her main raison d'etre seems to be an instrument for the satisfaction of the man's sexual desires and perpetuation of the species. Tehmina herself was no exception to this Table of Contents 89 rule and fashioned herself mechanically to cater to her husband's preferences, be it in appearance, attire or makeup. Moreover she reveled in the conventional social expectations of the behaviour expected of a married woman. Tehmina writes: The women in our circle did not seem to look beyond their raised noses. They chattered endlessly about disobedient servants, clothes, jewellery and interior decorations…. Many a day in the lives of these women was completely devoted to the topic of what to wear that evening (Durrani, 65). In the first part of My Feudal Lord, Mustafa is portrayed as a man who revels in the total subjugation, repression and oppression of his female counterpart. Tehmina's conventional upbringing, conditioned by her patriarchal social environment in which she lived, made her accept her husband Mustafa's physical assaults and sexual brutality, enduring these attacks as a part of her destiny. That was the social ethos which inculcated itself into her being. Her mother's comment aptly illustrates this: If a husband behaves in a strange or unreasonable manner, you should treat him like a sick human being, like someone who needs medical care and treatment. Deal with him like a psychiatrist (Durrani, 130). Yet Mustafa is neither sick nor unreasonable. He is simply insanely and irrationally possessive in a manner reminiscent of the Duke of Ferrara in Robert Browning's My Last Duchess. For, according to Mustafa, a woman, like land, is “ power, prestige and a property” - a commodity meant for utilization and consumption in whichever way the owner / master deems fit. Surprisingly, when Tehmina becomes pregnant as a result of Mustafa's violent rapist tortures, he takes a lot of personal care of her. However, a close reading of the novel makes the reader realize that it is not out of love for her but in the hope of a male heir that Mustafa is attending to Tehmina. Her endurance of Mustafa's tortures is the result of an archaic patriarchal value which inculcates a sense of slavery into the essence of womanhood. This extends to sexual domination of the wife by the husband. Patriarchal discourse does not regard sex as a means of mutual physical enjoyment but rather as a tool of dominion. This is why Tehmina tries to perpetuate her marriage bond with Mustafa, realizing fully well that in her society, a divorced woman is the most despicable of the human species.