Saadat Hassan Manto Analysis

Saadat HassanManto, (1912-1955) is the short story writer of the twentieth century in the language of Urdu. He was a very controversial writer of his times, who faced many court trials because of his so called ‘sex oriented’ expressions. But the fact is that Manto analysed the deep feelings of common men and women and characterized them with most sincere frankness in his writings. In many of his stories, Manto depicted woman as the main character. He brought to the reader how a woman is exploited and used by men for their individual satisfaction. In his stories Manto gives a higher status to certain values and concepts that may roughly be called his vision of life. These values and concepts include- frankness, honesty, the discrepancy …show more content…
Among all Urdu fiction writers, Manto has been translated the most extensively into these languages as well as into English. He was also a film and radio script writer and journalist. In his short life he published twenty two collections of short stories, five collections of radio plays, three collections of essays, two collections of personal sketches, one novel and many scripts for films. He wrote about prostitution, religious superstition, adolescent anxiety, sex, the Partition and Bombay cinema in the thirties and forties. They were the great themes of his time. Manto, portrays various facets of womanhood in his works. In Indian society the concept of female purity is directly related to body. The more guarded a woman is about her body the more pure she is. Those women who transgress this norm of purity are looked down upon as ‘impure’ and ‘fallen’ from the higher ideals of life. In this sense, the protagonists in Manto’s above selected stories are fallen women free from any type of social control. Based in various cities of colonial India, the stories illustrates the lives of these so called fallen women. With yet touching narratives and a critical approach to cultural stereotypes, Manto explores how a male dominated society treats, the women fallen from the mainstream society of honourable ladies and gentleman. Our society does not give …show more content…
Saugandhi is a prostitute. After her date with an official from the city’s sanitation department, the sleeping Saugandhi is awakened in the middle of the night by her pimp Ramlal, he‘s got a wealthy gentleman waiting for her outside. Saugandhi freshens up and puts on makeup only for the gentleman to take one look at her and respond “Oonh!” before driving off down the alley. This raw instance of rejection proves devastating for Saugandhi. She resolves to put an end to her recurring exploitation. The next day her lover, Madho visits her, a cunning man who professes love for her but actually is an extortionist who meets her for money. Saugandhi kicks him out of the house and vows not be victimized anymore. She returns to her huge empty bed, reserved for her clients and tries to sleep, hugging her dog, the only living creature from whom she can expect love and companionship. Perhaps she finds the dog more faithful than any human