Unseen Bodies: Sexuality and Subordination in Manto’s "Blouse"

Domestic servants are shadowy yet ubiquitous presences in upper and middle-class homes in the Indian subcontinent. Separated by socio-economic divisions and hierarchies, the unavoidability of proximity between bodies from different social strata inhabiting the same domestic space often creates tensions over possibilities of cross-class intimacies. This paper, through a close reading of Saadat Hasan Manto’s short story, Blouse, examines how bodies—as sites of budding sexuality—located in structures of servitude, experience and navigate the changing contours of the self and the other. The paper focuses on how conditions of invisibilisation, which characterise the servant’s position, on one hand produce effects of marginalisation and exclusion, but on the other hand also engender conditions for the servant to observe, encounter, and experience the other in such an intimate manner that it often threatens to disrupt the carefully maintained relations of social difference. The paper attempts to understand how different bodies behave and engage with each other—through relations of indifference, fascination, and deprecation—while navigating the complex terrain of gender performativity and class politics in the private space of home.