Critical Summary

“The Quilt” opens with an unnamed first-person narrator commenting on how, when she throws a
quilt over herself in winter, the shadows the quilt makes on the wall appear to sway like an elephant.
The image evokes a terrifying memory of when the narrator was a little girl and her mother went
away for a week, leaving the narrator with the mother's adopted sister, Begum Jaan. The mother left
the narrator because she was always getting into fights with boys.

The narrator tells the story of how Begum Jaan has an arranged marriage to Nawab Sahib, a Muslim
nobleman whom the public considers virtuous because no one ever sees dancers and prostitutes
visiting his house. However, the nawab keeps an open house for young male students to live with
him while he pays their expenses.

Because of the nawab's implied homosexuality, he ignores his wife's sexual needs and sequesters
her to a section of the house. She tries in vain to seduce him, but eventually, after finding her life
force wasting away, Begum Jaan is brought back to life by Rabbu, her hired
masseuse. Rabbu massages Begum Jaan constantly. She is beside her at all times and even sleeps
next to her. Begum Jaan has a persistent itch that no doctors can cure. Only Rabbu can scratch the
itch—a euphemism for the need for sexual release. The maids in the household gossip about Begum
Jaan's dependence on Rabbu, but Begum Jaan is oblivious: her existence is centered on her itch.

The narrator, as a child, comes to stay with Begum Jaan, whom she loves and finds very beautiful.
Begum Jaan is fond of the narrator as well. The narrator sleeps in the same room as Begum Jaan and
Rabbu. She finds Rabbu ugly.

The narrator wakes up when Begum Jaan's quilt shakes. In the darkness, the quilt looks like it
conceals a struggling elephant. The narrator says Begum Jaan's name and the quilt stops shaking; it
deflates. Begum Jaan tells the narrator to go to sleep. The narrator says she is scared, and when she
hears a second voice in the room, she says she thinks a thief has come in. Rabbu—the second voice
—answers that there is no thief.

In the morning, the narrator has forgotten about what happened in the night. The next night, she
hears Rabbu and Begum Jaan arguing in subdued tones. Rabbu cries, and then the narrator hears the
slurping sound of a cat licking a plate.

The next day, Rabbu leaves to visit her son, who earlier stayed with the nawab but ran away after an
undisclosed incident. With Rabbu gone, Begum Jaan is distraught. She won't eat and mopes all day.
At night, the narrator offers to massage her adopted aunt. Begum Jaan lets her, and accepts the
massage while lying quietly.

The next day Rabbu still isn't back. Begum Jaan grows irritable and her head aches. The narrator
massages her again, and Begum Jaan expresses her satisfaction with sensuous breaths. While
chatting about buying things from the market, the narrator barely notices when Begum Jaan directs
her hand to where Begum Jaan itches.

The narrator jerks her hand away when she realizes the intimate spot she is touching. Begum Jaan
laughs and makes the narrator lie next to her. She begins touching the narrator inappropriately,
counting her ribs despite the narrator's protests and attempts to wriggle away. An intensity builds in
Begum Jaan's eyes and a scent rises from her body. A strange fear overcomes the narrator. Begum
Jaan presses her as though she were an object. Eventually, Begum Jaan lies back, breathing heavily.
The narrator leaves the room and is thankful when Rabbu returns that night.

The narrator continues to stay in Begum Jaan's house. She tries to avoid Begum Jaan and the
nameless terror she feels around her by spending time with the maids. Begum Jaan makes the
narrator sit next to her while she washes herself, and the narrator can't look at her body. Begum
Jaan tries to offer the reticent narrator a gold necklace and sweets from the market, but the narrator
insists she only wants to go home. Rabbu covertly reprimands Begum Jaan for being so pushy with
the narrator, and Begum Jaan flies into a fit.

That night, Begum Jaan has calmed down. In the bedroom, the narrator notices Begum Jaan's quilt
swaying and shaking again. She switches on the light. The people under the quilt—Begum Jaan and
Rabbu—somersault forward. The narrator glimpses under the corner of the quilt. What she sees
causes her to gasp, "Good God!" She then sinks deeper into her bed.

Critical Analysis along with author’s view

In her collection of short stories The Quilt and Other Stories, Ismat Chughtai portrays the limited
options available to women, whether single or married, under an oppressive patriarchy. In these
stories the options available to women are that either the characters are dissatisfied by the lack of
emotional fulfillment available to them within marriage or they suffer communal criticism because of
their unwillingness or inability to conform to traditional standards. In each case, Chughtai dismantles
the notion that marriage, the institution society prepares women to expect, is the culmination of a
woman’s life. 

Chughtai is concerned not only with the manner in which men treat women, but also with the
manner in which women conspire to undermine other women’s positions. By depicting the lack of
solidarity among women, Chughtai conveys the extent to which women are indoctrinated into the
practices of a traditional system. Women abusing other women is a thematic focus in “Scent of the
Body,” “The Rock,” and “The Eternal Vine.” Each of these stories shows a man abusing the power
society grants him over certain women (including, but not restricted to, his wife), along with
women’s acceptance of and promotion of such masculine abuse. 

Ismat Chughtai is also concerned with the sexuality of young women in a society that is very
detached from and ignorant of women’s needs. Largely due to her exposure and commitment to
progressivism, her writings were the first in Urdu to openly explore female sexuality. In many of her
short stories female characters are ignored or dissatisfied with their conjugal relationships. Rather
than pine away, the dissatisfied wife finds her own satisfaction in “The Quilt.” Chughtai’s exploration
of female sex- uality in this story has led to acclaim as well as censure from critics.

“The Quilt” is one of Chughtai’s most infamous stories and it resulted in her being put on trial for
writing obscene literature. Although she was eventually cleared of the charges, the story largely
remains known for its “obscene” content. Chughtai herself bemoaned the fact that she would be
remembered only for writing this one story which she did not feel accurately represented her writing
or her interests. “The Quilt,” because of its homoerotic themes, has been reduced to discussions
revolving around scandal, but the story is actually rich in meaning. Chughtai explores the plight of a
married woman who has been denied the sexual and domestic attention of her husband. Through
the character of Begum Jan, a newly married wife, Chughtai shows the frustrations of married
women in a structure in which they function as role fulfillers rather than as people. 

Begum Jan’s desperation is shown almost immediately when she enters the house and is discarded
by her husband: 

After marrying Begum Jan, he deposited her in the house with all his other possessions and promptly
forgot about her! The young, delicate Begum began to wilt with loneliness … she realized that the
household revolved around the boy-students, and that all the delicacies produced in the kitchen
were meant solely for their palates.

(5–6)

Begum Jan’s husband is more concerned with young boys than with his wife. According to the terms
of marriage in this society, he considers himself responsible only for providing for his wife’s material
needs, not her emotional or psychological needs. He treats her in much the same manner as “all his
other possessions”—standard behavior in a society where marriage is considered a necessary duty
to be fulfilled by men as well as women. Thus Chughtai shows that the role of woman-as-wife
requires that a man-as-husband complement be present—even if it is in name only. 

As the marriage continues, this young girl declines even further from neglect. 

Begum Jan slowly let go and consequently became a picture of melancholy and despair. 

She felt like stuffing all her fine clothes into the stove. One dresses up to impress people. Now,
Nawab Sahib neither found a spare moment from his preoccupation with the gossamer shirts, nor
did he allow her to venture outside the home. 

                                                                 (6)

Begum Jan is trapped within her house, where she is ignored because of the prohibition, created by
the custom of purdah, against women’s free movement in the public sphere. 

The rules governing seclusion and guaranteeing women’s purity force Begum Jan to remain within
her house even when she has no one and nothing with which to entertain herself, while her relatives
are free to visit her: “Her relatives, however, made it a habit to pay her frequent visits which often
lasted for months, while she remained a prisoner of the house” (ibid.). This woman begins to
physically deteriorate due to emotional neglect and lack of human companionship: “But, despite
renewing the cotton filling in her quilt each year, Begum Jan continued to shiver, night after night.…
What the hell was life worth anyway? Why live?” (ibid.). The frustrated existence of this young
woman shows the results of a system that imposes marriage upon women and then renders them
immobile. 

Chughtai presents alleviation for Begum Jan’s loneliness in an unconventional manner—an intimate
relationship with a female servant: 
 

Rabbo arrived at the house and came to Begum Jan’s rescue just as she was starting to go under. Her
emaciated body suddenly began to fill out.

Her cheeks became rosy; beauty, as it were, glowed through every pore! …

Rabbo had no other household duties. Perched on the four-poster bed, she was always massaging
Begum Jan’s head, feet or some other part of her anatomy. 

(6–7)

Chughtai’s subtlety is manifest in her choice of the story’s narrator. It is told through the narrator’s
childhood reflections and thus handles the physical relationship between Begum Jan and her maid
delicately, as the innocent observations of a child. Readers understand the relationship between
Begum Jan and Rabbo without ever seeing explicit scenes of intimacy. Chughtai uses their
relationship to show that women forced into seclusion must create meaning out of their meager
existences. She poses this intimate relationship as one woman’s way of overcoming the emotional
void imposed on her by her husband.

Ismat Chughtai was a woman of unconventional educational and social experiences which gave her a
unique perspective on Indian society.

Her family’s affluence allowed her to observe at an early age the inconsistencies of a society that
was divided along class and gender lines. Chughtai’s writings convey the ironies that exist for women
in a patriarchal system which has been perpetuated by women themselves accepting conventional
roles. Through her short stories Chughtai allowed her readers to glimpse the contradictions and
difficulties facing women who lacked autonomy and were acculturated into accepting the notion of
woman-as-wife as being the sole function of their existence. Tahira Naqvi explains the significance of
Chughtai’s role as a female author:

[She] played an important role in developing and shaping the modern Urdu short story form as we
know it today. More importantly, she helped establish a tradition of self-awareness and undaunted
creative expression for the Indian and Pakistani women writers who came after her. 

(xiii–xiv)

Chughtai’s fiction posed questions about the prevalent acceptance of the societal regulations and
constrictions placed upon women’s lives in India. These questions have since been taken up by other
South Asian writers and are still being explored in contemporary novels in all of the languages of
India.