Echoes of Motherh d Women’s ood an Position in Rebel English Academy by Mohammed Hanif: A Feminist Analysis

Abstract

In this article I engage the feminist lens of Mohammed Hanif's writing, Rebel English Academy (2026), to analyse how the novel builds and challenges the positionality of women in the overlapping patriarchal, military and religious systems of 1970s Pakistan. The central theme of motherhood as a biological weapon against women and as a symbolic voice of resistance lie at the heart of the analysis. This paper identifies the textual evidence of Sabiha Bano's narrative and the critical reception of Hanif's 'tough and purposive' feminism and recommends that the novel makes the female body the main terrain of contestation for the authoritarian control, while at the same time teaching women their agency of the testimony as an act of rebellion.