Prostitution and Perceptiveness: Violated and Aging Bodies in Rizia Rahman’s <i>Letters of Blood</i>

Abstract

This article aims to portray the suffering and trajectories of female prostitutes in Rizia Rahman’s novel Rokter Okkhor (1978), translated into English as Letters of Blood by Arunava Sinha in 2016. By using the radical feminist perspective, the constructive framework of this paper aims to project the social and cultural restraints as well as the hegemonic power relations and male dominance in the lives of female prostitutes portrayed in the novel. Considering neo-abolitionist feminist viewpoints, this paper focuses exclusively on the experience of specific hierarchies, male domination, violence, and old-age problem on the part of the female prostitutes working in an unlicensed brothel in the fictional place of Golapipatti, Bangladesh as depicted in Rahman’s novel. Additionally, the paper also seeks to demonstrate how prostitution and the threat of being classified a ‘prostitute’ work as an impediment to female prostitutes’ heterosexual engagement and are used as a tool of female oppression.