Intersectional Experiences of Rural Women: Analyzing Impact of Gender and Class in Aysha Baqir’s Beyond the Fields

The present study aims to analyze the impact of gender and class on rural women. The study focuses on intersectional experiences of female characters. In Beyond the Fields (2019), Baqir reveals how multiple layers of oppression intersect and shape identities of female characters and how these females, Zara, Tara, and Amma, resist and navigate the situations. The purpose of this research is to investigate the various struggles, self-determination, and fortitude demonstrated by rural women in the novel. The present study is descriptive in nature. Close reading and text-based analysis methods are applied. It centers on rural women’s experiences within various social and political contexts. The intersectional framework addresses important axes of social division, including race, class, gender, and disability, which interact and have an impact on one another. These social axes control the hierarchies of power in a given society, which can lead to prejudice and inequality. In literary studies, representation of women is no longer limited to European and American academic writings. The South Asian fiction writers also exhibit a feminist approach in their works, within the feminist paradigm. The study has been limited to the analysis of intersectional experiences of rural women in the text. For the analysis, intersectionality theory is used as the theoretical framework presented by Patricia Hill Collins. The findings of the present study show that rural women face intertwined oppressions of gender and class. Rural women’s resistance changed their experiences. The novel provides an insight into the intersectional nature of rural women in a patriarchal society where gender and class play a vital role in shaping individual identity. This study will provide a deeper understanding of their experiences and their potential to ignite revolutionary societal change by investigating their intersecting realities.