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Afghan women have one of the lowest Gender Development Index indicators in the world. They are silenced, dominated and marginalised with little to no freedom or power. From being sexually marginalised to being politically silenced, the customary law is regressive beyond imagination. The present paper is a study of female incarceral space and Afghan legal laws with special reference to Nadia Hashimi’s A House Without Windows. It subverts the idea of prison when it comes to women and explores prison space as therapeutic community, praxis of survival and a site of transformation. Moreover the paper analyses body as site of resistance and uses silence as a tool to protect one’s own truth by controlling one’s own narrative. By exploring the strategy of reticence, it delineates silence as passive resistance, a coping mechanism and a form of autonomy.
Dr. Manu Bharti. “Incarcerated and Silent: Exploring Female Prison Space in Nadia Hashimi’s A House Without Windows.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 4, August 2026, pp. 75-87. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n4.5.
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