Body, Space and Curfew: Saʿadat Hasan Manto’s “Mozelle” in the Light of Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space

Abstract

This paper examines the interrelationship between body, space, and identity in Saʿadat Hasan Manto’s short story “Mozelle” (1951) by situating it within Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space and Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of the body. Set against the backdrop of the Partition of India, the study argues that Manto represents bodies not merely as biological entities but as living spaces that are produced, regulated, and transformed through social relations, religion, gender norms, and communal violence. Drawing on Lefebvre’s assertion that “each living body is space and also produces that space,” the paper analyses how the characters Mozelle, Trilochan, and Kirpal Kaur negotiate alienation and self-identity within shifting urban and communal spaces.

Through close textual analysis, the study demonstrates how the female body—particularly that of Mozelle, a Jewish sex worker—emerges as a site of resistance against patriarchal, religious, and cultural constraints. Spaces such as the terrace, the city streets of Bombay, and the curfew-bound alleys function as heterotopic zones where conventional social codes are suspended and renegotiated. The paper further explores how curfew operates as a spatial mechanism of control that simultaneously produces fear and enables moments of subversive solidarity between women.

By integrating spatial theory with Partition studies, the article foregrounds the role of embodied experience in shaping identity during periods of historical rupture. It concludes that “Mozelle” subverts traditional binaries of religion, morality, and gender by presenting the body as both a site of alienation and a generative space of self-definition, thereby offering a nuanced critique of the politics of space and power during Partition.