Investigating the Reconfiguration of the Gothic in Pakistani English Novels Post-2010: Haunted Houses, Partition Memory, and Urban Decay

Abstract

This study examined the reconfiguration of Gothic aspects in English novels published in Pakistan since 2010, focusing on haunted domestic spaces, Partition memory and urban decay as literary tools that represent the postcolonial trauma. The researchers employed qualitative research design and selected purposive sampling technique of six novels of Pakistani English writers. The study explored the elements of postcolonial Gothic theory, trauma studies, and urban spatial analysis and how the novelists of the present era used these elements to express collective historical trauma, cultural dislocation, and the anxieties of the modern urban life in Pakistan. The results showed that Pakistani English fiction reimagines the Gothic genre in culturally specific ways, which involve the transfer of the Gothic haunted castle to the domestic interior, ruined cityscapes, and traumatic historical memory of South Asian experience. The Partition of 1947 became a ghost in the house, lingering over family and national memories over the years. Spatial metaphor of urban decay in cities like Karachi and Lahore was used to describe the social fragmentation, moral ambiguity and political violence. The study found that the Gothic genre was used productively by the Pakistani English novels as a means of postcolonial mourning and cultural resistance. The results of these findings helped to shape the wider scholarly debate on non-Western Gothic literature and the migration of the Gothic into fictional traditions in postcolonial worlds.