Patriarchal Structure (Denying the Role of Women as Futile and Abstract) Violence against Women (original) (raw)
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Psycho-Socio-Cultural Matrix of Women's World- A Study in the Selected Indian Women Writings
Indian women writers have significant contribution in Indian English Writings. Indian literary scene has witnessed a tremendous change as far as women writers’ role. Women writings are concerned with the status of women in India. The ups and downs in these writers’ life have emphasized much upon the socio-cultural and psychological aspects. Women’s literature in Indian English Studies presents many women characters as role models or as silenced voices. This research paper takes into account the Indian women writers’ perspective of women’s world. For the study the following works have been selected - the novel Cry, the Peacock which explores the sociological state of the protagonist, Maya. She reflects internal conflicting realities of her psyche in de-motivational or subversive terms. The novel is concerned with a modern new woman’s rejection of her priorities and subsequently her failure on account of her meaninglessness in her thoughts, choices and deeds. The novel The God of Small Things portrays the politics of caste/gender and its effects on the marginalized, deprived woman in context of informalization and feminization of labour, her body and her ‘Self’. Manjula Padmanabhan’s play Harvest delves deep inside the pains, anguish of the poverty-stricken family that falls victim to the commoditization of the Third World body; while it also visualizes the futuristic approach of woman to counter the machines that may likely to govern human body in modern times. The Selected Poems of Kamala Das represent the wishes, aspirations, individuality, ambiguity and frustration. She is concerned with the women’s status in the men’s world. This research paper will attempt to find insights into the subjective experiences expressed in the writings, and same will be investigated as a source of self-discovery of these authors and their creative urge to find their space in public sphere. Other aspects such as - woman’s subjugated past, their voice breaking the silence, resisting the patriarchy and finding a female tradition and their imagined stereo- typed image will also be discussed. Keywords: Indian English Literary Studies, Women Writers, Gender-autonomy, Discriminatory doctrines
Depiction of women in Indian Literature-A Critical Study
THE LITERARY VISION, 2023
Woman is said to be the most beautiful creation of God on this planet. She is herself the origin of life and ultimate creator. She is the foundation of family who embraces everyone with her unconditional love and care as a grandmother, mother, daughter, sister and wife. She forms nearly half of the total population and thus has always been a centre of study and discussion in Indian literature. The Indian writers have continuously tried to present the complicated world of women from different perspectives and points of view. They have responsibly taken up the various issues and problems of women, their anxiety, pain and suffering. These writers have expressed their views and concerns through their work. Woman's condition and position in Indian society have undergone many changes from ancient times to the present. This article is an attempt to critically assess the depiction of woman in Indian literature since ancient times.
This paper attempts to explore the Portrayal of women in some of the works of Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande and Nayantara Sahgal. The quest for identity and freedom has become dominant themes in literature. It unfolds the problems of women in the patriarchal society in a very positive way. These writers brings out the alienation, anxiety, insecurity, fear her marital familiar and social relation, sufferings and exploitation and struggle for new identity. These writers brings the familiar problems faced by women in the society and her own family. Their trauma over the situation of being dependent and suffering without expressing it to others. The inner strength of the women has been observed clearly. Most of the female novelists are known for their bold views that are reflected in their novels. They focus principally on the psychological searching of inner mind of women. These writers being women enter deep into the inner mind of the depressed women by virtue of their feminine sensibility and psychological insight and bring to light their issues, which are the outcome of Indian women's psychological and emotional imbalances of the society.
A STUDY OF AGONY AND PAIN OF WOMEN IN THE SOCIETY THEME IN THE NOVELS OFNAYANTARA SAHGAL
The present study was aimed on exclusive focus onSahgal's major concern in her novels i.e. theme of agony and pain of women in thesociety.I have tried my best to make it clear that NayantaraSahgal's journey as a woman writer starts from the search for selfhood and reaches its culmination in the attainment of it. She has a humanitarian dislike of suffering and inequality. She is sensitive to the suffering of Indian women and champions their cause. Almost in all her novels, Sahgal has gone deep into the female psyche. She is able to go deep into the psyche of her female characters and study them with sympathy and understanding. As a woman novelist, Sahgal recognizes that her primary obligation is that of advocating the emancipation of women. Sahgal is deeply concerned with the failure of marital relationships, the loneliness of living and private terrors. Sahgal's women characters suffer because they refuse to submerge their individuality and cling to their personal identity at all costs. Sahgal shows women suffering in marriage-life and then deciding to come out of the suffocating bondage by preferring divorce. She depicts her women deciding to opt for divorce rather than live a stifling life of injustice and agony. Her novels portray women trampled and oppressed because of their dependence upon men and the harrowing experience they have to face in their struggle to come out of the bondage and stand on their own feet. In her novels, woman suffers not only by man's act of physical violence, but she is often emotionally hurt and crippled through his arrogance, cynicism and indifference. Loneliness, suffering and frustration in marriage sometimes cause disintegration and make women rebellious. A keen observation of the position of woman in our patriarchal society brings to the fore, the pathetic condition of their being. Woman who has been compared to the creator, woman who has been deified, woman who has been at the centre of all human existence has sadly and surreptitiously been robbed of her own identity. In her role as a mother she has taken pride, in her role as a daughter she has privileged, but while trying to give perfect performance in these roles somewhere down the line she has forgotten her own self. Man has used her, exploited her, taken her support to climb the ladder of success but at the end of it all discarded her shamelessly.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, 2021
Mahasweta Devi, one of the most prominent writer in India, always talked about Indian women and their struggles in various layers they face as the women of the third world. Devi was a preacher of humanity and liberation and her writings always reflected these thoughts. Three of her famous stories in Bengali titles as "Draupadi", "Stanadayini" and "Choli ke Pichhe", which were taken and translated by famous scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak into a collection titled Breast Stories (the stories are titled "Draupadi", "Breast-giver" and "Behind the Bodice" in English respectively) are taken as source texts for this paper. In this paper, the various forms and aspects of exploitation of the female body, as presented by the author as a contemporary socio-political and socioeconomic issue and how under certain circumstances they are also found to the resistance, will be discussed. The first story, "Draupadi", talks about the protagonist Draupadi or Daupdi, who throughout her life fighting against the oppression over her community and land, got arrested and as a spectacle of punishment for the transgression of acting against the authority is stripped off all her clothes and raped multiple times. As patriarchal agents find this the ultimate weapon against the second sex (a patriarchal term for female), it turns out to be the boomerang when Draupadi denies her clothes and uses her raped bare body with pride and fearlessness to mute the Senanayak. The second story, "Breast-giver" displays how female body part can be used to fulfill the existential demand at the cost of the life of Jashoda. The demand of patriarchal aspects towards the female body is also found to be served at the same time. The third story, "Behind the Bodice", talks about the aesthetics of the female body and the need to preserve them but at the same time, very paradoxically, it fails to address the way of securing the female herself. The protagonist, Gangor, keeps making her living using her body (specially her breasts which are mentioned as the aesthetical part which were chopped off by the police after rape) finally turns violent and shouts out her vengeance against the society which did this to her. The photographer who used to praise her breasts couldn't bear her rage and died while running from her on learning about her condition. This paper discusses about the various tropes of female body used by the author in the abovementioned stories and how these tropes succeed and fails to create the resistance at various level of the society.
Portrayal of Women in the Novels of Nayantara Sahgal and Shobha De: A Comparative Study
CENTRAL ASIAN JOURNAL OF LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE, 2022
Feminism, Self-realization, Indian women, New Woman Indian Literature in English has journeyed a long way to achieve its present glory and grandeur. At present a number of women writers through their writings offer penetrative insight into the complex issues of life. The fictional concerns of these women writers analyze the world of women, their sufferings as victims of male hegemony; they also express social, economic and political upheavals in Indian society. Among these women writers Shobha De and Nayantara Sahgal has earned a separate space for their particular attention towards psychological insight and existential concerns. These new generation of writers talked about the self-realization of women. The high class, educated, sensible women became protagonist in t heir novels. Their women were new class of women whose lives were not infested by problems of dowry or poverty. These Indian women lived a blessed life as far as material standards are concerned, but there was something wanting, some vacuum in their lives. These women were facing the problem of identity. They show concern about basic human problems and to them woman is a mother, a wife, a daughter, a housewife, a working woman and above all she is a woman. Their women are the victims of a male-dominated society. In their novels men are not always sinners or oppressors. They explore the identity of the oppressor and show a holistic approach to the problems of women through their novels. They have raised woman’s issues and strove to reach to their solutions as well.
If the twentieth century afforded great change due to wars and decolonization, a great deal of the twenty-first century’s upheaval comes from globalization and technology on one hand and a new kind of warfare labelled terrorism on the other. The purpose of the research is to examine against the backdrop of this development, to what extent the image or construct of a woman has changed in India for readers, particularly by studying the way it has been depicted in the writing of Indian women authors. The fact that recently these authors have received international acclaim in the form of awards makes it even more important to understand how readers all over the world and India perceive the image of an Indian woman. In short how are Indian women being positioned? The texts studied are: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, who is a second generation immigrant; The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, a first generation immigrant; Ladies Coupé by Anita Nair and Difficult Daughters by Manju Kapur, both of whom are Indian nationals residing in India with a certain amount of western education, the latter being a ‘traditional’ intellectual. The last chapter deals with the ‘organic’ intellectual focussing particularly on two contrasting short stories—“The Hunt” and “Statue” by Mahasweta Devi. However, to substantiate the hypothesis and for the purposes of comparison, the study also takes a brief look at other novels by Arundhati Roy, Sudha Murty, Lalithambika Antherjanam, Sharmila Rege, Baby Halder and P. Sivakami, keeping in mind that many of these works are translations. The approach adopted is a close reading of the texts focussing on the female characters, themes and attitudes. On this basis, the theoretical approach adopted is the writer’s interpretation of Hegel’s master-slave dialectics and Fanon’s reinterpretation of the same, Freud’s love-hate binaries, Gramsci’s differentiation between the ‘traditional’ intellectual and ‘organic’ intellectual and Spivak’s vision regarding the role of the humanities. According to Hegel, consciousness does not exist in isolation but is always dependent on another for a sense of selfhood. As there is injustice and an imbalance of power in this world, the two consciousnesses engaged with each other will assume the roles of master and slave with respect to each other. The injustice inevitably results in a struggle for selfhood on the part of the slave; one way this selfhood can be attained is through recognition of the slave’s labour. A defining emotion in this relationship is fear and it is only by overcoming fear that the slave can break free. The ultimate fear is that of death. In addition to the instinct for domination, Freud does not see the true self as one entity but as in Marx, it is a balance between contradictory forces and in this case the dialectic is between Eros—the love instinct, and Thanatos—the death one. For Antonio Gramsci, a solution or an instrument of change is the ‘organic’ intellectual. The purpose of an intellectual is not to be “specialised” but to become “directive” that is one who is political and driven to bring about change. However, in the face of globalization and the crisis that it brings with inequality, war and terrorism, according to Spivak, hope is available through education in the humanities, for it is through the humanities that one can bring about “the empowerment of an informed imagination” (Spivak, “Righting Wrongs” 2). The aim of the research is to try and understand whether western education helps to envision a new-age woman, whom this study defines as self-reliant, able to question roles and norms society has set for her, thinks independently and uses her own free will to choose to live life for herself rather than be subservient to the needs of her husband and family, or is this education an impediment. Thus in addition to intellectual and economic independence, she must be emotionally independent as well. It must be stressed that this concept of new-age is an ideal which is strived for but never actualized because it is dynamic and constantly changing over space and time. Also one must be wary of the tendency to generalize women who vary on the basis of geography, race, economics, caste and so on. The thesis statement explored is that although in some cases western educated Indian women may ostensibly live more liberated lives, the characters or images of women in the novels by the selected writers are more circumscribed as women. Another concern of the study is the difference between lived and written reality. A questionnaire based on the movie The Namesake taken by a community of informed readers in Pune indicated that in reality the image of the woman may have changed on the page but not in the minds of women and hence paradoxically in reality the concept of ‘new-age’ is a myth. The key women protagonists analysed are Ashima and Moushumi from The Namesake; Sai, her grandmother Nimi and her mother along with Noni and Lola in The Inheritance of Loss; Akhila and her companions in the coupé in the novel Ladies Coupé and Mary in ‘The Hunt’ and Dulali in ‘Statues’. The research hopes to indicate, that the most revolutionary change in the image is captured in the characters drawn by the Indian woman who is an ‘organic’ intellectual. By working intimately with the subaltern, she is aware of the urgency for change unlike a more privileged woman. She functions as a “permanent persuader” who is an instrument of change. Thus perhaps one answer to the conundrum could be that the writing of the ‘organic’ intellectual has the potential to capture one of the myriad images of a new-age Indian woman. As for a definite final one, perhaps it can never be found as it will always be dynamically changing and evolving and hopefully aspiring towards an ideal concept akin to the one defined by the study
2017
In the 20th century, women's writing is the most powerful medium of modernism and feminist ideologies. Women novelists integrated various female experiences. In the recent two decades, an extraordinary success is observed in their feminist writings. The present women writers, who are western educated, have brought their novels with women issues. The paper compares the depiction of women in Anita Rau Badami"s Tamarind Mem and Shashi Deshpande"s That Long Silence. The tales of both the women, though different, are much common in the background and treatment. It is so interesting to note that both the authors advocate a similar message through their novels ie., the need for an equal, open and friendly treatment to women in their respective families. The protagonist of Badami"s novel is compared with that of Shashi Deshpande"s on various similar aspects. The commonality in their observations and presentations is discussed with sincere appreciative perception. The...
Space for women in Indian women’s writings
The present paper tries to analyse the study of selective works of Indian writers in English with a purpose of exploring the space for women in patriarchal society. Indian English writings by women attempt to tussle with living realities of women of various strata of society and endeavour to project life in all its complexities. Women writers have proved themselves as silent protesters. They have given vent to their feelings of protest in their poetry. In pre-independent India, Toru Dutta, Sarojini Naidu and a host of other poets produced the best kind of poetry. Meena Alexander and Sujata Bhatt have written poetry on their surroundings. Kamal Dass pours out her sensual longings, frustrations, humiliations and triumphs in her poems.