LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 13:12 December 2013
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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A Thematic Study of Manju Kapur’s Novels:
Home and The Immigrant

V. Thenmozhi, M.A., M.Phil.

Introduction

Manju Kapur is the most talked about and appreciated contemporary Indian English woman novelist. She insists that the world she portrays analytically in her novels stems from the intellectual experience of her academic life. Her basic approach is to liberate women from the oppressive measures of patriarchy. The protagonists in her novel therefore, endure physical, emotional and psychological suffering, but finally are able to attain their long cherished freedom to a great extent.

Portrayal of Women

Manju Kapur’s women are portrayed within the periphery of their respective territories subject to gender prejudice and oppressed to the level of giving up individual identity. A self-effacing and selfless living is thrust upon women, acclimatizing them to gender prejudice and willing accepting of their present situation. In all her novels Manju Kapur places emphasis on the cultural conditioning of the girl child in an Indian setup. From a social and psychoanalytic angle, she explores the manner in which Indian girls are moulded to suit the needs and imperatives of a patriarchal society. While most novels dealing with feminist issues begin with the problems affecting the marital life of an urban educated woman, the novels of Manju Kapur trace the painful voyage of the heroines from childhood into adulthood. The manner in which myth, religious dogma and tradition are used to curb a woman’s freedom and stifle her natural impulses to live and grow as men do, and the manner in which her education and career are intentionally delimited to deprive her of freedom from dependency are revealed as the two powerful social forces that impede the development of the Indian female child.

Personification of New Women

The women in the novels of Manju Kapur seem to be the personification of new women who have been carrying the burden of inhibition since ages and want to be free now. Manju Kapur clearly shows the dilemma of women who carry the burden of being female as well as the added responsibility of being mothers to members of their own sex. In the traditional social milieu of the novel where mothers and daughters exist, marriage is regarded as the ultimate goal and destiny from which these women cannot escape. Manju Kapur succeeds in presenting the real picture of women in a male- dominated society. Her female protagonists are mostly educated, aspiring individuals caged within the confines of a conservative society. Their education leads them to independent thinking and makes them intolerant of family and society. They struggle between tradition and modernity. It is their individual struggle with family and society through which they plunge into a dedicated effort to carve an identity for themselves as qualified women with faultless backgrounds. Manju Kapur has portrayed her protagonists as women caught in the conflict between the passions of the flesh and the yearning to be a part of the political and intellectual movements of the day.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

V. Thenmozhi, M.A., M.Phil.
Assistant Professor of English.
Ayya Nadar Janaki Ammal College
Sivakasi 626123
Tamilnadu
India
honeylanguage5588@gmail.com
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