LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 10 : 10 October 2010
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
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         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         K. Karunakaran, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.

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Feminine, Female and Feminist -
A Critical Spectrum on Selected Novels by
Kamala Markandaya, Shahsi Deshpande and Arundhati Roy

Nagesvari Paramasivan, M.A.


Abstract

The Indian literature has been documenting the stories of Indian women from the classical era up until now. The male authors have naturally dominated the field of literature with their normally-stereotyped perceptions of women in their works. It must be said that there has been little truth regarding the lives of women in these male authors' works. The emergence of female authors in India has been successful in depicting new perspectives in the images of women in their writings.

Kamala Markandaya, Shahsi Deshpande and Arundhati Roy are the women authors purposefully selected for this study. They are the ones who have managed to bring out the reality of what it is really like being an Indian woman in such a patriarchal system. These authors have given a voice to the women characters that they create, to represent the contemporary Indian women who are still in the struggle to gain rights and freedom.

Markandaya, Deshpande and Roy bring to public the unheard and untold stories of women from different strata of the Indian society covering a wide range of issues that impede their growth. With the terms 'feminine', 'female' and 'feminist' under the limelight, brought about by Elaine Showalter, this study attempts to analyze the woman-protagonists in the novels of choice, written by these remarkable authors.

Introduction

The literary works from India, those which are specifically written in English have gained a special place in the World Literature. Studies on Post-Colonial Literature, Emergent Literature, Third Word Literature and Commonwealth Literature, will not be complete without close scrutiny and study towards the literary texts from India. Male authors like the Nobel Prize winner Rabindra Nath Tagore (1913), winner of Best of The Booker Salman Rushidie (2008), R.K Narayan, Vikram Seth, Amitav Gosh, Khuswant Singh, Shahsi Tharoor, Amit Chaudri and Booker Prize Winner Aravind Adiga (2008), had carved their name in the international art, established for being able to introduce various universal themes into his works.

No matter how wide is the universality of the theme in the male authors' works, the significance and position given to the woman characters are very small and cast aside, and no other than being a mother, wife, maid or servant, daughter, widow (whose husband is dead), widow (a divorcee) and of a low-caste. It is very rare to see the strength, empowerment and vigour of these women in the writings of male authors from India. In this connection, Showalter observes, the woman characters constructed by these male writers have not represented what the women really experience, but instead, these writers have produced and reflected their own views and perceptions about this gender.

The portrayal of women's characteristics in these male writers' works is normally weak and passive, as pointed out by Simone de Beauvoir in her Second Sex, 'He is the Subject, he is the Absolute - she is the other' (Beauvoir,1989:19). For Beauvoir, the weakness and passivity of the women characters in the works of male authors are not reasoned by the factor of woman biology but due to the social system that has long been dominated by the power of men.


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


English Loanwords in Meiteiron A Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Analysis | A Report on the State of Urdu Literacy in India, 2010 | More Than Meets the Eye Reasons Behind Asian Students' Perceived Passivity in the ESL/EFL Classroom | English for Medical Students of Hodeidah University, Yemen - A Pre-sessional Course | Education as an Indicator for Human Resource Development | Representation of Malaysian Women in Politics | A Modern Approach to Application of Abbreviation and Acronym Strategy for Vocabulary Learning in Second/Foreign Language Learning Procedure | Causes of Social Acceptance of "O" and "A" Level Education System in Pakistan | Pronounce Foreign Words the English way! | Dubhashi and the Colonial Port in Madras Presidency | An Investigation of Davis' Translation of SHAHNAMEH - Rostam and Sohrab Story in Focus | Feminine, Female and Feminist - A Critical Spectrum on Selected Novels by Kamala Markandaya, Shahsi Deshpande and Arundhati Roy | Four-letter Words and the Urdu Learner's Dictionaries in Pakistan | Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin - A Study of the Impact of War on Historical and Economic Aspects of the Society | Was Gandhi a True Mahatma? | Omani Women
Are Their Language Skills Good Enough for the Workplace?
| Spread of English Globalisation Threatens English Language Teaching (ELT) in Pakistan | Multiple Intelligences, Blended Learning and the English Teacher | A Micro-Case Study of Vocabulary Acquisition among First Year Engineering Students | Imagery of Wilderness in Margaret Hollingsworth's Islands | The Influence of Learning Environment on Learners' Attitude in a Foreign Language Setting | Caste - Gender Ideology in Gundert's Malayalam-English Dictionary | Development of a Hindi to Punjabi Machine Translation System - A Doctoral Dissertation | A PRINT VERSION OF ALL THE PAPERS OF OCTOBER, 2010 ISSUE IN BOOK FORMAT. | HOME PAGE of October 2010 Issue | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com


Nagesvari Paramasivan, M.A.
School of Humanities
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Malaysia
shakti.1011@yahoo.com

 
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