LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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.

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