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The Womanly Observation By Manju Kapur

Indian writing in English is a relatively-recent phenomena, as far as literature goes. Though one can trace such writers in India to a century back, Indian writing in English has come into force only in the last couple of decades or so. Some of these writers have achieved worldwide fame, some national, and others perhaps have to be content with a more constricted circle. The very definition of the adjective Indian here is hazy. Many of these writers neither live in India, nor are Indian citizens. To get around this haziness, I will cast my net as wide as possible and include all those writers who are related to India be it by origin, or the subject of their writings—whether they admit it or not, whether they like it or not!Indian women novelists have been portraying women in various manifestations. But recently, the remarkable range of India’s most accomplished women writers of post colonial strand has brought a tremendous change in the trend of depicting women characters. Women writers as Kamala Markendaya,NayantaraSahgal, Anita Desai, SashiDeshpande ,Bharathi Mukherjee, Manjukapur, Gita Hariharan and the others have intuitively perceived the gender issues upsetting women and presented women as an individual who fights against suppression and oppression of the patriarchy. The present paper analyses the patriarchal norms confronted by the women characters in ManjuKapur’s novels. Kapur has presented the women of the1940s, when women had no voice to assert their rights, most importantly the voice of the protagonist. She raises the voice against male chauvinism to claim the rights of economic independence. Kapur makes the woman a cult figure that fights against taboos, social and joint family restrictions and constraints laid by patriarchy in the tradition. A major preoccupation in recent Indian Women’s writings has been a delineation of inner life and subtle interpersonal relationship. In Indian culture and heritage, individualism, quest for identity, protests and concepts of rebelliousness have often remained alien ideas, as far as women were concerned. Women were not supposed to raise voices for their rights, protest against injustice or question the already existing beliefs, customs, rituals and superstitions. They have to merely exist subjected to the patriarchal system. Women have to be obedient, quiet, submissive, and passive not claiming any of their rights neither as women nor as human beings. Even the earlier Indian women novelists have been portraying woman as the silent sufferers, the upholder of traditional values and ethics, a strict observer of social taboos, an essence of tolerance and patience, an exemplar to their successors, a being with no space for herself, a woman without an identity (rather identified as subordinates to men), a worshipper of their counterparts, unfortunate and ignorant about their rights as human and so on. Recently, fortunately there is a tremendous change in this trend, with the advent of feminism. Indian women writers have brought incredible transformation to conform a specific genre to explore the unexplored array of maladies; to reveal the explicit reality of the society and the plights of Indian women in the society. Women are no longer characterized to surrender, submit and suffer to martyrdom. Women novelists unveil the hidden secrets and enfold the deliberate denials that are refutable in today’s context. A whole band of women novelists beginning with Ruth PrawarJhabvala, NayantaraSahgal, Anita Desai, SashiDeshpande, Kamala Markandaya and many others have highlighted significance of portraying woman as an individual rebelling against the traditional role, breaking the shackles of exploitation and oppression, awakening with a sense of identity, to assert their individuality. Their novels speak about women’s frustrations, refusals, retaliations, and their breach of conventional expectations.