Kamala Markandaya was a pen name used by Kamala Purnaiya Taylor. She moved to England in 1948 and settled there after marrying an Englishman. However she still considered herself a true Indian. Her first published novel, Nectar in a Sieve (1954) was a bestseller and cited as an American Library Association Notable Book in 1955. Her other novels include, Some Inner Fury(1955), A Silence of Desire(1960), Possession(1963), A Handful of Rice(1966), The Nowhere Man(1972), Two Virgins(1973), The Golden Honeycomb(1977), and Pleasure City (1982). The works of Markandaya abound in the themes featuring a clash between traditional and modern, East and West, agriculture and Industrialization. Markandaya's feministic stance in her works is unique and distinctive. The female characters in Nectar in a Sieve are portrayed as independent minded confronting and enduring all odds meted out to them. Rukmani, the protagonist, comes across as a woman whose strength, courage, perseverance and resilience is a fitting reply to all those patriarchal institutions promoting the stereotypical images of women. The writer places her female characters in different circumstances and the same is to be analyzed in the Paper. Markandaya doesn’t portray her female characters in Nectar in a Sieve as victims rather they are shown as an epitome of will and patience standing upright against all onslaughts. Rukmani throughout the novel, succeeds in asserting and affirming her independent identity that celebrates her womanhood. Markandaya deconstructs the gender ideologies that propagate the dominance of male over female. The Paper is an attempt at scrutinizing the different female characters of the novel through feministic perspective.
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Women repr...
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...Kamala Markandaya in the form of a recurrent female ‘quest for autonomy’. It is Rukmani’s faith and belief in her own Self that makes her a unique woman protagonist. Thrity Umrigar in her “Afterword” to the novel regards Rukmani as a true “everywoman”. The novel is thus a saga of a triumphant womanhood in India.
Primary Sources
Markandaya, Kamala. Nectar in a Sieve (1954). New York : Signet Classics, 1982.
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Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental feminism and literature's ancestral house: Another look at The Yellow Wallpaper". Women's Studies. 12:2 (1986): 113-128.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" Women's Studies. 12 (1986): 113-128.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature 's Ancestral House: Another Look At 'The Yellow Wallpaper '." Women 's Studies 12.2 (1986): 113. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" Women's Studies. 12 (1986): 113-128.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. “Monumental Feminism and Literature’s Ancestral House: Another Look at ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.” Women’s Studies. 12.2 (1986)113-128. EBSCOHost. Web. 10 Mar. 2011.
Love, an emotion everyone can relate to. This theme draws in many readers as it is a very passionate topic. In Nectar in a Sieve, by Kamala Markandaya, she attempts to use love as a major theme throughout the story to keep the audience engaged. However, this method doesn't work in this case because it is not true love, but rather an undermining theme guised by this “fake love.” The true theme, instead of love, is portrayed as anti-feminism and a degradation in power of women. Therefore, love is not an overlying theme in Nectar in a Sieve, but rather women’s dependence on men, which counters feminism beliefs and gives less power to women.
Malkani, Gautam. Londonstani. Rotten English: a literary anthology. By Dohra Ahmad New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" Women's Studies 12 (1986): 113-128.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" Women's Studies 12:2 (1986): 113-128.
In this chapter Mahasweta Devi’s anthology of short stories entitled Breast Stories to analyze representations of violence and oppression against women in name of gender. In her Breast Stories, Devi twice evokes female characters from ancient Hindu mythology, envisions them as subalterns in the imagined historical context and, creates a link with the female protagonists of her short stories. As the title suggests, Breast Stories is a trilogy of short stories; it has been translated and analyzed by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak and, in Spivak’s view, the ‘breast’ of a woman in these stories becomes the instrument of a brutal condemnation of patriarchy. Indeed, breast can be construed as the motif for violence in the three short stories “Draupadi,” “Breast-Giver,” and “Behind the Bodice,”
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature's Ancestral House: Another Look at 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" Women's Studies. 12 (1986): 113-128.
Dhawan, R.K., "The Goddess of Small Things : Some Observations on the Fictional Technique of Arundhati Roy's First Novel" in Arundhati Roy the Novelist Extraordinary, (Delhi, 1998)
Ramamoorthy, P. “My Life is My Own: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s Women” Feminism and Recent Fiction in English Ed. Sushila Singh. New Delhi: Prestige, 1991.
Recent years have witnessed a large number of Indian English fiction writers who have stunned the literary world with their works. The topics dealt with are contemporary and populist and the English is functional, communicative and unpretentious. Novels have always served as a guide, a beacon in a conflicting, chaotic world and continue to do so. A careful study of Indian English fiction writers show that there are two kinds of writers who contribute to the genre of novels: The first group of writers include those who are global Indians, the diasporic writers, who are Indians by birth but have lived abroad, so they see Indian problems and reality objectively. The second group of writers are those born and brought up in India, exposed to the attitudes, morale and values of the society. Hence their works focus on the various social problems of India like the plight of women, unemployment, poverty, class discrimination, social dogmas, rigid religious norms, inter caste marriages, breakdown of relationships etc.
Garg in ‘Hari Bindi’ discusses the story of a common woman and made it extraordinary by the active force she was experiencing in herself to live her life. The husband of the protagonist symbolises the power and control of patriarchy that had restricted her life in such a way