Essay On Indian Women Novelists

Unlike the past, where the works of women novelists were given less priority and were actually undervalued, classification of feministic or male writings hardly makes any sense today. Majority of the Indian readers comprising both male and female read the novels of the Indian women authors with certain expectations. They look for some “Indian-ness` in the write-ups. Only the women novelists of India are capable of conveying the messages of feminism in an Indian way.

Indian women, the embodiment of love and affection, hope and patience, have been showing their worth in each and every discipline of knowledge. Gargi and Ansuia in scriptures, Sita and Rani Durgavati, Rajia Begum and Arundhati, Roy Manju Kapur and Mahasweta Devi and many more in fiction have left their indelible imprint on the pages of history an imprint which is suffused with such a powerful and beautiful colour which can’t be erased and darkened by time. They are, to quote Ben Jonson ‘not for an age but for all times’. Remove women from the history is tantamount to remove all zest for life and adventure and to bury deep all literature.

A number of Indian women novelists like Shashi Deshpande, Arundhati Roy, Gita Hariharan, Manju Kapur, Shobha De, and many more made their debut in the 1980’s and 1990’s producing novels that revealed the true state of Indian society and depicts the emergence of “new women” who tries to break the shackles of patriarchy. They invigorated the English language to suit representation and narration of what they felt about their women and their lives in contemporary India. Anita Nair and Jhumpa Lahiri have emerged in the Indian English scenario as such writer. They are one of the new writers attempting to carve a niche for...

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... women in religion. The position of women in religion is actually based on multiple locations that have evolved through integration of complex configuration of language and power. The literary discourse, especially its Indian branches, relates intimately to the general political discourse on nation and national identity that has characterised both the period of anti-colonial struggle and of post independent India. Anglo-Indian, Indo-Anglian, Indo- English or Indian English Literature –to name the terms variously applied to a specific cultural practise of the nation- thus participates in quiet a common discourse of the 20th century that is motivated by the need to counter Western aspirations of hegemonic control over a colonized and mass media- promoted transnational cultural tendencies: presses that threaten to level or even erase cultural difference and identity.