Anjana Appachana is an author who truly interprets and represents Indian middle class women and their lives through her writings. She makes her characters speak about everyday life of Indian culture and society. The theme of her writing mostly concentrates on the existence of women and their quest for identity. Dealing with domestic issues and the societal behaviour towards women she succeeds in bringing out the suffocating oppressed environment to which Indian women are more often exposed to. The households and the characters actually are the microcosmic view of Indian society. Anjana Appachana is one such writer who unfailingly explores the pain and torment in the quelled world of Indian women. Their concerns, desires and dreams form the dominant issue of Anjana Appachana’s works. Her protagonists are often seen choked by the domestic, traditional and social confinements; they are ever seen struggling for the survival. In revert of all the duties, responsibility and devotion she extends to society, she is given to exploitation, oppression, suffocation and ultimately, silence. The heart filled with pain, the parched saliva and eyes gleaming with tears need to be out poured but these are always halted in the name of shame and ignominy.
Feminism is the most indefinable, evasive and revolutionized subject in history of world literature. This movement had revised the interest in women’s as well as about women writings. Over a long period of time, the role and contribution of women in every area has been underestimated; the spread of feminist movement has commenced the re valuations of women’s academic, literary, social and political role. With the coinage of term “feminism” by Charles Fourier, a Utopian Socialist and French philos...
... middle of paper ...
...mately "unfit" for entering or continuing with the "pious" institution of marriage. Suppressing her desires to chase her dreams and hobbies comes out as another form of exploitation. To be a good wife, mother and daughter in law, she has to leave her own pursuits. In nutshell, all the works are true representations of the unsympathetic behaviour of society towards women who have been considered as "weaker sex" or "second sex" by the patriarchal society. The silence in the narratives speaks at its highest pitch about the fallacy in modernising the nation without abolishing the barriers of gender.
Works Cited
1. Appachana, Anjana. Listening Now. New York: Random House, 1998.Print.
2. Appachana, Anjana. Incantations and Other Stories.UK: Virago Press, 1992.Print.
3. Sanga, Janna. South Asian Novelist in English: An A to Z Guide. London: Greenwood, 2003. Print.
Thus the text analysis will give instances where the portrayal of women is a reflection of the modern society which will be researched from a feminist point of view. To sum up, feminism plays an important role to uphold women’s right, and their status in a society. Furthermore, it is use to bid for human equality based on gender context. We can conclude that women now have the chance to decide on their
The oppression of women in society plays a huge role in how mothers raise their young daughters for the cruel world that waits. In Jamaica Kincaid’s short story “Girl”, Kincaid lists multiple stereotypical roles of the “typical” women in her short text. Without question, Kincaid defines roles of women in a way that may seem sexist and put a strong limit on what women can and cannot do. Moreover, Kincaid’s piece does come to empower women and evokes various degrees of power, freedom and the control of women.
Ihara Saikaku’s Life of a Sensuous Woman written in the 17th century and Mary Woolstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman written in the 18th century are powerful literary works that advocated feminism during the time when women were oppressed members of our societies. These two works have a century old age difference and the authors of both works have made a distinctive attempt to shed a light towards the issues that nobody considered significant during that time. Despite these differences between the two texts, they both skillfully manage to present revolutionary ways women can liberate themselves from oppression laden upon them by the society since the beginning of humanity.
For hundreds of years, women are fighting a war of inequality in the male dominated society. Heather Savigny addressed a very important question in her article, what is Feminism? By definition, “Feminism” is a moment started by women to end inequality in all fields of society. Women in the society started this protest to gain rights that were deprived by the males in the society. A feminist can be a normal person who fights against the discrimination on based on sex, age and gender. The feminist movement is very important in our society, to protect women for sexual harassment and violence. To fight this problem, and to find a possible way to end it, many great writers wrote very influential poems and stories. A very few writers who chose to
The book became a great source of information for me, which explained the difficulties faced by women of the mentioned period. The author succeeded to convince me that today it is important to remember the ones who managed to change the course of history. Contemporary women should be thankful to the processes, which took place starting from the nineteenth century. Personally, I am the one believing that society should live in terms of equality. It is not fair and inhuman to create barriers to any of the social members.
Kahle, Antje. First Wave of Feminism in Politics and Literature. New York: GRIN Verlag, 2010. Print.
The article expresses how oppressed women broke free from the constraining chains that they were tied to during the nineteenth century. Also, it references some of the women that had a significant impact with their literary writings such as Gilman. Additionally, the journal speaks about the ideology of separate spheres and the expectation for societal norms. Ultimately, this in addition to her madness gives the narrator the ambition to break the ties by defying the traditions of a male dominated society.
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
explores not only the way in which patriarchal society, through its concepts of gender , its objectification of women in gender roles, and its institutionalization of marriage, constrains and oppresses women, but also the way in which it, ultimately, erases women and feminine desires. Because women are only secondary and other, they become the invisible counterparts to their husbands, with no desires, no voice, no identity. (Wohlpart 3).
Nothing has more of an effect to the controversial conversation of women’s liberation than literature. The subtle cues from Cosmopolitan emphasizing femininity: beauty, sensuality, appreciating the female body… Self-help guidebooks persisting the woman to let go and just be free for once. It is liberating for the woman to see such medias to act upon what they were thinking and to even go beyond that. Talks of
Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson, and Peter Brooker. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 4th ed. London: Prentice Hall and Harvester Wheatrsheaf. 1997.
For thousands of centuries literature has been used as a clever device to show the negative outlook in which society has on women at that time. The common theme of men exploiting women for personal gain and using their heavy-handed power to make women feel inferior can be seen in writings from the ancient Greeks all the through authors of the 20th century. Writers and intellectual thinkers such as Plato, Peter Abelard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henrik Ibsen, and even women such as Virgina Wolfe, and Fatima Mernissi have all written about the struggles caused by domineering men which women have fought against for so long. It is not until the late twentieth century that we see a positive almost spiritual view of women from the stories told by Gao Xingjan in his book One Man’s Bible. The 1994 publication of Fatima Mernissi’s memoirs of her girlhood in a harem spoke powerfully in favor of women shedding prescribed gender roles in favor of embracing their own identities. It is books such as Fatima’s and Gao’s which will help carry out feminist movements into the 21st century.
The discourse on the status of women and their struggle for liberation in the society and in literature, however, is not new. Women’s liberation movement, popularly known as ‘feminist’ movement, started with an aim of establishing and defending equal rights and opportunities for women. Until late eighteenth century, women, whether of Europe or non-Europe, did not raise any voice to claim their rights in the society. With the publication of the British feminist writer and advocate of women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft’s revolutionary work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), there emerged a women’s...
Men and women have different life experiences, the writing of male and female authors will differ, as well. Some people believe that male authors are not able to write accurately from the female perspective or present feminist ideals because they have not experienced life as women. When writing about women it is possible that authors will describe them differently depending on gender and culture. But, there are cases were male authors can illustrate women representing the stereotypical female. To explore these issues, I have studied the representation of women in four novels: two novels from male writers, Henry James and Ernest Hemingway, and two novels by female writers, Kate Chopin and Sandra Cisneros.
India constitutes a large number of diaspora all over the world. Migration of people in various countries is no longer a surprising issue. Immigrants endeavour to settle in adopted land. Though they adapt foreign way of life and culture yet the pull of past intervenes in their life. They become nostalgic and feel alienated. If out of these immigrants some choose writing as their profession, they consciously or unconsciously give vent to their diasporic experiences in their writings. They attempt to focus on pains, dilemma, discrimination and conflicts they have to face there. Through their imaginary characters they catharsise themselves.