Indian women Fiction

The male writers’ intuitive gift and superb insight describe feminine characters, feminine nature, femaleness, and femininity. In the 19th century, the study of the character logical portrait and cultural traits associated with femininity enunciated feminists’ discourse to justify vindication of rights as regards women’s cultural anxiety, political identification, and aesthetic experimentation. Similarly, the women writers’ imaginative powers characterize women’s emotions either reflecting shrinking subjectivity or elaborating notion of voluntary subjectivity as regards their experiences and existence, their passions and sensations, and their self and life. The 20th century women’s writings raised inquiry against presentation of gendered self, performance of gender, gender discontent as regards with their sex and gender, which are assigned at birth as well as also for the alignment of biological sex, sexuality, gender identity, and gender roles. In this paper, the study of the four selected novels such as The Scarlet Letter, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Emma, Surfacing, and Inner Line shows how circumstances, strata of time, and externalities of others objectify woman and her domestic space; how a woman perceives her deprivation as regards her own image which seems nobody to herself due to the sense of low perception; in what way sexual difference and gender-specific practices and ideology enforce woman to chide herself in the given environment and surroundings of legal codifications, moral prescriptions, and medical prognostications. The analyses of the novels draw how woman’s experience as living subject in the vital dimension of human existence and utopian image of human fellowship is potentially undone by way of sexual exploitation, dismemberment, and embodiment. What kind of vulnerable moments force woman to withdraw from her body and from her essence is the center of concern in this paper? While discussing the feminists’ culture and ethics in their works, the focus is on the essentialized notion of gender-specific discrimination as well as on the frustrating double-consciousness that characterizes the cultural position of the other.
KEYWORDS
feminists’ discourse, femininity, gender-specific practices and ideologies, ethics, double consciousness, cultural position and dismemberment

Feminism till late twentieth century has been regarded as one of the social movements carried out by females across the world for establishing their status quo in terms of equanimity, equality or equity in availing opportunities, but it has also been cross-examined in Indian diaspora fiction for essentializing the feminine gender in society. Hence in view of this changing perspective and perception of females, the concept of womanhood and female psychology is much beyond than social movements and political alliances. The purpose behind this research paper is to differentiate and to point out the same. Further other embedded issues are critically evaluated in this paper, they are-how femininity, femaleness and feminine psychology are integral to the normal and abnormal psychological aspects, and why it is crucial to contemplate upon the same-especially when the author through her writing concerns with precarity and predicament of woman' self-perception. The reference taken here is the protagonist from Anita Desai's novel-Cry, the Peacock (1963), a woman named Maya whose psychological conflicts, despair and hopelessness, that subsequently disillusioned her meaninglessly to an extent of her marital discord, which in a way results towards her tragic end. The study of the protagonist's character establishes a connection between the significance of women psychology and the disastrous consequences that can occur, if the subject is not deeply contemplated upon. Moreover, the study in this paper aims to bring forth critical aspects of a woman's psycho-social conditions that basically builds upon her past and present mental conditions and mindset; Needless to say, in some way such factors evolve the persona of the protagonist-Maya in the novel and exhibit the impact of her childhood and adolescent memories in her later stages of life, even influence her relationship post-marriage. The paper is also critically presenting the impact of the society and people living nearby the character of Maya, who affect the mindset of a woman and her search for support. The analyses will draw upon criticism that she faces, she tries to express by way of her true feelings and emotions, she goes through in her life and thus aim of the study is how Maya the protagonist reflects her intricate mindset in the course of her journey of her life that is portrayed vividly by the author.

In an epoch_making National Seminar in  India (Haryana) ,vital issues like Culture and Women,Re_creation of Culture,Female Bonding,Gay and Lesbian Relationships,Poetics of Women Writing,Dalit women writing,Women and Creativity were discussed threadbare.

It emerged that any feminist/womanist discourse would have to evolve a pluralistic and flexible discourse where seemingly disparate strands and attitudes_the romantic,modern and the postmodern_would harmoniously blend to create an encompassing feminism that goes well beyond the markers of caste,religion,language and perhaps even biological gender.

This paper is about the quest of Virmati, in Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters to find a space in the world of patriarchal supremacy, female marginality and centrality of stereotypical definition of women. Through this award-winning novel, Kapur weaves a tale that is set in the British India of forties about a woman Virmati, who defies the rigidity of her traditional household, dares to fall in love with a married man, enlightens her mind through studies and finally gets married to live as a co-wife of her beloved. Her journey is marked by struggle to find a place of her own amidst the chaos in her family that finds expression in the political upheaval of those times. She gets inspired by Lahore where she discovers a possibility of freedom, an opportunity to taste the modernity which allures her and a chance to get redemption by overcoming her inhibitions by participating in the Indian freedom struggle. Instead, she chooses to fight for her personal struggles – with her family, her morality, and her will to marry the man she loves. Virmati's quest for a space allures her throughout the novel. Although she is able to lead her life on her own terms, she is never able to find a total reconciliation within herself. Perhaps that is the tragedy of Virmati, she finds another Virmati in her own daughter, Ida-who refuses to tread on the path defined by her. Eventually, Ida becomes a difficult daughter for Virmati just like she was for Kasturi-her own mother.

Postface du traducteur: "Quelques jours, une vie, là-bas, ici, partout… "
Pandavapuram (1979) est un "classique moderne" du roman indien qui a marqué un moment de modernité tout à fait révolutionnaire avant même les avant-gardes indiennes anglophones. Traduit en anglais en 1997 et dans plusieurs langues indiennes, publié aussi plus récemment en allemand et en turc, une édition française manquait à l'appel.  C'est aussi une lecture fascinante et inépuisable, douloureusement belle et épurée, de la condition féminine dans l'Inde d'aujourd'hui et d'hier, et bien au-delà, à travers la pensée schizophrène d'une institutrice de village abandonnée par son mari, inventant un monde réel de substitution, plus vrai que le vrai, sans parvenir à combler son désir, ni à construire définitivement son objet, ni à le détruire.

Namita Gokhale’s A Himalayan Love Story revolves around the life of Parvati, a young, beautiful and blooming, but seemingly doomed woman. Parvati experiences paradisiacal bliss in her life, but unfortunately, outside the limits set for expressions of desire.  Bounded sexuality traps her burgeoning femininity and ultimately she finds herself ineffectual to escape the muddle in which she is seemingly entangled. The people in Parvati’s life too fail to untangle those knots. Thus the novel succinctly problematizes the evolved predispositions, individual personality, fostering the physiological psychological, social, cultural, political and spiritual aspects of passions and forbidden passions. The tragedy is placed in sharp contrast with the sensuous sensuosity she relished as she was blossoming. The suppositions we make as we understand the inexplicable nature of desire which gets manifested in umpteen shades in the novel heightens the irony and makes us ponder the futility of ‘potently impotent’ refrains of liberation.  In this context, my paper is an attempt to analyze how the boundary of the platonic notion of love blur and form a seamless whole within the contradictory notions of the endless tale of love and lust, duty and desire, sensuosity and sexuality.  It tries to understand how the novel succeeds in simultaneously shuttling across mainstream and borderline subjectivities and plays out upon a complex topography where questions of history, society, politics, culture, gender, and sexuality transect.

This article examines the feminist potential and political risks of a theatrical mode of protest staged by women in India, namely, the deliberate and public exposure of naked female bodies as a gesture of defiance against the violence of the Indian state. I examine literary, theatrical, documentary, and political representations of such naked protests in India, tracing how they draw from and reconstitute a wider cultural repertoire around women’s nakedness that shapes their meaning and impact as critiques of patriarchal violence. I also consider the gendered logics through which each of them attempts to rescript the patriarchal terms underwriting the violence of the state. I argue that naked protest does deviate from the hegemonic norms of feminine shame that render women violable—yet in particular framings, the gesture also risks reinscribing a chivalrous ideal of masculinity in ways that should give feminists some pause. I conclude that the eventual success of naked protests as a viable mode of women’s protest in India should be gauged not only in terms of their immediate reception and outcome but also in terms of the gendered scripts that they rewrite or reinforce. Moving away from a false dichotomy of protective or dominative masculinity implicit in some of these protests, I conclude that an ongoing deconstruction of the gender binary is integral to any feminist critique of violence.

Dalits are the mass victims of a slow cooking Holocaust that has been going on for millennia

And apart from changing their name, in spite of just trying to assess their number and without even really trying to put an end to the segregation, some glorify some divine models that just perpetuate their fate till death ensues.

A hot debate on Youtube and some other reviews of very provocative and challenging books on the fate of Dalits and women in a culture that sings the beauty of taking women along the road for your pleasure when you are a man and that makes you divine.

Feminism till late twentieth century has been regarded as one of the social movements carried out by females across the world for establishing their status quo in terms of equanimity, equality or equity in availing opportunities, but it has also been cross-examined in Indian diaspora fiction for essentializing the feminine gender in society. Hence in view of this changing perspective and perception of females, the concept of womanhood and female psychology is much beyond than social movements and political alliances. The purpose behind this research paper is to differentiate and to point out the same. Further other embedded issues are critically evaluated in this paper, they are-how femininity, femaleness and feminine psychology are integral to the normal and abnormal psychological aspects, and why it is crucial to contemplate upon the same-especially when the author through her writing concerns with precarity and predicament of woman' self-perception. The reference taken here is the protagonist from Anita Desai's novel-Cry, the Peacock (1963), a woman named Maya whose psychological conflicts, despair and hopelessness, that subsequently disillusioned her meaninglessly to an extent of her marital discord, which in a way results towards her tragic end. The study of the protagonist's character establishes a connection between the significance of women psychology and the disastrous consequences that can occur, if the subject is not deeply contemplated upon. Moreover, the study in this paper aims to bring forth critical aspects of a woman's psycho-social conditions that basically builds upon her past and present mental conditions and mindset; Needless to say, in some way such factors evolve the persona of the protagonist-Maya in the novel and exhibit the impact of her childhood and adolescent memories in her later stages of life, even influence her relationship 1

It's perilous penning this blurb.
It's fine when man is modest about his work.
It even affords him the aura of an invisible crown!
But what about his work?
Were it an art or craft, it is there for all to see.
What of a literary work of an unheralded author?
Well, lauding the same might raise one's eyebrows.
Failing to praise wouldn't make a 'jewel-less crown' either!
Why not see, if this is the great Indian novel.
This is the story of the rise and fall of an ambitious man, the decline, and the decay of his conniving wife, the trials, and tribulations of their wayward son as well as the grit and gall of a spirited woman, who enters into his life.
This depiction of their life and times not only pictures the facets of ambition and achievement, intrigue and betrayal, compulsion and compromise, sleaze and scandal, trial and sentence, but also portrays the possibilities of repentance and resolution, love and empathy coupled with compassion and contribution, leading to the spirituality of materialism, and that makes it the saga of our times.
The story of a lifetime, truly.

Dedicated to
VV Rao my soul mate
PN Murty the friendly cousin
KB Bhaskar my computer guru
for their support of my literary cause,
Jewel-less Crown comprises of -

Book One - Artha and Kama
1. Party Gone Sour
2. Trauma at Tihar
3. Mind of the Maligned
4. Twist at Tis-Hazari
5. Trial in Camera
6. Dilemma of Qualms
7. Moment of Reckoning
8. End within end
9. Vestiges of Prestige
10. High on Rebound
11. Bellows of Delhi
12. Dicing with Life
13. Spidering Spadework
14. Loss to Order
15. Daring the Fate
16. Victims of Deceit
17. Baring the Soul
18. Garland of Guilt.

Book Two - Dharma and Moksha
1. Bliss of Being
2. Collage of Crime
3. Domain of the Devil
4. Renaissance of Life
5. Sprouts of Love
6. Despair of Hope
7. Turn at the Bend
8. Amity of Empathy
9. Day to Remember
10. Spirituality of Materialism
11. Sense of Reincarnation
12. Epilogue.

Feminism till late twentieth century has been regarded as one of the social movements carried out by females across the world for establishing their status quo in terms of equanimity, equality or equity in availing opportunities, but it has also been cross-examined in Indian diaspora fiction for essentializing the feminine gender in society. Hence in view of this changing perspective and perception of females, the concept of womanhood and female psychology is much beyond than social movements and political alliances. The purpose behind this research paper is to differentiate and to point out the same. Further other embedded issues are critically evaluated in this paper, they are-how femininity, femaleness and feminine psychology are integral to the normal and abnormal psychological aspects, and why it is crucial to contemplate upon the same-especially when the author through her writing concerns with precarity and predicament of woman' self-perception. The reference taken here is the protagonist from Anita Desai's novel-Cry, the Peacock (1963), a woman named Maya whose psychological conflicts, despair and hopelessness, that subsequently disillusioned her meaninglessly to an extent of her marital discord, which in a way results towards her tragic end. The study of the protagonist's character establishes a connection between the significance of women psychology and the disastrous consequences that can occur, if the subject is not deeply contemplated upon. Moreover, the study in this paper aims to bring forth critical aspects of a woman's psycho-social conditions that basically builds upon her past and present mental conditions and mindset; Needless to say, in some way such factors evolve the persona of the protagonist-Maya in the novel and exhibit the impact of her childhood and adolescent memories in her later stages of life, even influence her relationship 1

Clone inaugurates a new kind of writing on the Indian continent.  A contemporary parable, it holds a dark mirror to the world.  Generically, it draws upon but refuses to be subsumed by science fiction of the dystopian variety. The protagonist, a 14th generation clone in 24th century India, struggles against imposed amnesia and sexual taboos in a species depleted world.  She hesitantly navigates through a world rendered unfamiliar by her expanding consciousness.  The prose is resonant, allusive, and at times reaches an incantatory, almost Vedic pitch.  The questions the author raises revolve around a shared humanity, the necessity of plurality of expression, the wonder of love and the splendour of difference.  The book adventurously forays into vastly different times, spaces, and consciousness whether animal, human or post human, to create an imaginative space for compassion in the midst of all the grotesquely. It is by means of this redemptive space that Chabria speaks of the horrors as well as resistance to it.

Contemporary Indian Fiction in English: Critical Studies is an addition to the critical books in Indian English literature in general and Indian fiction in English in particular. It offers critical studies on various aspects of the fiction of Khushwant Singh, Arun Joshi, Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Manju Kapur, Jhumpa Lahiri, Amitava Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, Shobhaa De and Kiran Desai.

Contents
Preface
List of Contributors
1. Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan: A Script Written in Blood
-T. Sasikanth Reddy

2. Dillema of Existence of a Modern Man in Arun Joshi’s The Last Labyrinth
-Grishma Khobragade
3. Social Realism in the Portrayal of Rural India in the Select Novels of Kamala Markandaya
– Banumathe Balan
4. A Journey to the ‘World’ Beyond the Parameters of a Confined ‘Self’: A Critical Study of Anita Desai’s In Custody 
-Saptarshi Mallick
5. Shashi Deshpande’s Small Remedies: A Critical Study
- T. Jeevan Kumar
6. The Changing Consciousness of Indian Women as Depicted in Major Works of Manju Kapur
-Chandana John
7. Deteriorating relationships And Marital Maladies in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Novels
-Madhavi S. Paul
8. Dehierarchising Colonial History in The Calcutta Chromosome: A Bakhtinian Perspective
-VK Tewari & Seema Singh

9. Perils of Nature’: Re-reading Amitava Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide
-Antara Saha

10. Linguistic Resistance in Sea of Poppies
-Kruti Trivedi

11. Power of Relationship’s in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Shobhaa De’s S’s Secret
-Manish Shrivastava & Kamaljeet Sinha

12. Metamorphosis of Sampath in Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
-Kamaljeet Sinha

13. An Analysis of the Themes of Inferiority Complex and Indians' Inordinate Fascination for the West in Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss
-Nidhi Mehta
Index

It is an exploration of Indian Sensibility, East West Conflict, Cultural clash, Multiculturalism and drift from materialism to spiritualism, and from sheer rationality to absolute faith in order to be better human beings in the novels of Kamala Markandaya.

If passing through youth was like crossing the mirage of life for Chandra and Nithya, it proved to be chasing the mirage of love for Sathya and Prema though for plain Vasavi, Chandra's pitiable sibling, it was the end of the road.
As life brings Chandra, who suffers from an inferiority complex for his perceived ugliness, and Nithya, who was bogged down being jilted by Vasu, together, they script their fate of fulfillment.
And as poetic justice would have it, Sathya, who caused Prema's heartburn, himself was led down the garden path by Kala, doing a Sathya on Sathya.
Just not that, life has in store just deserts for Vasu owing to Nithya's retribution as he tries to stalk her. Besides, after many a fictional twist and turn, the way the story ends, challenges the perception that fact is stranger than fiction.

This book Dedicated to Kanna,
whom I could help in crossing the mirage of her mind
has these Sign Posts to Cross -
Shackles on Psyche
End of the Tether
Burden of Freedom
Onto the Turf
Respite by Death
Lessons of Life
Naivety of Love
Dilemma of Disclosure
Perils of Youth
Absurd Proposal
Crossing the Mirage
Setting the Pace
Oasis of Bliss
Busy bees in Honeycomb
Twist in the Tale
Love in the Bind
Turn for the Worse
Shadows to the Fore
Spurring on to Err
Tempting the Fate
Stooping to Conquer
Fouling the Soul
Poetic Justice
Agony of Penitence
Embrace of Love
Life of a Kind
Just deserts

Shauna Singh Baldwin?s passionate stories dramatize the lives of Indian women from 1919 to today, from India to Canada to the US. Through the eyes of these women adjusting to change, we see a world whose familiar rhythms mask dissonance and discordance. More overt is the ongoing struggle for the Sikh women in these stories to keep their identity and assert it ? the massacres of Partition and 1984 are never far away. More subtle is the cost of integration into the new world, how colonialism survives in the minds of the colonized, and how these women confront the twin fear of freedom and fear of ?the other.? Moving from the inner sanctums of the family to the world of the office, subway and university, Baldwin lingers sensuously on the mundane surface of her characters? lives: the jewel-like colours of turbans in the wash water, the shimmering bowls of cashews and almonds on a table, the worn magic of an abandoned house in Shimla. Slowly, almost innocuously, Baldwin reveals the unseen...

The grand narratives of Mother India posit women's emancipation as the central concern, insisting on her public participation in the educational and economic sectors. The relegation of the archetypal motherhood to the national periphery is strictly rooted in the Hindu traditional culture. The schisms of caste, class, and religion in contemporary society are normalised whilst the gendered undercurrents of domestic violence, chauvinism and religious sensibilities are ignored. Such polished idealisms are, in fact, far from the living reality of most women and girls across all spheres in the country. By reviewing notable texts from past and present, this research problematises the position of Muslim women in India, specifically during the nationalistic discourse and post-independent era. The national freedom struggle movement assured a democratic constitution, which primed Mother India as the figurative Indian woman encrypting ideologies from socio-religious discourses. The grand narratives often become instrumental in politicising the vested interest of the hegemonic class. The struggles of Muslim women were foregrounded not only in the gendered disparity of the religious domain but also in the socio-cultural disparities which excluded them from the domain of Indian womanhood. Mainstream history, literature and even women development organisations deliberately typified Muslim women along with the religious discourse. Briefly, in this paper, we infer that Muslim women were rendered invisible in the limelight of the archetypal Mother India, denying their social, political, cultural and literary participation. They were thus subjected to constitutional othering by the mainstream socio-political entities (who subjected them) at the onset of nationalism, which continues to exist in post-colonial discourses where women are expected to constantly negotiate their religious identity over their national identity.