Papers by Dr Aditi Roy Suar
Where ladies get honour, god arrives there A Hindu mythical slogan is not in practice even among ... more Where ladies get honour, god arrives there A Hindu mythical slogan is not in practice even among the Hindu community but there is only on the pages of religious books. During the Pre-Aryan age women were gratis and equivalent to men. But from the medieval era, a male dominated society elevated from walls around her excluding her from the rights equal to men. The writers from the mounting countries that are widely termed third world dominate modern literary scenario. Liberalization of educational rights and the freedom of speech and expression brought about by the end of the imperial rule in the earlier colonies could be the reason for the surge in the women's writing. These writers not only confer women's issues through their works but also use their writings as a tool to challenge and dismantle the authority forces of patriarchy. The representational writings on Indian history have conventionally used gender to describe weakness or power. Women traditionally had occupied a secondary position, as they were economically dependent on the male earning members. Especially women in rural areas were exploited in many ways. They had a very low social status. They were denied education, as they belonged to the weaker section of the society. It is gender inequality that has led to affirming femininity as a cultural construct engraving the society's views about women through conventions and inhibits woman's individuality. The term 'feminine' stands for woman herself and everything concerning her womanhood. It is body, passion and nature that define a woman's feminine personality, focusing on her psychological and physical nature of mothering and fostering life. Women are often treated as inferior and are mingled to put themselves last, thus undermining their self-esteem. For the great majority of women the allocation of social and economical rewards is determined primarily by the position of their families and, in particular, that of the male head. Colette Guillamin is a French feminist who writes about the discrimination of women under the basis of gender: women are doomed to belonging the " class of women " and they cannot flee this categorization in a male dominated world. Guillamin believes that the specific nature of the oppression of women is caused by the misappropriation of the class of women by the class of men, thus reducing women to the state of material stuff. Therefore, the relation between women and men is based on power. Men dominate women in any sphere of society and the appropriation is not only physical, but also social. A woman is never anything but a woman, an interchangeable object with no other characteristic than her femininity, whose fundamental characteristic is belonging to the class of women. (Guillamin: 178) The burden of gender has a strong influence on contemporary Indian fiction and it is reflected in the creation of women writers from different social, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Most Indian writers deal with gender in their works. Indian women novelists have forcefully focused light on the psyche of women of different streak in contemporary times of never ending existential struggle in their life. Like other novelists, Anita Nair, an eminent modern novelist, has focused on the marginalization of women in Indian society.
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Papers by Dr Aditi Roy Suar