UNIT 3 FEMINISM: INDIAN ENGLISH WRITERS

Structure

3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 The Feminist Movement and Feminist Literary Criticism
3.3 The Women's Movement in the Indian Context
3.4 Evolving the Canon: Issues and Problems
3.5 A Sample of Women's Writing
3.6 Let Us Sum Up
3.7 Questions

3.0 OBJECTIVES

In this Unit, we shall look at the literary agenda of Feminism in order to determine
what would qualify as a femini/st canon of Indian writers in English. We will begin by
looking at Feminism as a political movement in the western world and the role of
feminist literary theory and practice that grew around it. We will raise the question
whether there is an Indian feminist literary theory around which there may be a body
of writers and what is the scope and limitations of Indian feminist literary theory in
the context of Indian writing in English. We will go on to discuss the problematic
nature of evolving a feminist canon in India in the absence of a female aesthetic
theory. As a first step towards evolving a canon, we will then undertake a brief
survey of women writers who may qualify as feminist writers.

3.1 INTRODUCTION

Feminism, like all social positions is highly self-conscious and works with an agenda.
Thus it is important to say at first that feminism in literature should not be considered
ahistorically. Clearly, we have to familiarise ourselves with the central tenets of
Feminism. We need to see at what point in history it was born and why. The issue of
process is also important. We have to understand how feminism becomes a
movement, what particular tendencies it shows and how it is constantly evolving
itself. In particular we need to see how feminism manifests itself in India and in
Indian writing in English. In this attempt we will restrict ourselves to women and
women's writing 1980 onwards. We will see if there is a feminist theory of literature
in Indian English writing or whether Indian writers in English move towards a
feminist agenda by virtue of their choice of subject andlor mode of expression. We
have to point out here that mere cataloguing of women's lives and woes is not
feminism. There is a tendency to lump all women's writing as feminist writing just as
it is often mistakenly assumed that only women are feminists. It is important to
emphasise here that it is not enough to be a woman writer to be a feminist writer.
Though, most of you are already familiar with Feminist ~ t 6 d i e and
s Feminist
Criticism, having done it in the MEG 05 Course: Literary Theory and Criticism,
we shall none the less look at the' feminist agenda in some detail in the next few
sections of this unit. /

In the next sections, we will examine feminism as a social movement and also
consider it at the level of theory before we come to scrutinise Indian writing in
English. In this scrutiny we will not consider male writers at all, or women writing .
before 1980 or the writing of the hdian 'diaspora'. Also we will only look at the
genre of the novel and the short story.
 Feminism: Indian
3.2 THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT AND FEMINIST. English Writers
LITERARY CRITICISM

Feminism is a cultural- intellectual movement that recognises the fact of oppression

of women and seeks ways to emancipate them. For centuries now, there has been a
tradition of writing about the problem of women's unequal position in society and
some o$ these have proposed solutions. Historically, there have been contributions
from both men and women. As early as 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A
Vindication of the Rights of Women, which discusses writers like Milton, Pope and
Rousseau. John Stuart Mill carried on the tradition with On the Subjection of
Women (1869) and The Origin of the Family (1884). Olive Screiner wrote Women
anci Labor (1 91 1) and Virginia Woolf in her essay, A Room of One S Own (1929),
writes movingly about the unequal access to education and the lack of alternatives
available to women who sought options other than marriage and motherhood. In
1949, Simone De Beauvoir writes the landmark treatise, The Second Sex that
discusses among other things the representations of women in literary works and
male attitudes towards them. She includes a significant discussion of women in the
novels of D H Lawrence.

Thus we see that women have been writing about their experiences in a male -
dominated society but it is in the 1960s in America that the feminist movement takes
a concrete shape and widens its scope. Feminist thought thereafter, impacts not only
the social sciences and humanities, but, every branch of academic study, including
the study of the sciences. The feminist trend recognised very early that literature
provides the role models that indicate \to men and women, especially literate,
educated and therefore, cultured men and women, of what is approved and acceptable
as 'feminine' modes of conduct, feminine goals and aspirations. The 'literariness' of
the Feminist Movement of the 1960s was a given, an achieved fact from the start
because of it concern with the following:

It examined the representations of women in literature and questioned the

mode and manner of the construction of those representations
It saw as crucial the necessity to question the circumstances and authority and
purpose of the constructions
It positioned itself to combat the ideology that existing images of women
propagated in society
It realised the importance of working through books, literature and other
mass media circulation of images of women as the most pragmatic way of
influencing everyday conduct and attitudes.

Let us find some connections within this complex of concerns. Patriarchy means the
structures through which male domination over women is achieved. The central focus
of feminist writing and thinking in the 1970s is the investigation and elaboration of
patriarchal systems. Feminist writing seeks to expose the mindset in men and women
that perpetuates gender inequality. Particular attention is paid to male writers
constructing typical and influential images of women. Feminist criticism of the
period is necessarily abrasive, polemical and combative. Add to this the fact that in
the 1980s, feminist criticism began to be influenced by the development of other
branches of literary theory. It also veered away from the critique of a male version of
the world. It recognised that the history of civilisation has been constructed as the
history of men, and women have been rendered invisible in that narrative. Feminism
then seeks to recuperate women from the margins of history and make women's
experience visible. In other words, it explores the nature of women's experiences and
seeks to restore the lost or suppressed narratives of women's experience.

It is in this phase of the 1980s that the Anglo-American literary world goes about
constructing the canon of women's writing. To do this it has to rewrite the history of
the novel (thC preferred and popular genre), and poetry to highlight the achievements
of women writers who had been neglected. Radical Feminist literary theory qualifies
Evolutions of Catrons in its agenda as moral and.politica1criticism. It takes a stand, is ideological and
Indian Etrglislt Writing revolutionary in that it brings in change. It is praxis and will effect genuine social
improvement. The feminist critic identifies both a text's absences, its gaps and
silences, and also its liberating tendencies, its ability to project a utopian vision where
equality of gender is possible, as is resistance to patriarchy.

What then is Feminist literature? Because of its origin in the women's movement
feminist criticism values literature that can serve the cause of the movement, that is,
the emancipation of women. Viewed this way literature must in the words of Cherie
Register, do one or more of the following:

It must serve as a forum for women; help to achieve cultural androgvny;

provide role models; promote sisterhood and augment consciousness-raising.

3.3 THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN THE INDIAN

CONTEXT

There are a number of problems in defining the canon here. Firstly, the women's
movement in India was a social movement that had to factor in the highly stratified
nature of Indian society. Thus it dealt with variables not only of gender and class but
also caste, region and religion. In India there is not one patriarchy. "Patriarchies"
emerge because of their overlapping with feudalism,,caste and with rural and urban
experiences.

Secondly, the earliest feminists were men who had set out to introduce reforms in
upper caste Hindu society addressing social evils like child marriage, dowry, female
illiteracy and the practice of sati. This necessarily limited their goals and-vision since
they did not question patriarchy or its unequal distribution of property rights. Many
latter day feminist scholars felt that this agenda overlapped or intersected the agenda
of the National movement which was an upper casfe, Hindu, male-dominated one,
and that women had been used to further the nationalist agenda without any redressal
of their true positions in society as unequal and oppressed beings on the basis of
gender.

Thirdly, feminist readings of literature and society came out of the works of
historians, sociologists, social workers, political theorists and not out of departments
of English Literature. In fact, feminist writing in English in India is largely in the
nature of critical responses to literature, history and society. In other words, literary
production in English lacked a feminist perspective or a feminist literary theory that
was culture - specific. It is clear that when we come to the Indian context, in order to
evolve a feminist canon of Indian English writing, we need to depend on the
definitions and perspectives provided by the Anglo- American tradition.

Finally and most importantly, all significant feminist writing by men and women, and
there is a large corpus of it, was in the regional literatures as it continues to be even
today. Though Indian writing in English has been singularly lacking in a feminist
perspective. However, the female voice or figure or concern or world has registered
to a considerable extent in Indian English Writing. But in evolving the canon of
feminist Indian English Writing, we first need to evolve the theory of a female
aesthetic. In the absence of any authoritative definition of a female aesthetic we need
to consider very carefully, the many ways in which writing can be feminist. Let us
see in what ways we can talk about a canon of Feminism among Indian English
Writers. We can approach the evolution of a Feminist canon by asking in what ways
a writer may be considered a feminist. We shall next discuss the issues involved in
evolving such a canon.
 Feminism: Indian
3.4 EVOLVING THE CANON: ISSUES AND PROBLEMS English Writers
I

The first issue that must be addressed in writing about Feminism in Indian English
writers is, whether it exists at all. Many writers hbve stated that their gender is
incidental and that they write, as sensitive human beings and that their subjects or the
forms they choose are not dictated by their being female. Yet there are areas of
experience that are available only to women or which are ignored by men or
described by them in their male- centred terms.. Women writers have considered such
experiences worthy of exploration and female patterns of living and dealing with the
world have produced a female perspective.

The female perspective is often problematised by the fact that patriarchy or male
norms are so deeply embedded in the female consciousness that often the literature of
revolt or protest uses the male voice and formulations to express ideas that are rooted
in male experience. Patriarchy and its norms constitute the common cultural
background of both men and women. Indian writing in English has produced
successful women writers by masculine standards. We do not find either the
innovations of form, a narrative technique that reproduces women's patterns of
thought and speech, or selection of subjects that are decidedly feminist. Women
writers in English have continued the tradition of social realism apparent in the
'
vernacular works of their regions or others that they can access. However, the very
' issue of finding a narrative technique which will embody the patterns of thought and
speech of women is fraught with problems in the choice of English as a medium of
writing about women, unless of course, the social class or location of the women
subjects are all adapted to the choice of English as the idiom of speech.

An important problem facing Indian feminism is that Indian English women writers
have rarely reflected on their craft. Indeed there is little consciousness of either
initiating or being part of a movement that develops its aesthetic. This leads us to
assume that though women's experiences are important to these writers, there is no
centrality of those experiences in a political way. They are not there because the
writer wishes to bring about change in the ways in which women are thought about or
perceived or treated, but to indicate how women perceive the world around them. The
writer does not think of herself as an agent of change actively intervening to improve
the lives of women, but as one describing the condition of women. There is no C S
Lakshmi or Mahasveta Devi in Indian English writing.

Any survey of feminism in Indian English writingJwillbe to some extent, subjective.

As yet we have no particularly evolved canon or standards to judge this writing.
Readers may disagree and supplement the writers discussed. But we can move
towards evolving a canon and this is a first step. The women writers under
consideration in the following section are those who have treated women's
experience from within and have been. successful in conveying their vision of that
experience. The experience they describe and judge may be diverse and individual
but is intrinsically the product of women's lives and not of masculine principles and
values. We have deliberately avoided writers who have not written more than one
book. We have also side- stepped the writing of the so-called 'diaspora'. Similarly, in
keeping with the emergence of new identities of Indian womanhood, we have
emphasised the writing of the last three decades with 1980 as a watershed. That is not
to say that writers like Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai and Nayantara Sehgal
are dated, but that it is time to move on and foreground the new and exciting work of
another generation of women. Here, we would also mention the excellent effort of
Eunice de Souza and Lindsay Pereira to recuperate for us women's writings from
nineteenth and early twentieth century in their anthology Women S Voices (2002).
This is a truly feminist event in IndianWriting in English. In the next section we shall
take a look at the writings of a new generation of women.
Evolutions of Canons in
Indian English Writing
3.5 A SAMPLE OF WOMEN" WRITlNG

The difficulty in evolving a feminist canon lies primarily in the absence of a theory of
feminist literature and the absence of a female aesthetic in Indian English writing.
Also no writer has claimed the feminist tag for their writing except Suniti Namjoshi
who now resides in the UK and writes from there. Yet there are many women writers
who have in their writing carried the markers of feminist literature. Undoubtedly
Namita Gokhale is one of them. One of the finest writers in the genre of fiction, she
writes as a woman with a profound understanding of love and loss but also of the
network of relationships that females form to share memory and pass it on as a
legacy. Her first book Paro: Dreams of Passion (1982) was also the first to
foreground the celebration of sexuality of the middle-class Indian woman.
Unembarrassed and uninhibited expression of female desire ran through the book
making it a milestone. Female sexual desire and women's awareness of it are issues
that Indian society does not discuss. Namita Gokhale broke the silence. Her maturity
as a writer, a woman writer, was evident with every book she wrote. Her milieu is her
awn beloved Kurnaon, a place she is intimately familiar with and one whose whims
and fancies, grandmothers, aunts and ghosts she knows at first hand. But it is also
Delhi, equally her home and place of work, whose anonymity, grotesque balance of
power and battle of survival all come together in Gods, Graves and Grandmother
(1994). Whether it is these or Sojourn or A Himalayan Love Sloly (1996), or
Mountain Echoes, (1998) Gokhale ~uccessfullyetches for us the dilemma, the
anxieties, the violence of a female existence that walks the tightrope between the
traditional and modem in our societies.

Love, bordering on lust, pain, actual physical pain and loss in death marks her
complex novel, The Book of Shadows (1999), where every nuance of the disfigured
woman protagonist's qmsciousness has found expression in a narrative style as
distinct as the subject. The canvas is vast and densely peopled. The novel is
conceived in chiaroscuro, a technique of the visual arts where the complex interplay
of light and shade lend depth to the characters and situations. There are in the novel
moments of intense lucidity that are suddenly obscured by mysterious shadows. The
suicide of Rachita's fiancee over her infidelity and subsequent revenge by his sister,
who throws acid on Rachita's face, suddenly transform Rachita from a complacent
and self-assured teacher of English Literature into a conhsed and disfigured recluse.
She moves into her childhood home in the Himalayas pnd retreats into her self,
moving among several levels of reality, now a participant, now a voyeur, lurking in
the nooks and crannies of the house. Lohaniju, the mysterious caretaker, is the anchor
of ~achita'svulnerable sanity and.the continuity of the past and present is maintained
through a dog's name. The Book of Shadows, whose title is reminiscent of epic
journeys to the underworld contained in 'The Book of the Dead', in the Greek epics,
and echoes Isabel Allende's The House?of the Spirits (1985), is a journey for the
mutilated woman's sensibility where she learns to remember and forget, conscious
that time is not structured or contained in a lifetime.

Anees Jung should be considered an important feminist writer for two reasons. One,
that she enters into the world of ordinary Indian women in UnveilingIndia: A
Woman 's Journey in 1987, to document the reality of their lives and metaphorically,
unveils a world of deprivation, oppression, hope and faith and a sense of community
and at the same time, recuperates new images of women. Secondly, she transforms
what would be an ethnographic study of a social group located in time and space, into
a poetic account of the lives of these women. She thus actually discovers a mode of
narration that by the operations of the genre of fiction lends an epic quality to her
subjects. Epic is probably an apt word for her efforts. In Beyond the Courtyard: A
Sequel to Unveiling India, (2003), written almost two decades after the first, she
retraces her steps into the very same households to find out what became of the
daughters of the women of the earlier book. It is a fascinating account of
powerlessness and hopelessness as she finds that though India has moved into the 21" Feminism: Indian
century, the lives of women have been largely untouched. English Writers

In the telling of the stories of other women, Anees Jung's book becomes a sort of
literary consciousness-raising.She literally gives the women a voice. In Unveiling
India, she says:

Not long ago a woman who spoke about herself'was considered a loose
woman. To voice a pain, to divulge a secret, was considered sacrilege, a
breach offamiIy trust. Today, voices are raised without fear, and are heard
outside the walls of homes that once kept a woman protected, also isolated.
Some of the women who speak here have stepped out. Other's who have not,
are beginning to be aware, eager tofind expression. But let them speak for
themselves [I 091.

And saying this she lets loose the narrative while readers listen to unheard and half-
remembered voices. The use of the fofm is original and masterly and facilitates what
Jung sets out to do: to make those voices heard, angry, resentful and hopeful. Her
own self overlaps those of the women she portrays or 'interviews' as she feels the
'connectedness' of empathy, arising from her own experience of growing up in the
seclusion of the purdah, yet with her aspirations and independence realised in her
' own life.

In the book, Jung attemptst0 formulate a distinct view. She says about herself:

My reality no longer has one face. I have stepped out of an enclosed reality
into one that is larger, more diverse, and mobile. . . . I continue to live out an
experiencefor which I have yet tofind a name [la].

She presents her book, which begins with her own story and slowly blends into the
story of other women as a "journey":

In the macrocosm of a vast land Ifind the microcosm of my own experience

repeated and reaffirmed. . . . Coiled within the lives of these women Ifind
myselftransformed. The effort here is toprobe the mystery of this experience
and look beyond to another that is beginning to spell change and is centered
in change. . . . It is the story of women who understand what survival is -- a
story with grace [20].

The most important contribution that Anees Jung's vision of survival and grace
makes to developing literary tradition is the refusal to take recourse to suffering and
tolerahng as the 'womanly' way of confronting life. This is how a 'voice' starts
taking a shape.

In the sequel, Jung returns to investigate what, has altered for the daughters of the
women of Unveiling India. Have the dramatic changes in society in the wake of
liberalisation, cable TV and a general exposure to a larger scenario made a
fundamental difference to their lives? Did these daughters possess the indomitable
spirit of their mothers, or was this a generation of women so characteristically,
trapped between two worlds, reined in by tradition, struggling to break free and yet
lacking the wherewithal to do so. Again Jung finds stories of suffering afid resilience,
despair and hope:

Journeying across forgotten landscapes, both human and geographic, Anees

Jungpaints yet another unforgettable and, at times, harrowing portrait of
women in India at the dawn of the new millennium. (jacket)

Shashi Deshpande is another important writer to contribute to the corpus of feminist

writing. The question thairnay be asked is: Is she conscious of the role she is
performing as a trend- setter? Deshpande has declared that she is not a feminist, and
that she writes of human experience. But again and again we find that human
Evolutions of Cattons in experience moves around the figures of women and are most resonating in the
Indian English Writing silences that surround them:

Idid not start writing as a feminist: I was a writerfirst. I wasn't very familiar
even with the word feminism, this was in the 60s, I don't think it was very .
common in India as it is now. But I was writing about what Isaw, what Ifelt,
what I had begun thinking, and I was very uneasy about my own roles as wife
and mother, which was all that I was supposed to be, and I knew I was not
that. And so I think my writing came out of this, and that out of this
articulation of ideas and thoughts that my feminism emerges.

Indeed Deshpande's stories are about conflicts in middle-class domestic situations

that arise as a conflict between societal and traditional expectations of women,
especially in their roles of wife and mother and her own aspirations, emotions and
sensibilities. What has the practice of writing on Deshpande's part meant for the
evolution of a feminist angle?

Shsshi Deshpande has written prolifically, both short stories and novels but her short
story, The Intrusion (1997) can be read as a representative of her concerns as a
woman writing. It is about marital rape. The young bride whose marriage is arranged
by her family without a reference to her own wishes is the central figure of the story.
Brought up like most women she internalises her roles as assigned to her by a male
dominated society. Like most women she is often unaware of the ways in which she
is exploited and equally often consents in her own oppression. In The Intrusion, the
sexually un-awakened young bride is not mentally prepared for a sexual encounter
with her husband. She wants to wait but her husband asserts his conjugal rights and
takes her even as she sleeps. It is a violence done to her that she cannot find in herself
to forgive. She feels violated, used and contaminated, as is the case after rape. But
there would be none to recognise her plight as a victim of rape. As the wife she is
bound by her role. Shashi Deshpande portrays the feeling of outrage that a sexually,
assaulted woman feels and asserts that mamage does not mitigate that feeling if she
is not in possession of her body. This is something to which the community of males
has remained insensitive.

Consciously or unconsciously concerned with the situation in which women find

themselves placed, Shashi Deshpande feels that she has been able to touch the lives
of many women. They write to her to tell her that they have found their feeling
echoed in her stories that are graphic accounts of the site of the woman's body as
possession and temtory. Lifting the silence on rape as violence that threatens the
women's integrity in unimaginable ways, she goes on to speak about marital rape, an
event that does not exist for all practical purposes in Indian society. The very concept
is alien, as the law would tell us. Yet it is through the violation of the unprepared,
unwilling self of the woman by the male sexual act that Deshpande at once points to
the general and the specific nature of the violence that is perpetrated on women.
Whether this finally translates to theorising is the question.

Taking another example Manju Kapur is an important addition to the canon because
she is one of the few women writers in English who writes on the theme of partition
from the woman's point of view. Partition remains one of the most profound and
disturbing events in modem India and a theme in much of contemporary literature
written in the regional languages, particularly of the north of India and Bengal.

With Bapsi Sidhwa's (Pakistani), The Ice-Candy Man (1988) and Urvashi Butalia's
recordings of the voices of Partition women entitled The Other Side of Silence:
Voicesfiom The Partition of India (2000), Manju Kapur's Dzffcult Daughters
(1998), relives the trauma and dislocation of the Partition. Equally, it evokes the
indomitable spirit of women in love. Manju Kapur narrates the story of Virmati, the
trials and tribulations of that age, the bloody battle waged between her loyalties to her
family and her love. Amidst the unrest and upheaval which forms the backdrop of the
novel, Virmati's tale is one of growing up caught in a vicious circle of longing, hate,
hesitant hopes and innocent aspirations. In love with a married professor with Feminism: Indian
children, hers is a saga of revolt against deep-rooted family tradition, self-doubt, English Writers
resolution and acceptance.

Manju Kapur's book is partly autobiographical, and is about laying ghosts to rest. It
ends on a note of resolution:

This book weaves a connection between my mother and me, each word a
brick in a mansion I made with my head and my heart. Now live in it, Mama,
and leave me be. 'Do not haunt me any more.

But in the context of the experience of partition, the ghosts are yet to be laid to rest
and the echoes are still haunting us from that past. Thus, the book is about difficult
times, about difficult daughters, about difficult mothers. The book is also about
difficult mothers who are alienated from their daughters, about daughters who are
resentful and want to assert themselves. It begins with a daughter embarking on a
quest to understand her mother, after the mother has died and becomes a novel of
recuperation. The motif of the freedom movement assumes specific overtones when
applied to the oppressive social arrangements in which Virmati finds herself. Her
body, like that of the country is the site of conflict and India's fractured fieedom is
also Virmati's conditional liberation from sexual oppression.

Manju Kapur's second novel, Married Women, (2002), too is about the sense of
displacement often felt by women in the traditional institution of marriage and the
family. But it is perhaps more significant for the complexity of the communal
situation of December 1992, the Ayodhya Movement which culminated in the
destruction of the Babri Masjid, and riots that followed, which forms the background
of the novel and on which we get a woman's perspective. The involvement of Astha
and Aijaz which after the latter's death becomes a communion between Astha and
Aijaz's kife Peepilika, opens possibilities which have not been examined in Indian
writing' in English, perhaps with the exception of Suniti Naamjoshi's work. The
novel thus works at several planes. The i~timacyand comfort she receives fiom this
affair, contrasts strongly with the distance she feels in her rigidly defined role as wife
and mother. She ultimately must make a decision to either choose the radical,
liberating option of following her lesbian lover or stay within the safe, strong bonds
of her family. The time-honoured, celebrated, even feminist, practice of passing on
the legacy from mother to daughter is treated with exquisite irony. Astha passes on
the same self-limiting values that her mother had passed on to her:

Thus teaching her daughter how to devalue her work andpassing on the
traditionfrom woman to woman.

Looking still further into the region of specificity of women's experience, we reach
Shobha De who has used the epistolary form to continue this tradition and take it a
step further in Speed Post: Letters to my Children, (199 l), by adding the responsible
upbringing of sons to the Indian feminist agenda. Again partly autobiographical, the
letters from a mother of six children to her daughters and sons, encapsulate the
challenges that contemporary society poses particularly for young men and women
growing up in it. It also articulates the anxieties of a mother not only for the well -
being of her children but also of casting herself as a role-model for them. It is in the
cultural inversion of values that marks the rethinking on women and their roles that
make the letters interesting. Here is no mother who preaches suffering silence to her
daughters, or that the 'honor' of the family means her own annihilation or that a
daughter must abnegate her self to uphold the interest of the males of the family and
all the other stereotypical advice that is culturally acceptable. Instead, there is the
instilling of a strong sense of values grounded in independence, mutual respect,
integrity, love and trust.

We would include Shobha De in the caoon. Many of Shobha De's novels have
annoyed and shocked the conservative domain of Indian literary criticism because
they highlighted women in a milieu that was privileged by class. However, Shobha
De still happens to be among the first women writing about the urban housewife1
Evolutio~sof Canoas in aspiring career woman, her sexuality and sexual exploitation, her sexual frustration
Indian English Writing and her predatory instincts and how she has learnt to use her body in the struggle for
upward mobility. Female sexuality, its awareness and its use as a weapon may
disappoint a society that is wont to pay lip service to the devi in woman, but the fact
remains that De writes about erotic experiences non-judgementally and from the
inside as it were, if we remember that she has been the first female editor of Stardust
and Society and a woman who moves in and is familiar with the upper echelons of
society. Her writing were for a while discussed as 'popular fiction' in universities in
India and the west, and she is a woman who lives life on her own terms. What we
realise in this discussion of contemporary fiction of women in India is that a distinct
feminist trend is in the process of evolution today. We have to see the direction it
might take.

3.6 LET US SUM UP

In this unit we have tried to familiarise ourselves with the Feminist movement in the
west and understand the concept of Feminism. We then saw how literature with its
myth making and iconographic function became an area of special interest for the
feminist movement and the feminist literary theories that came out of it. We learnt
that a feminist literature would need a female aesthetic and that this was still in the
process of becoming, even in the west. Evolving a feminist canon in Indian English
writing would be a formidable task in the absence of both a defined aesthetic and
avowedly feminist writing. However, concentrating on fiction we found no dearth of
women writers engaging with a female universe, its specific issues, its special modes
of perception, its silences and its speech. As a first step towards evolving a canon we
discussed some of the milestones in the domain of women's writing in English, in
India.

1. What is the function of a feminist literary critic?

2. What kind of literature may be called feminist?

3. What are the issues and problems in the construction of a feminist canon of
Indian English writing?

' 4 . Using the works of any two writers discussed above say how they contribute
to the*body of women's literature in India.