Out of the Pigeonhole: The Characters in The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad by Twinkle Khanna (2024)

Portrayal of Women in Indian Fiction

International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences, 2019

A woman is a dawn of light where all the darkness disappears. She is the sun that enlightens everyone and beholds the ability to vanish all the fear that grows in darkness of mind. Women are essentially the origin of life. No one can cast a doubt on the substantiality of women that they are the ultimate creators of this very existence. The woman strengthens the foundation of family as a mother, daughter, sister, and wife embracing everyone with the unconditional love. If allowed to grow their potential they not only enhance a women's world as writers, entrepreneurs, mystics, painters, counselors, scientists but can also provide a better vision to the men's world. The following paper highlights the transformation of women from the Vedic ages to the Contemporary Era.

Depiction of women in Indian Literature-A Critical Study

THE LITERARY VISION, 2023

Woman is said to be the most beautiful creation of God on this planet. She is herself the origin of life and ultimate creator. She is the foundation of family who embraces everyone with her unconditional love and care as a grandmother, mother, daughter, sister and wife. She forms nearly half of the total population and thus has always been a centre of study and discussion in Indian literature. The Indian writers have continuously tried to present the complicated world of women from different perspectives and points of view. They have responsibly taken up the various issues and problems of women, their anxiety, pain and suffering. These writers have expressed their views and concerns through their work. Woman's condition and position in Indian society have undergone many changes from ancient times to the present. This article is an attempt to critically assess the depiction of woman in Indian literature since ancient times.

The curse of Being Women- Bhartiya Prajna.pdf

Mythology, like history, has a tendency to repeat and reinvent itself. In order to comprehend the contemporary world, the modern writer seeks a parallel in the remote past. Mahasweta Devi’s short story Draupadi revisits the past and recreates the character of the mythical Draupadi to formulate an account of a helpless woman who must fend for herself unlike the epical Draupadi who had Lord Krishna as her saviour. Both these characters—Dopdi of Mahasweta Devi’s story and the mythical Draupadi-- symbolize exploitation at the hands of their patriarchs. However, Dopdi represents the extreme abjectness of circumstances in the case of a woman in the modern world that boasts of an ultimate cultural advancement. Separated by thousands of years in time, the two are united in this fictional account of Mahasweta Devi only to showcase the never-ending miseries of the women who are no better than the Fanon’s wretched of the earth. This paper presents an analysis of Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi under the archetypal framework given by the Canadian scholar Northrop Frye reasonably appropriated into the contemporary Indian context.

WOMEN IN THE 21 ST CENTURY INDIAN WOMEN NOVELS

Kripa Dristi Publications, Pune, 2023

Through literature, we can travel in time and learn about and comprehend life on this planet. By portraying the society's virtues and flaws, it educates us. We can understand how human society changes through time and why we need to adapt our behaviour and way of thinking to match the changes taking place all around us. it helps us how we have to be. This book helps the reader understand the changes transpire in women’s mindset, family life, social life, and issues from a woman’s perspective; to determine what kinds of changes the new Indian woman wants and needs that is essential for both the survival of society and the harmony of human life.

Depiction of Women in Literature: A Reading of Indian Literary Texts under Gender Theory

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND HUMANITARIAN RESEARCH, 2023

Within this complex spectrum of "culture" Indian Literature has represented accurate sufferings of numerous characters. Identity and our skirmish in finding its appropriate nature, has often pressurized the psychic nature of humans, particularly women. To be precise the struggling of marginalized identities is more toilsome in comparison to the "centered" identities. In this phallocentric Indian society, the "white-cis-phallus" is the centre and the remaining becomes the "other". Marginalization can be considered as a chain of events taking place in a society to create certain restrictions for few and power for the rest. Gender, class and caste are further divided into layers, creating a stratified structure where power dynamics moulds and produces identities, not for recognition but for marginalization, oppression. Within this marginalized "remaining" the identity of women and their effort to break the imposed roles of Woman/Wife/Mother is somewhere trapped between the supposed links between "sex" and "gender" which then is to be inherently related and "culturally" bound. Therefore my paper would focus on politicized children"s literature-Brave Rajputs by Anant Pai, and presentation of Tilo in Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni"s The Mistress of Spices, gender-power dynamics in Mahasweta Devi"s Breast Stories, Jhumpa Lahiri"s Lowland, and Khaleid Hosseni"s A Thousand Splendid Suns.

The Portrayal of Women in Indian Literature: A Comparative Analysis of the Works of Tagore, R. K. Narayan and Anita Desai

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023

TRACING THE CHANGE IN THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN INDIA THROUGH SELECT NOVELS

The first Indian novel in English by Bankim Chandra was Rajmohan’s Wife. Though the novel is about the events in life of Matangini, her introduction to the world was given as someone’s wife. From being invisible as an individual to being portrayed as leaders, scientists, etc female characters in the world of English fiction have come a long way. Indian society has traditionally been divided into a number of segments on the basis of class, caste, religion, rich, poor, privileged, underprivileged, etc. Developments and transitions for every segment came at different time and in varied ways. The revolution in the world of fairer sex has thus been non linear, women as a group have not grown together but along with the segment they belonged. The study focuses on four novels by four authors written in different time period describing the social conditions and the status of women in the Indian society. All the four writers are progressive and given to the cause of presenting the social reality of the country. The present study undertakes one novel of each novelist: The Guide by R K Narayan Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markand

Women in R. K. Narayan, Nayantara Shagal and Anita Desai: A Comparative Study

This paper makes an attempt to analyze the portrayal of woman characters in the writings of R. K. Narayan (1906 – 2001), Nayantara Shagal (1927) and Anita Desai (1937). Although Narayan was senior to Shagal and Desai in age, as a writer he was contemporary to Shagal and Desai and wrote many of his important pieces when Shagal and Desai were writing. These three litterateurs have written with special focus on women's causes but the portrayal of woman characters in their writings is conflicting and varies from person to person. While Shagal and Desai seem to have based their woman characters on their autobiographical experiences and imagined other women's condition like theirs, Narayan's portrayal of woman characters is found based on his objective observation of the matter-of-facts of the Indian women's social status. R. K. Narayan, Nayantara Shagal and Anita Desai have dealt, in their writings, with Indian women's problems and their efforts to be emancipated from patriarchal domination but the attitudes of their woman characters to their problems are conflicting. While Shagal's women are decisive, courageous and indifferent to the societal reactions and traditions, Desai's women are caught in a serious predicament: they are torn between the need for conformity to the age old tradition of India and the need for a separate existence for women. And Narayan's women move steadily from their age-old tradition defined subordinate position to a secular position where they are women but not heavily chained by patriarchal shackles. India's historical and sociological studies on women's condition of the writers' time show that Narayan's portrayal of women in his novels is, no doubt, fictionalized, but not imagined, rather based on his observation of the matter-of-facts of the prevalent condition of women in India's age-old tradition bound patriarchal society and Shagal and Desai, instead of reflecting the actual condition of women in their writings, have imagined the condition of women on the basis of their own personal social status. According to Asha Choubey, these woman writers moved toward an ideal situation and out of imagination created such women as were much unreal. The personal

NALAYANI: AN IMMORTAL SAGA OF FEMININITY AND FEMINISM

Transstellar Journals, 2019

Certain women in literature have never failed to intrigue us. The nuances of their personality, the myriad shades of their characters, the things they say and they do, everything about them paves the wave for their glory, and for the kind of fame which lasts not only for one lifetime but goes on to inspire generations and generations of women after them. What they leave behind is a legacy, a legacy of good deeds, good thoughts, brave acts. One such character-maybe not so well known, maybe not so extensively written about-is Nalayani from the Mahabharata, who is known to be the quintessential 'pativrata' woman of the Indian society. Nalayani is the ideal doting wife to a husband, who is handicapped and depends on her for all his needs, yet treats her harshly. And yet, she serves him with all her mind, heart, body and soul, going to the extent of carrying his broken week feeble form to the brothel for the fulfilment of his physical pleasures. This paper highlights why this woman is not only a doting quintessential wife, 'pativrata', but is also an epitome of feminism. This paper highlights both, femininity and feminism, in the character of Nalayani.

Evolution of Woman in Indian Society: Since Early Twentieth Century