Sahitya Akademi

Patriarchy and the Indian Woman-poet

Author(s): ROOPALI SIRCAR CHIBBER
Source: Indian Literature, Vol. 33, No. 5 (139) (September-October, 1990), pp. 165-178
Published by: Sahitya Akademi
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Patriarchy and the Indian Woman-poet

ROOPALI

T \0

women

SIRCAR

CHIBBER

and

write differently? Vivianne Forrester

know what women's vision is, what do

men

claims, "We don't

women's eyes see? How do they carve, invent, decipher the world?
I know my own vision. One woman's vision.
I only see what
men's

see."

eyes

That patterns of language- use vary with differences in social

position is a well documented fact of socio-linguistics. Robin
Lafoff argues that women's speech is related to their social
position

by

a two-part

process.

First,

women

learn

to use

specific

linguistic features as part of the process of learning to act "lady

like", to behave like acceptable women.
Second, the specific
that
learn
features
them
from asserting
they
linguistic
prevent
themselves in conversational interaction and limit them to being
powerless

and

ineffectual

members

of society.

enquiry of Gilbert and Gubar shows that in the 19th

century, and even today, the dominant patriarchal ideology
presents artistic creativity as a fundamentally male quality. The
writer "fathers" his text in the image of the Divine Creator.
Gilbert and Gubar then ask the crucial question, "What if such
The

a proudly masculine Cosmic Author is the sole legitimate model

for all early authors?" Their answer is that since this is indeed the
case under patriarchy, creative women have a tough time coping
with the consequences

of such a phallocentric

myth of creativity.

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166 / Indian Literature

Since

creativity is arrogated as male, it follows that the

literary images of femininity are male fantasies too.
Women are denied the right to create their own images of female
dominant

ness and

instead must seek to conform to the patriarchal stan

dards imposed on them. The ideal woman is seen as passive and
docile, and above all a selfless creature.
Any argument that addresses itself to woman in Indian
literature will have to contend with the myth of her exalted
position. In the pantheon of Indian gods and goddesses it is
Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara (all male gods) who hold the
key to creation, and attempts to contain within boundaries
female intellect and experience are easily reflected in the concept
of the Laxman-rekha, and in Kali's
rage being contained by a
husband's (Shiva's) presence.
Behind the depiction of women as angels and devis lurks the
male fear of femininity. Thus the obverse of male idealization is
the monster-woman.
acts

on

her

own

This is the woman who refuses to be selfless,

initiative,

has

story

to

tell

and

rejects

the

submissive role patriarchy has reserved for her. Gilbert and

Gubar mention characters like Shakespeare's Goneril and Reagan
and Thackeray's Becky Sharp, as well as the traditional array of
as the Sphinx, Medusa, Circe,
such terrible sorceress-goddesses
of whom possess duplicitous arts
Kali, Delilah and Salomeall
that allow them both to seduce and to steal male generative
energy.

the monster-woman is precisely because she has

Duplicitous
something to tell, or to tell a different story. The duplicitous
woman is the one whose consciousness is opaque to man, whose
mind will not let itself be penetrated by the phallic probings of
masculine thought. Thus Lilith and the Queen in Snow-White, or
become paradigmatic instances of
Surpnakha in the Ramayana
male
in
the
the monster-woman
imagination. In her poem "From
the Border of our Lives" Pratibha Bhat declares "We women are
not what we seem, our curious elegance hides those adventitious
feelings . . . where your fine male incision never reaches/ We are
all sirens within. . ." and Joyshri Lobo resents "male penetration
Sept.-Oct.

1990

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Patriarchy and the Indian Woman-poet / J67

of the entrance to my womb. .
Feminist critics point to the situation

of the woman artist

For the female artist the essential process of

under patriarchy.
self definition is complicated
by all those patriarchal prescrip
tions that intervene between what she is and what she is
to be.

The social

and

historical

realities of Indian
in any meaningful exami
nation of women in Indian literature, and of writing by Indian
women-writers.
Criticism will have to be both textual and con
textual. The study of images is an important developmental step
supposed
women's

lives must be considered

in feminist criticism. It is the first rung of consciousness, beyond

which it becomes a challenge to male writers to recognise distor
tions, just as it is for racist writers to recognise and correct
For women writers, the "woman as victim"
racial caricature.
character performs a political function, directly stimulating

empathetic identification in the reader, and in a sense, challeng

ing her to change.
A positive image is one that is in tune with Indian historical
realities, and does not stereotype or limit women into postures of

dependence or submergence. Instead, it searches for more accurate

which suggest the possibility of transcendence.
portrayals-ones
It attempts to make visible "the invisible woman", or audible,
"the mute, voiceless woman",
the woman who exists only as
to
man
and
his
tangential
problems. It explores the idealisation
of women and motherhood, how this distorts the creation of a
female mythos, and how it conforms to the realities of women's

lives.
A random survey of Indian women writing poetry in English
in the eighties reveals a fraternity of urban post-independenee
products boasting of degrees in subjects as varied as literature,

law and molecular genetics. Cutting across socio-cultural barriers

they attempt to give a lie to Jean Jaques Rousseau's misogyny
that "women . . . can acquire scientific knowledge, erudition and
talent. . .but the celestial fire which heats and engulfs the soul. ..
will always be lacking from women's writings."
A clever patriarchal stance complete with dedication

to the

No. J39

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168 I Indian Literature

and

inspiration
sometimes

carried

helplessly

of a father,

encouragement

a mother

or

sister,

by the

away

forces

is of

memories

moments,

fleeting

It

interest

that

these

us.

of time,

stances expresses itself in a vocabulary

capture

husband

confronts

or

nature

and

son,

sense

of being
circum

and

Which tries desperately to

and

emotions.

women

young

of the

poets

turbu

lent eighties image a world cocooned

in satin and silk, of
emotional
of
and
leisure, pining away
deprivation,
conception
while

for

waiting

actors

and

doers

the

from

emerge

is an

underlines

the

desire

of a lover.

these

and

pages,

as

Women
even

love

Bittersweet is a
Joyshri Lobo's
romantic desperation that defines

unequal relationship.
collection of first verse with a
and

voice

and

footsteps

seldom

to

to and

cling

"catch

the

that

days

are past". This harping on the past, a past in terms of love,

childhood or innocence, is a common thread. "Trembling" skin
and

contact,

side-long

"fleeting

in a poem

glances",

dedicated

to

a "husband's birthday" have the poet plaintively crying out like a

pat ivrata Hindu nari, that she's "a weakling, a non-entity" with
out her husband, who is "the pillar that holds" her up. . .She
alarms us with her submission "I'll make you proud of me / a
being moulded / into the image you sought her to be." If any
irony is implied it fails to come through.
Bhat in whose poems,

Pratibha
wants

also
to be
me.

to

for

. .my

seduced.
she

she pleads.

"swathe

about
shadow

and

moans

your
to

meet
me

"gather

of caresses"

diffuse

yours."
into

The desire to be possessed

a "symphony

plays a pivotal role,

"you"
shape/gladly

to rouse

"Change
innermost

your

my
me,

body
make

crust..

is so acute that she waits

her

to "stealthy

awaken

ing". She has internalized patriarchy so completely that she sees

herself as a "helpless tree", rooted with the wind playing upon
as

her,
to

be

a "pretty
acted

butterfly"

Bhatia

Achala

object,

uponan

predictably

or

a "driftwood",
an

always

something

other.

calls

her

book

of verse,

Awakening.

has roused Snow-While and the

Charming's
from
virginal sleep into sexual awakening, "The
Sleeping Beauty
kiss

Just as Prince
pain

around,

Sept.-Oct.

ripped

my

soul

apart,

and

was

aware

1990

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of the

Patriarchy and the Indian Woman-poet / 169

at large. .
The violent and tragic loss of virginity
unconsciously manifests personal grief into a cosmic one, and
Bhatia is oppressed by an unexplained
sorrow, "There are
streets. . .each corner littered with its grief. .
which "I look
tragedy

upon" and when "reality dawns upon me / I retreat to my

world."
Retreat, a backward motion, an inward life, death and
the broken heart are compelling metaphors for her.
Gratitude to an inspiring husband makes Vijaya Goel's poem,
a paean to being an object, a possession. "For an
"Belonging",
eternity" she marvels, she has waited to hear "Those enchanting
wordsYou
belong to me." In a shocking antifeminist posture,

Goel thumps her chest with pride in being an object of

possession and re-iterates it by detailing that neither "pearls",
nor "nightingales" and not even the "notes of famous Malhar"
can fill her heart with joy "the way your calling my name
Somehow this "joy" gets subverted in a rare image as
does. .
Vijaya

she delves into a box of memories and "swiftly shuts the box
afraid. . .that from the surface the bitterness'll seep and enter
into my box."
Ironically she disempowers woman in her effort
to empower her with lulling epithets like "power of the earth/
the creator of man"and
"Yet

you

and

yet

lie

at

"strong"

his

feet

in the same breath chastises her with

begging

is another

to

survive."

contradiction

Woman
that

as
she

"fragile"
accepts

as

real, thus reinforcing male stereotyping of woman.

Anne Alexander also titles her collection Awakening, the
woman "awaking" to a "poet's destiny". Although she claims
this destiny, the whole process seems to be
that she "assumes"
She is a "chosen slave", a "blinded child",
out of her control.

her "eyes", she says, "are not my own", she begs with
outstretched for illumination",
for experience
and
to
her
kind.
Like
denied
Gandhari
in
the
Maha
knowledge long

even

"hands

bharata, her perceptions are symbolically trammelled.

There is overwhelming evidence of solitariness, aloneness,
emptiness, and the images are repeatedly of night, darkness,
winter and the colour black, and the sights are always set on the
sky and the stars above.
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170 I Indian Liter atur

The

woman poet, like the "lotus", rises to the surface from

the depths, but what can the poet do with her new found voice?
Anne Alexander's wail of "with whom do I share the joy of my

foregrounds the question of women's writing and their

readership. She also knows that because she's a woman she'll be
"choked"
and "stifled".
silenced, "mocked",
Only the dark
of
can
hide
her
her
and
"night"
anonymity
pen. In questioning
being?"

the Lord whether her life was meant to be wasted in the "lonely
she makes a poignant statement on
corner of a dim room. .
female condition everywhere.
The decibel shattering patriarchal voice of "thunder" lashes
and in "violent drops of rain" in Jayashree
out in "anger"
Nandi's

Iravati and Other Poems. Iravati

of the "wild giggle" is

sternly tamed, and therein lies the pain. "Compromise", "Lonely
Pain" and "In Anger, in Pain" are three poems which reflect a
woman's life. Tamed "female aspirations" and heavy-chains of
"domesticities"
and

had dared
course,

the

make Nandi look "at my own corpse", helplessly

In

passively.

self-directed

to believe that
waves

. . . and

anger

the

poet

wonders

how

she

she could "play with the colours, the

change

them

all,"

that

she

too

could

be part of history.
Jayashree's rational scientific mind (a Ph. D. in Molecular
Genetics) scrutinizes irrational nature, crafting poetry out of
it. There

is suppressed

and

overt

violence,

mirroring

her

own

feminine impotence and rage.

A savage eroded mountainscape
reflects time ravaged faces lined with creases.
The "cold cruel
rocks" are distant and aloof, masculine, and "unresponsive",
the maddening gush of wind, "snatching", "wrenching", "uproot
Precise similes abound, images
evocative and razor
ing".
sharp. The river Iravati has her "long plait flying. . .", the dense
misty dawn is "like a reluctant beloved taking leave", and "the

mountain stands like an embarrassed intruder."

Malavika Rajbans Sanghvi is very much the city-bred soph
The "elevator"
isticate, her metaphor is urban claustrophobia.
and meaninglessly which
moving up and down monotonously
the lift attendant attends to, but makes no contact with, and the
Sept.-Oct.

1990

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Patriarchy and the Indian Woman-poet j ill

closed

space closing in, is stark and brutal imagery. His anony

and
mity
marginalisation have a parallel in the limited space of
woman's

existence.

animal
Malavika's
contain
poems
Deliberately obscure,
in
their psychic content: "goat",
"raven",
imagery, Freudian
"toad", "tracking wolf", "coiled snake", "baying beast", "lurk
birds", "fishes", "dark and brooding
ing creature" "squaking
beasts of many seas", "elephants" dying, "ass's head", "baying
"a

crazed falcon", a "wise old owl", and a

These
fears lurk in the maxshes of the uncon
"shadowy
woman's
scious,
suppressed sexual desires curbed in by a "room",
"
a space, an ideology.
The question of female sexuality, culturally
suppressed,
contained and cordoned off, is not fully addressed by these
hyenas",

love

bird".

poets. Puritanically shying away from passion, they never probe

the body, only vaguely touching the periphery of the mind or
guiltily indicating, like Joyshri Lobo does that "our bodies then
took precedence. . .till thus satiated we turned to the mind", to
"erupt"

She never comes to grips with the

to "explode".
of
treating it clinically till in
ecstasy
sexalways

and

orgasmic
evading

for

substitute

experience

up

passion.

love

seeking
is

regret

"mechanical"

and

without

for

craving

perversely

There

is unsatisfactory,

it is male-centred

that

ends

conversation",

worldly

"manly,
as

she

passion

and

too

that

and

sweet

sterile
words

her

sexual

"momentary",
or

"prologue",

an

"epi

logue".

If Jayashree
prefers

"dark

Nandi is trapped

amnesia"

and

draws

within a wall
our

attention

of pain and
to

a woman's

Radha
closed space, where mind is "dwarfed" like a "Bonsai",
with its anaemic images of "pale
Monogenesis
Saraswathy's
"twilight glows", "flickering lights", "glow-worms",
of light", "bloodless
"skull
veins", "brain-white",
or
white" with everything "slithering",
"sliding"
"sinking"
makes a statement on woman's schizophrenic existence.
at the use of bird image metaphors in women's
Looking

greens",
"shivers

writing in the 19th century, Ellen Moers concludes

that there is
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172 I Indian Literature

something distinctive in the way women writers have used certain
She states that "birds" because they are little and
images.
because they are beautiful and exotic creatures promising sensual
delights, are soft and round, palpitate, flutter and sing that they
Jane Eyre spurns Rochester's
are universal emblems of love.
by proudly declaring, "I am no bird and no net
Our female poets wishing release from their
ensnares me."
caged experience want to grow wings and take flight.
"We sleep the contentment of lovely birds in the cages/ all
illicit love

dreaming/ of a flight. . ." writes Pratibha Bhat. "All

the while" implies a secret betrayal of the phallocentric world in
which women find themselves imprisoned.
the while

Goel pre-fixes her flight with an 'if'"If

I had
'if' the impossibility of the
Like Andrew Marvel's
in which she is placed as a woman is acutely experi
enced. But, even if such a cataclysmic event were to occur, she'd
Vijaya

wings".
situation

masochistically
"mango

tree"

deny herself the palpable

or

to

"snow-clad"

pleasure of flying to a
Unused

peak.

to "wings"

into the illusory and elusive "window

of your
"hop"
Here is proof of how complete patriarchal indoctri
heart".
nation is! Elsewhere she wishes she could "clip the wings of
time", unconscious of her own clipped wings.
Surekha Vij wants to be free as a sun-bird to "rejoice in your
she'd

Note

thoughts".

the

dependency

on

the

"your".

pronoun

Again

there is consciousness

of failure expressed plaintively in "I wish

I had the way to fly", ending in a shrill refrain "I wish I had
the wings/1 had the wings. .
Nandi's

poems abound in bird images, conventional and

hurt and restlessness are ensconsed in "The
Pain,
startling.
of
a
Koel", "a lone bird in search of a mate".
While
Longings
loneliness returns in concentric circles like a "lone flapper circling
the same path", the muse in her is awakened by "the tiny finch

fluttering feathers / spluttering restlessness."

amidst

claustrophobia

tries "again"
Sanghvi
Sept.-Od.

the

flutter

to "face myself".
has a "love crazed

There is endless

of "caged

wings",

falcon",

a "wise

as

the

poet

owl" and "a

1990

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Patriarchy and the Indian Woman-poet f 173

shadowy bird" haunting the pages of her poetry; a lovelorn
Pratibha Bhat's "lips" are like "a rain blighted bird/ trilling with
the warmth of your window",
birds and flowers entwine her
aching soul and when utterly disillusioned her "birds" take flight,

she carries in anger "a cyclone in my trail".

Charu Sheel Singh's birds are "cloistered"

and "quivering"
while the "dove of love has fled. . .weeping earth. "Neelima Wig
contains a "bird inside" her, which she needs to "set free", to
"sing the strains it was meant to", and Kaninika Bhatnagar is

like "a. . .bird just flapping its wings for its first flight," and
Anamika is "a bird un-nested" seeking its "way to you".
Her
birds also twitter, "Birds of timid desires" "hop" and "fly" in
"dismay".
The birds are caged and cribbed and want to fly but never
seem to take flight, not even when the bird is a woman's
dream

or aspiration!
Thus enclosed within the spaces of affluent urban
homes these young Indian women poets are often obsessively
self-absorbed, introspecting into the recesses of their leisure-filled
minds.
If one is looking for social realism, for voices that will
one could easily be disappointed.
pull you out of complacency

Nature is too often only a part of expensive vacation excursions.

It is not the harsh reality of survival as it is for millions of our
The turbulent rivers, jagged rocks, or burning
country-women.
desert sands that they describe do not really touch their lives
and so lose their colours in their poetry. Poverty is fashionable

for poetry and the grief it evokes is synthetic and is

But then this is true of much
mostly an intellectual posture.
of new Indian verse in English, both male and female, although
women-poets empathise with deprivation more genuinely.
Feminist concerns for the aged, the deprived girlchild or a
material

prospective dowry victim limp their way in here and there, but
no strong voices are raised. Joyshri Lobo guiltily confesses to
but her
feeling "secure in my air-conditioned compartment. .
she
looks
when
at
is
"fetid",
punctured
superficial concern

slum dwellings and sees men lying on "bright

"crumbling"
while the
mattresses / sheets of cotton loaded mattresses"

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174.1 Indian Literature

women lay at their feet on "hard clay floors"! That the wretch
edness of poverty touches the lives of men, women and children
alike, she neither knows nor is able to imagine.
Woman as mother or child-bearer is lovingly dwelt upon.
Here too there is no escape from images that are inhibited
and stereotypical.
Motherhood is mvthologised and mother's
"bangles" make sweet music for Nandi. They don't strike her as
Bhat grieves over her mother's "soft
symbols of enslavement.
fair cheek", while Surekha Vij recalls her mother's "dove-like
touch" and Nandi pours over her son reminding him of his
"mothers warmth".
For Anamika, mother is "so tender and so
brave", an "epic of grace".
Vijaya Goel registers no horror or pain at the sight of the
slain blood stained body of Indira Gandhi.
For her she is a
"calm mother",
"and a bedecked
bride." Mythical Durga
and Kali empowered or disempowered
find no place in these
poems.

Nini Lungalang's
Mother

is

no

longer

mother is real, not an idealized abstraction.

a

suffering

here.

martyr

"She

has

stamped

herself soul deep in me with things that are hers. . .Things. . .1

did not want . . ."
That this is self-perpetuating is clear in the
last line: "my daughter looks a lot like me."
She fears for the "street sweeper", dirty and grimy, and yet
beautiful who "doesn't
know she's beautiful/ but one day she'll
wish she wasn't . .
Understated in the "wish" is the tragic
knowledge that male lust and brutality will make victim of the
unsuspecting virginity of the streetsweeper.
To be the father is to stand at a certain remove and to

present the child to the world in a dignified posture.

To be
mother one must lie supine, spread-legged,
exposing the locus of
the child's generation, the womb. Thus the child in the
womb,
warm, secure and cloistered, unseen and unheard, symbolic of
the mother's life, is preferable to child birth. "Awaited Birth " is

Achala
she

so

Bhatia's

lovingly

ode

traces

to her "unborn
and

matriarchal claim: "You'll

Sept.-Oct.

on

whom

child", whose "contours"

she

desperately

asserts

her

be like me," she asserts. In being born

1990

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Patriarchy and the Indian Woman-poet I 175

the umblical

cord will be severed and patriarchy will stamp its

identity.
Radha

"Still Born", "smothers" to death its

Saraswathy's
"dilated brain" bubbling into "amniotic odours".
If this is the
cruel and deliberate fate of a female foetus, we are not told.
dream"
Jayashree Nandi's
being
"My Child" is a "vague
She worries what fate awaits her unborn child,
"crystallized".
into
maternal
lapsing
sentimentality and concern but lacking
the power of Louis MacNeice's "Prayer Before Birth".
In "To the baby in my womb" Pia Ganguly (who lives in the
US) addresses her fears, "I am a little scared." She is afraid her
"tall football player" son will laugh at her, an "emotional

midget."
Sanghvi has "no words to unearth" her "unborn
children". She calls them "Sunflowers" who'll "pop up from our
tombs." Charu Sheel Singh sees "a dream of forms full of formal

in her "barren, unfertilized egg. . ." and again her

tissues of an
"shadowy being is forced by the cantankerous
unborn child. . ."
But childbirth or fear for the fate of the
female child is nowhere expressed by the poets considered here.
meanings"

Glossing over disturbing concerns in our Indian social milieu,

some of these women-poets have used language precisely and

analytically

to dissect

only

their

personal

traumas.

Unlike

black

women-writers, they do not specifically write against the erosion

and repression of female sexuality as it is channelled by male
desire and stifled by domestic life, nor do they wield their pen to
fight against decades of entombment in domestic space or to

stake their claim to holding up half the sky.

is the "subject"
of
far too long an "object",
"Woman",
to
Guide
A
D'souza's
book
of
verse,
Spelling
Woman,
Charmayne
which is refreshing in its feminist content. Choosing to "worship"
a "crucified man" (Christ) rather than be slowly impaled to death
she rejects the all suffering image
sexually and psychologically,
Covert anger veiled by sharp satire exposes
of Mary Magdelene.
the brutal exploitation of women by both God and man as in a
near

"blasphemous"
other males to claim

image, God too must stand in line with

the whore's body. Roles change when the
No. 139

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176 I Indian Literature

poet confidently discards the pining woman image, when she
states that her lovers have in no way "interfered with my life".
"Strange Bedfellows" is hard-hitting in its attempt to strip and
demythisize marriage of its hypocritical spiritual posture, with "I
have marked this woman out for me." The "scarlet" bridal saree
and the scarlet vermillion brand her and
The "mangalsutra"
object for procreation.

mark her out as an

lying like a "bullet"
as the "swift sharp

in the woman's breast, spells violence just

erection" will spill scarlet virginal blood.

If the feminist anger jars, it'll be so because it is unexpected

and unconventional and disturbing in woman's poetry. "I meet
you in unequal combat," Charmayne declares and she gets ready
to draw swords across "cattlefronts" and "battlefronts". Thus
freeing herself from cultural stereotypes, she succeeds in being
"what I am. . .peculiar only to me." Speaking with firm under
stated determination, she says,. "I'd like to have my mind back,"
with the implied castigation of what the society
the female intellect.
My

of

reading

concerns

that

are

Indian

common

in English

women-poets
to women

elsewhere

has done to
reveals

in the

world,

some
and

some that are specific to Indian social realities: (i) women's pursuit
of love and happiness, (ii) male attitudes to woman as object,
iiii) the idealisation of motherhood, (iv) fulfilment in concep
tion and child-birth, (v) the development of the self, over and
beyond,

but

not

separate

from

tradition

and

other

man-made

of social and religious atrocities

restrictions, (vi) consciousness
on women, (vii) the tragic effect of communal violence, especially
in the lives of women (There are images of terror, bloodshed
and loss of shelter in Lobo's
. .A night of swinging matchets
. . .and drunken howling mob", while Sanghvi tells us that "one

minute they were borrowing onions/and then this. . .") This is

not to deny the existence of positive and substantive elements
in the domestic experiences of women, who are, after all, break

ing the silence and, like Vij, questioning their craft ("Am I a
poet, or only a scribbler?") Women are finally leaning out of
the "kitchen-window"
with Pratibha Bhat while the "stove
Sept.-Oct.

1990

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Patriarchy and the Indian Woman-poet I 177

buzzes"

and the "kettle boils", "nursing" wailing infants, to see

boomerang"
refusing to "shut their dreams like
in plastic
boxes."
Thus women-writers are
pepper-corns
the "stars

unwitting witnesses, as Mary

their

and

event

own

private

true artist's

The

"to both the public

Kelley states,
experience."

voice

is one of individual style and it is

to
but
sexless,
then,
quote Joyce Carole Oates, "Perhaps to have
a sex determined voice, or to be believed to have one is, after
all, better than to have no voice at all."

Select

Anne,

Alexander,

Achala.

To

Ist ed. London

Charmayne.
Ltd.
Longman's

Pia.

Images

Workshop.
Delhi:
S.S.

1988.
Publication.

Guide

to Woman.
A Reader.

Theory:

on a Stroll.

Calcutta:

Writers

Blackwell

London:

1989.
Workshop.
in Literature

The Autumn Flowers.

Calcutta:
Vijaya.
a Difference:
and Kahn.
ed. Making

Writers

Workshop.

1990.

Feminist

Literary

Criticism.

ed.

York:

C.S.

The Fare

Delhi:

Vikas

Lakshmi,
New

Century

Joyshri.
Toril.
Methuen.

I Textual

Stage:
Literary
York : OUP.
1943.

the Mask'.

Publishers.

Bittersweet.

Sexual

Public
New

America.
Behind

and

1980.

Praegen.

1985.
Methuen,
Private
Woman,

Mary.

Nineteenth

Women

Orient

Hyderabad:

Language

New

Nandi,

New

and

Kelley,

Moi,

Writers

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Furman.
Borker,
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Greene

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of Halebid.

Calcutta:

A Spelling
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Eagleton,
Mary. Feminist
Oxford.
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Goel,

: Writers

Calcutta

Writers

Stones

Woman

Mary.

D'Souza,

Ganguly,

the

The Homescape.

Frances

1987,

Poems.

1989.

Workshop.
Bhat, Pratibha.
Billington,

Other

Calcutta:

Awakening.

Kaninika.

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and

Awakening

1989.

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Bhatia,

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Women

in

Domesticity
Tamil

in

Literature.

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: Writers

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Theory.

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Jayashree,

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I In/Han

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Atina,

Recent

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Calcutta:

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