Women’s Writing in India: Gender and

Genre

The feminist always tries to restore the tarnished

image of the woman and make it glorified. One evident
trait among all the contemporary women writers in
Indian writings in English is the revolutionary spirit with
which they strive to write. It is an explosion of pent up
feelings that has long been gathered. Women writers
have proved their stuff to be more serious and that
which requires attention. They handle things efficiently
balancing tradition and womanhood. To be a feminist
is to be able to create a feminine mode of
writing,fighting for the liberation of women and all that
crap that destroyed the family and mutilated the
feminine side of a woman. The infiltration of the
western culture gave a serious blow to the Indian
traditional life.

The work of Indian women writers is significant in

making the society aware of the women's needs and
demands in providing a medium for self expression
and assertion. Traditionally, the work of Indian women
has been underrated and devalued on mere
assumption about the superior worth of the male.
Majority of the contemporary Indian women writers like
Anita Desai, Shashi Despande have focused on the
psychological sufferings, oppressions of the frustrated
housewife whose only option was to suppress the
storm within, the inevitable existential predicament of
women in a male dictated society. The neglected
women as characters in their novel attempt for better
way of life mentally and physically. We clearly see a
“creative release of feminine sensibility” in the novels
of Anita Desai. (Rao 50)

Cultural clash suffered by the women swinging

between two cultures has also been a prominent
theme in the writings of the Indian women writers - a
state of inbetweeness which was explored by Kamala
Das and Jumpa Lahiri with utmost care and accuracy.
They have described the apathy towards women with
simple and stunning frankness. Their writingsact as
windows to viewthe unexplored female psyche which
is unfortunately beyond the reach of most of the male
understanding. “Feminine and masculine represents
social construct- pattern of sexuality and behavior
imposed by cultural and social norms.”(Singh 3)

Authors like Anita Desai have chosen to depict the

prevailing problems and issues faced by the women in
today's male dominated society. In Voices in the City
there is a detailed depiction of the middle class
intellectuals of the contemporary Kolkata and in Cry
the Peacock, there is a slow and continuous growth of
mental imbalance in the psyche of the wife who fails to
adjust with the hard core practical world of her
husband. She eventually feels rejected, in such a
demoralized state of mind that she kills her husband
out of frustration. Anita Desai, a concerned social
Visionary and a keen observer of the contemporary
society has tried to explore the psychological aspect
of her protagonists in context to the prevailing day to
day conflicts in man and women relationship. “The
hallmark of Desai‟s fiction is to focus on the inner
experience of life.” (Kanwar 7)

Today‟s Novels act as a mirror reflecting the protest

and the outburst of the suppressed feelings of women
which has never been taken care for ages. Shashi
Despande‟s novel That Long Silence begins with the
sentence “To achieve anything, you‟ve got to be
ruthless.” Despande's The Long Silence revolves
around the ongoing problems and predicament of the
middle class house hold. Her writings are like case
studies of women full of reality. Her women are real
flesh and blood characters from whom one cannot
take one‟s eyes of. One can visualize with clarity, the
struggle and trauma they go through in their
relationships pertaining to their surroundings, their
society, their families, their children and especially with
their men. In The Long Silence Despande has
depicted the Character of Jaya as a educated typical
middle class house wife with lots of love and affection
for her children who is dutiful and respectful to her
husband and in-laws but neglected when it comes to
her feelings and emotions. Her sincerity, honesty and
dedication are not recognized by anyone who
ultimately sinks her into silence. Her silence is
symbolic to most women in the world who are unable
to express themselves as an individual. This silence
gives her way to search for Identity. She says, “Worse
than anything else had been the boredom of the
unchanging pattern, the unending monotony"(p.4).
She desperately wanted a change and fought for it.

“Despande teaches women to fight the silence and

express themselves. Deshpande is not unconcerned
about Indian reality in respect of the lot of women, but
she is not a strident and militant kind of feminist who
sees the male as the sole cause of all her problems.
Her concern, in fact, is nothing less than the human
predicament. As a chronicler of human relationships
she is superb. The interplay between tradition and
modernity and tensions generated by it has been
faithfully presented. Deshpande does not offer
readymade solutions, for she believes, in literary
writing “one does not pose a problem and present a
solution. It‟s not maths. The value based fabric of life
that she projects are of great significance.” (Literature
and Gender 171)

Shobha De has gone a step ahead of the man-woman

relationship in marriages. Women ought to discuss
about their priorities and prerogative. 20th century saw
a phenomenal change in woman‟s writing. De has
moved away from the usual regulartrack and has
actuallymade a serious analysis of the man- woman
relationship. In Socialite Evenings De has described in
the background of Bombay high profile society, the
lives of rich house wives spending their lives in
loveless marriages whose self centered husbands
treat them more like commodities than human beings.
The so called hi-fi wives are used by their husbands
more for social respectability than for love. De has
vociferously and strongly advocated that a woman
ought to tell her partner not to take her for granted, she
should assert for her rights and boldly speak to her
man regarding her main concern and choices. She
should make her point clear to one and all that she
also has the right to be happy like anyone else.

Sex is implied more explicitly in Socialites Evening

(1989) by De which describes the erotic sex lives of
the high society in Mumbai. De expresses the
innermost desire of wishes of modern women, the
women who were brought up in conservative
environments turns up as enlightened women with
strong determination and freedom along with their
responsibilities, where the middle class always wants
to have the lifestyle of the elites. These women
novelist write about women who try to fit themselves in
the shiny version of globalization. They talk about
people who have lived their life in east as well as west
and their emotional results.

Kamala Das is a confessional poet whose treatment of

female sexuality is free from any sense of guilt
happens to be the basic ingredient of her writing style.
Her main theme revolved around love, its betrayal and
the subsequent anger. Her frankness in relation to
sexual matters expressed with dignity is remarkable.
She focused on the marriage, motherhood, women's
concerns to their bodies and sexual explorations in the
backdrop of traditional Indian society. Das considered
male as beast full of lust and ego which is instrumental
in crushing the identity of women ruthlessly.

When I asked for Love, not knowing what else to ask

For, he drew a youth of sixteen into the Bedroom and
closed the door, He did not beat me But my sad
woman body felt so beaten. The weight of my breasts
and womb crushed me. I shrank pitifully.

A glimpse of Das's special edge of sensuous and

passionate love, total involvement and unconditional
honesty for the lover is discussed in her poem The
Looking Glass

"Gift him all,

Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of Long
hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts."

Das's poetry provides an excellent opportunity for

study of the psyche of the loveless and deprived lives
of married woman who are not only deprived of
freedom of expression but are also restricted to the
extent of being chained within the ambit of the
husband's household which is depicted in The Old
Play House.

You planned to tame swallow to hold her

in the long summer of your love so that she would
forget Not the raw seasons alone, and the homes left
behind, but Also her nature, the urge to fly and the
endless Pathways of the sky...
Cowering
Beneath your monstrous ego I ate the magic loaf and
Became a dwarf I lost my will and reason, to all You‟re
Questions I mumbled incoherent replies

The image of women in recent writings has undergone

a sea change. Women writers have moved away from
the traditional, age old portrayal of self-sacrificing
women towards conflicting female protagonists
searching for identity and self respect.
Unquestionably, Shoba De happens to be India's one
of the top writers in revealing various facets,
confusions, agony and frustrations of modern women.
In her famous book, Spouse- the Truth about
Marriage, she elaborately describes about the real
colors of, the urban institution of marriage. It is a sort
of guide book dealing with, as to why a marriage is
either successful or a disaster. Through her strong,
bold and individualistic style she has to her credit of
having created almost a new language "Hinglish"
wherein one can experience an excellent blend of
english and hindi with good timing by virtue of
permutation and combination. She communicated with
her readers point blank in an entirely new language
without any ambiguity.

De‟s first novel Socialite Evenings points at the

wounds of the society from which the blood of agony
and frustration trickle down spreading on the self-
centered male dominated society demanding for
justice, basically it focuses on the life style of Mumbai
high society, depicting the life styles of the fed up
affluent ladies hanging on the loveless marriages
encouraging them to choose the option of extra marital
affairs in order escape from their sadistic husbands
whose only interest for their wives is for social
respectability than love. The novel gives its readers an
opportunity to visualize about the high profile parties
and the false spiritual leaders who filled the vacuum of
the superficial Mumbai elite life. De has factually
described the results of senseless infiltration of
western culture into the lives of elite Mumbaites which
led to erosion of Indian traditional culture. Karuna, the
protagonist of this story is similarly dumped into
loneliness and is fed up with her life and husband, in
order to get rid of from such sad circumstances, she
starts writing a Memoir. Through her perseverance,
tenacity, she becomes an active socialite and
eventually uses her new found prominence to achieve
a respectable position in the materialistic society.

Second Thoughts by De illustrates the unnecessary

social compulsions forced on the Contemporary
Women in the name of traditions and culture grossly
exhibiting utter indifference for their desires and
freedom “males indifference to the desires and
freedom of women left to suffer in loneliness”. Though
De faced lot of criticism for some her Novels like
Socialite Evenings for her erotic and unusual contents
which shocked the traditional elements of the society
but surely it touched the right nerve with many people
especially the women in India. Although, a novel it
reflects various aspects of De's own rise to fame and
some consider it to be partially autobiographical.
Irrespective of various opinions, acceptances and
rejections, undoubtedly, she stands as a strong pillar
for women- power, women emancipation in the society
and as an undisputed advocate for the women world
as a whole.

Women writers were mostly known to write about their

enclosed domestic spheres. They were ranked below
the male writers who supposedly dealt with „weightier
themes‟. As they started venturing out of their
enforced comfort zones and charting virgin territories
of extra-marital affairs, new found love, the sight and
quest for an identity, the so called male bastion stating
falling apart. Women now desirous of proving
themselves and their acumen, walked shoulder to
shoulder with men proving themselves equal and even
better sometimes. Thus emerged women literature
and contemporary women writers were no more the
“second sex”. The social contructs of man and woman
as separate entities in the binary oppositional structure
fell apart and women no more subjugated to the whims
and fancies of the male society. She had emerged
from the cocoon of her existence, the beautiful
butterfly ready to take on the world. Her writings in
English- the language of the cosmopolitan society
gave her wings to fly. The woman was ready to explore
the pathos, the humility, the subjugation of her
existence and lend it a voice which would prove to the
world at large that she was an equal, in some
instances she could challenge the suzerainty of man
and emerge victorious. The woman as a writer had
appeared on the world scenario and contemporary
woman‟s writing is a tribute to the resurrection of
women power and talent.