Delineation of Woman in the Postcolonial Indian Fiction in English by Female Writers with Special Reference to Anita Nair Manju Kapur and Meenu Mehrotra

Abstract

Even though Indian Writing in English had made a humble beginning at the turn of the Nineteenth century during the British Rule, it has in fact made its presence strongly felt in the World Literatures by emerging as an accomplished national literature worth serious attention only in the closing decades of the Twentieth century, owing largely to the blossoming of rich and resourceful Postcolonial Indian Writing, mainly, Indian Diasporic Writing. One can rightly say that, the Indian Writers in English have now crossed over what the postcolonial critics would call the adopt stage and successfully started adapting the Eurocentric genres like fiction in their attempt to negotiate with the experiences and aspirations of their own people. They preferred to use the language of their erstwhile colonial masters, if not to curse but to challenge the Eurocentric or the Western value systems as well as their own indigenous outdated ones. newlineWomen in the West started their revolt against the androcentric power structures that existed in the form of conventional social, political, and religious centers of patriarchal power. Their insurgence resulted into a historical movement called Women s Movement. Women raised their voice against oppression and advocated for social, political, cultural, and human rights at large. The voice of women was strongly heard with the advent of an agitation demanding emancipation and equal opportunities for women in all walks of life. In this way, women s attempts to overthrow the socio-political oppression perpetrated by the conventional male psyche and thrust for self-identity, self-help, and self-realization lead them to rebel against patriarchal hegemony. newlineElaine Showalter, a renowned feminist scholar, argued the three stages of feminism as, Feminine (1840-80) where woman writers had imitated subjects of male writer s norms. Then in Feminist (1880-1920) phase they had thought radically and expected a separation from male newlineVIII newlineauthors. In Female (1920 to onward) phase women focused their own