Author: Meenakshi Bharat
Publisher: Pencraft International
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 240
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8185753598
Description
This volume investigates the tremendous contemporary spurt in the literary creativity of women writers in Indian English Fiction. Demonstrating that fictional creation is no male territory and women are no trespasser in it, the contributors to this study, both discerning critics and major fictionists, scrutinize and evaluate the diverse, inter-related aspects of women’s fiction. The volume meticulously brings together the voices of these persistent and determined Sheherzades, too significant to miss or ignore, in a wide-ranging selection of perceptive essays, written in jargon-free and refreshing prose.
It is sad, this complete desert bemoaned Anita Desai not very long ago, In 1983, to be precise. She had not stopped there. Commenting on the dearth in women's fiction in English, she had despondently gone on to declare, There is very little fiction written by women in India, and that though the maximum number of novels was written in English, there were not more than half a dozen women writers of fiction.
The claim of this volume is modest, Despite coverage of more than a score Indian women writers in English, it aims only to open a window to the exciting new directions that the mission of women's writing of fiction is taking. It neither purports to be, nor desires to be, the last or the definitive word on the subject. If it succeeds in generating critical and creative interest in the field, its purpose has been achieved.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PART I
Critical Readings: What Others Have To Say
Radical Self-Fashioning: Language, Culture and Identity in Anita Desai’s Novels
Men in the Minds of Women: Women Writers and Male Narrators in the Fiction of Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai and Githa Hariharan
If I cast no shadow, I do not exist.
The Relationship between Existentialism, Materialism and Feminism in the Novels of Shashi Deshpande
The Heroine’s Progress: Feminism and the Family in the Fiction of Shashi Deshpande, Githa Hariharnan and Manjula Padmanabhan
In Exile/At Home: The Urban Middle Class in Shashi Deshpande
First Encounter: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
When Women Laugh: Humour in Namita Gokhale, Suniti Namjoshi and Arundhati Roy
Women, History and Fiction: Kapur’s Difficult Daughters and Baldwin’s What the Body Remembers
Gender and Beyond: The Child in the Nineties Novel in English by Indian Women
PART II: CRITICAL REVIEWS: READING WOMEN
On Her Own Terms: A Readings of Shashi Deshpande’s Small Remedies
Twins and Lovers: Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things
Strutting Our Stuff: Sujata Sankranti’s The Warp and the Weft
PART II: SPEAKING FOR THEMSELVES: WRITERS ON WRITING
Passion for India
Discrete Thoughts
On Writing
Why I Have Usually Written as a Man
No Identity, No Self!
On Writing Fiction
Bibliography
Contributors
Index