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Feminism In Anita Desai's 'Voices In The City'

1466 Words6 Pages

Abstract Feminism as a movement emerged in 1960’s to alleviate the notions by men which are out of misconception and fight for their denied rights. Feminist criticism’s major objective is exposing the mechanics of patriarchy, the socio-cultural mindset, and exploring ways to promote a mind-shift. The archetypal image of woman too is a patriarchal socio-cultural mindset. The images of the women are grounded in the subjective experiences of individuals, which are their dreams, their thoughts and their daily activities. This paper analyses the Archetypal Images of Women in Anita Desai’s Voices in the City. Keywords Feminism; Patriarchy; Images; Anita Desai; Voices in the City. Through the ages, women have been the source of mystery to man. The hard he tries to comprehend her, hardly has he succeeded in the feat. Hence, like that of the fox, which concluded after many attempts that the grapes are sour, man created myths which are his …show more content…

Feminist criticism’s major objective is exposing the mechanics of patriarchy, the socio-cultural mindset, and exploring ways to promote a mind-shift. The archetypal image of woman too is a patriarchal socio-cultural mindset. The images of the women are grounded in the subjective experiences of individuals, which are their dreams, their thoughts and their daily activities. One peculiarity of the images of women through out history is that social stereotypes have been reinforced by archetypes. In every age woman has been primarily in her biological, primordial role as the mysterious source of life. Women have been viewed as mother, wife, mistress, sex object and so on, in their relationship to men. Men too are viewed in their biological roles, but not to the same degree as women. Men are neither defined by nor limited to these roles. Ferguson in Images of women in literature explains as

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