Sarojini Naidu Feminism Summary

Whenever we think of Feminisms we think of the legendary French Feminists of the 1960s; or Simone De Beauvoir; or at best Virginia Woolf. In that respect, modern day Feminism does not start before the 1920s, especially, if we are to consider Feminism to be an exclusively Western socio-political development. When it comes to Feminism in India, we generally consider literary artists such as Sobha De, Manju Kapur, Kamala Das and various other writers of the post - independence era, who deal exclusively with women and their predicaments within the normative parlance of a heteropatriarchal society. Keeping this situation in mind, I plan to utilize the space of this research paper to reassess a poet, Sarojini Naidu, whose immensely successful political

In course of time the patriot exceeded the poet, and Sarojini Naidu came to occupy some of the highest unofficial and official positions in the public life of India” (207). It is indeed unfortunate that the poet in her died earl, for she did not write anything for the last three and a half decades, as she devoted herself unanimously to politics. Hence, when it comes to the history of feminism in India, we tend to forget her; perhaps because she never overtly talked about women and their problems, like some of the later Indian feminists have done; perhaps because she never popularised the overtly polarising politics of gender that later feminists have delved deep into. Even when people remember her they do so for her style and lyricism. I find it odd that there is a scarcity of literature that recognize the subtle undercurrents of the issues of gender and sexuality that can be found in her poems. Living in a depressing heteropatriachal society women often find it difficult to express

She had come in close contact with some of the most prominent intellectuals of her time such as Arthur Symons, Edmund Gosse, and a few members of the famous Rhymers’ club. Iyengar feels that such associations had ‘helped her to acquire verbal and technical accomplishment” (207). However, I am of the opinion that such an association must have made her a more prudent individual who would always look forward to expand the vista of her imagination. Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that she was growing up in a period when a gradual voice was developing for the liberation of women. Ibsen’s A Doll’s House had created a furore all across the European world by projecting Nora, the central character and the titular doll, as someone looking for freedom from the narrow constraints of domesticity. In many other literary works, especially in the novels of Hardy (though rather contradictorily ), we find the surfacing of the New Woman. The suffragette movement was gradually gaining momentum as well; finally culminating with women of New Zeland gaining voting rights for themselves in the year 1893. Sitting in King’s College, London, Sarojini Naidu was not far away from breathing in this non-normative, anti-hegemonic, and anti-patriarchal air that was blowing all across Europe during the late 19th and the early 20th