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What Is Feminism?

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ABSTRACT
ChamanNahal, a noted critic defines feminism as a mode of existence in which a woman is free of the dependence syndrome. The feminism as it exists in India today does not blindly follow its western counterpart but is in response to the issues related to Indian women, in a society where they play a variety of roles – that of a daughter, sister, wife, niece, aunt, grandmother, mother- in-law. But the same society denies them any individuality, identity and assertion. Indian women writers have now through their works, started questioning the age old traditions and patriarchal domination.
Shashi Deshpande occupies a unique position among contemporary Indian novelists in English. She has successfully delineated a realistic picture of …show more content…

They analyse their circumstances objectively and finally come to a new point of understanding which they had formerly ignored or rejected. They return more in control of themselves, confident and mentally mature. Rather than rebelling, Shashi Deshpande’s protagonists adapt themselves to a male dominated society and try to strike a balance between the social conventions, predetermined role of women and the contemporary issues. Considering marital relationship as worthy of maintenance they return, but at the same time they refuse to sacrifice their individuality for the sake of upholding the traditional role model of a woman as prescribed by society.
This paper is an attempt to portray through selected works of Shashi Deshpande a woman’s struggle for a visibility and a voice in this andocentric …show more content…

It makes a dichotomy between genders; masculine means power, domination, authority, independence and self-assertion and feminine means helplessness, subjugation, docility, dependence and annihilation of individuality. This categorization has led to the oppression, repression and suppression of women.
Simone de Beauvoir very aptly expresses this phenomenon when she says;
One is not born, but rather becomes a woman…………It is a civilization as a whole that produces this creature (282).
Women are treated as commodities to be used by men. A woman has no identity “apart from the one that man gives to her.”(260) Even in literature women are depicted as the inferior beings, passive and helpless victims at the mercy of men. The reason being that literary tradition is also primarily patriarchal. The concept of ‘proper woman’ as presented in the male authored text was of a selfless, self-effacing, submissive creature: who was prepared to internalize the idea of her own inferiority, an ‘Angel in the house’ who accepted without questioning the gender defined roles assigned to her by the patriarchal society. (Armstrong

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