Women in Indo-Anglian Fiction: Tradition and Modernity

"This anthology is a study of women characters in Indo-Anglian fiction spanning a period that begins with the early novels of Narayan and comes up to Shama Futehally’s Tara Lane (1993). The 17 essays that constitute the volume focus on key texts and are written by specialists eminent in their own fields. They offer new insights into Indian women who are seen moving slowly but surely from subordination to autonomy, from Dharma to personal goals, from sexual purity to sexual emancipation and from silence to speech. Together the essays provide a fascinating glimpse into the mind of Indian women as they live their lives in the patriarchal set-up, bearing the weight of tradition and at the same time reacting to the pressures for change and modernity. The writers studied are R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Rama Mehta, Arun Joshi, Salman Rushdie, Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai, Gita Mehta, Bharati Mukherjee and S hama Futehally. A 19-page introduction by the editor attemps to present a synoptic view of woman as seen in the ancient Indian tradition and suggests new parameters for this study. Shashi Deshpande’s essay ‘Of Concerns, Of Anxieties’ puts some of the issues relating to writing on and by women and the grooming of a woman as a writer in the Indian set-up in a wider perspective."