Literary Feminism in India

The word feminism refers to the advocacy of women’s right seeking to remove restrictions that discriminate against women. It relates to the belief that women should have the same social, economic and political rights as men. Feminism has often focused upon what is absent rather than what is present. The word feminist refers to the person who advocates or practices feminism and it takes political position. Female is the matter of biology and feminine is a set of culturally defined characteristics. Indian feminists have also fought against cultural issues within the patriarchal society, such as inheritance laws and practice of widow immolation known as sati. Unlike the western feminist movements, India’s movement was initiated by men and then joined by women. The feminist literary criticism spent most of its energy describing how women were represented in literary works by both men and women writers. Deshpande, as a great feminist and Indian novelist, presents a sensitive portrayal of Indian womanhood treading the labyrinthine paths of human mind and sheds light on the subtleties of the human female. Her novels are in themselves the schools of psyche based on lives and problems of women only. Each novel is a voyage of discovery for her, a discovery of herself, of other humans, of our universe.