Feminism and Contemporary Indian Women's Writing

Elizabeth Jackson conducts a developmental and comparative study of feminist concerns expressed through the novels of the four best-known and most prolific Indian female authors writing in English during the latter half of the twentieth century: Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande. The Introduction situates their work within its historical and political context, and each of the five chapters explores an area of particular relevance to their fictional writing: Women, Cultural Identity and Social Class; Marriage and Sexuality; Motherhood and Other Work; Women's Role in Maintaining and/or Resisting Patriarchy; and Form and Narrative Strategy. Each chapter is contextualised with a brief survey of Indian and Western feminist approaches to the particular area under consideration. Feminism and Contemporary Indian Women's Writing explores areas of commonality and divergence between Indian and ‘Western’ feminisms, highlighting the limits of both approaches to suggest future directions for feminism itself.