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Women at Crossroads: Reconfiguring the Gender Roles in Select Indian Genre Fiction

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247 views

Puja Chakraborty1 & Krishanu Adhikari2

1Faculty member, Dept. of English, Malda Women’s College. Email: puja6014@gmail.com

2Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Kandra Radhakanta Kundu Mahavidyalaya. PhD Scholar, Dept. of English, University of Hyderabad. Email: krishanu26489@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s15n2

Abstract

The inherent discursivity, entailing the composite category of ‘The third world women’ hinges on many contentious contours of female subjectivity, its genealogical and teleological subservience and submission to patriarchy, and the subsequent re-assertion of their identities and different female roles within the given rubric of patriarchal capitalist social order of the former colonies through strategic subversion, vis-à-vis negotiation of certain patriarchal ideals.The select novels, i.e. Anuradha Marwah Roy’s The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta  (1993) and Advaita Kala’s Almost Single (2007); from the discursive category of Indian genre fiction narrate two intersecting stories of two middle class Indian women, who have migrated to Delhi in pursuit of empowerment and to transcend the circumscribed trajectories of parochialism and stereotypical tropes of patriarchal order. Drawing inferences from these two texts, the present paper would like to look into the ethical question of women’s empowerment in India, so as to ‘problematize’ the much appropriated subversion of gender roles, through a ‘palimpsestic’ assertion of female subjectivity , as evidenced in the seemingly divergent experiences of the two protagonists, within the unstable contexts of a postcolonial nation. Having engaged with the contested notion ‘female consciousness’, the paper further seeks to examine the veracity of such changes in the lived experiences of the women within the ever-shifting paradigms of ‘post-national’ and ‘post-globalization’ Indian milieu, while being placed against the multifaceted impediments, faced by them to bridge the two extremes; personal and professional affairs. Last but not least, the paper would also seek to shed some light on the equivocality, bordering the genealogical and generic classification(s) of the ‘genre fiction’, often under the charade of ‘literary aesthetics’ and critical/wide reception of these literary narratives.

 Keywords: Third-World Feminism, Neoliberalism, Women empowerment, Indian middle class women, Indian genre fiction.

Identity Crisis suffered by the Women Protagonists in the Novels of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai: A Comparative Study

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660 views

Rajneesh Kumar

Ph.D. Research Scholar, DAV University, Jalandhar/ Sr. Asst. Professor and Head, Deptt.of English, Govt. Arts & Sports College, Jalandhar, Punjab, India. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-5850-7467. Email: prof.rajneesh@yahoo.co.in

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s14n1

Abstract

Identity crisis is one of the most dominating thematic concerns in the novels of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai. Sucked into the vortex of ascribed and achieved identities, the characters portrayed by these two authors struggle to create their personal identity and individuality. Roy has dwelt on the idea of identity on several platforms, be it on the page or stage. She has an in-depth understanding of individual and collective identities. On the other hand, Desai focuses on multiculturalism and dislocation in families that pose athreat to one’s social, civic and cultural identity. Her works offer some fresh insights into diaspora identity. This paper critically examines identity crisis suffered by the women protagonists in the novels of Roy andDesai within the comparative literature study framework by focusing on the method of thematology. Roy mulls over the significance of women in families and society. There is no dispute regarding their inevitable role, but their status is definitely a matter of debate. In her debut novel, Roy speaks freely about the concerns of women, but the issue of identity crisis outdoes in her second novel due to the polyphonic sounds of her women characters. Desai, to the contrary, presents an idealistic picture of Indian women. This paper delineates that Roy and Desai unearths various dimensions of womanhood in general and wifehood in particular. Both Roy and Desai deal with the issue of identity against the socio-cultural backdrop of India. They depict a panoramic view of identity crisis faced by women.

Keywords: Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, Identity crisis, Woman, Wife, Theme.

Feminisation of Multidimensional Poverty in Rural Odisha

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284 views

Surya Narayan Biswal1, S. K. Mishra2 & M. K. Sarangi3

1Doctoral Research Scholar in Economics, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be University), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. ORCID: 0000-0003-3890-3988. E-mail: suryabiswal100@gmail.com,

2Associate Professor in Economics, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be University), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0018-4172. E-mail: santoshmishra@soa.ac.in / skmtite@gmail.com,

2Associate Professor in Economics, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (Deemed to be University), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India.  ORCID ID: 0000-0002-9231-1601. E–mail: minaketansarangi@soa.ac.in / sarangimk@gmail.com,

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s12n2

Abstract                                                                                                                                                

UNDP’s 2030 agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasized gender equality in augmenting human capital and alleviating poverty. For eradication of extreme poverty and building resilience for persons who are vulnerable to poverty, SDGs calls for a pro-poor and gender-sensitive policy framework. In this context, a gender-based study on multi-dimensional aspects of poverty is highly significant. Extant literature reveals that females are more deprived in different dimensions of poverty such as education, health, living standard, empowerment, environment, autonomy and social relationship.  The present study is conducted with the basic objective of examining feminization of poverty in rural areas of Jagatsinghapur district of Odisha.  Seven socio-economic dimensions comprising sixteen indicators have been taken into consideration to construct the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) using the Alkire-Foster (AF) Method at the individual level. The novelty of the study lies in analyzing MPI at the individual level for rural Odisha.  Higher female deprivation is observed across social groups and all occupation categories except services. Dummy variable regression analysis also supports the major findings of the study. Complementary Cumulative Distribution Function satisfies strict first-order stochastic dominance condition and substantiates the feminisation of poverty at each level of poverty cut-off across all social groups and occupational categories except for services. The findings of the study have significant implications for developing suitable policies for gender equalization and poverty alleviation.

Keywords: Feminisation, Multidimensional Poverty, MPI, Odisha

Sustainability, Civilization and Women- An Environmental Study of The Overstory by Richard Powers

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608 views

Nikita Gandotra1 & Dr Shuchi Agrawal2

1PhD scholar, Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. Email: nikitagandotra55@gmail.com

2Associate Professor, Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. Email: sagarwal2@amity.edu

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s10n6

Abstract

The Overstory by Richard Powers is a reflection of the environmental issues gripping the human civilization once ozone depletion and global warming loomed into focus. Global warming and an intensive exploration of environmental effects on the human civilization have gained significance over time and they persist to be eminent topic of debate in both local and global context. While Emerson and Thoreau pay serious literary attention in nineteenth-century America; Robert Frost engages with ecology in the twentieth century. Likewise contemporary American literature reflects the conflicts that surfaced due to the industrial and technological moves affecting the environment. Richard Powers’ novel forms an example how individuals and communities negotiate with these phenomena. There is nothing like Wordsworth and the English romanticists in fiction like The Overstory; there is nevertheless a romantic idealism in the characters whose engagement and commitment to environment and trees is portrayed by Powers. His reference to the Chipko movement is a gesture towards radical practical need and towards human commitment. Powers lets his character Mother N to affirm the strength of the Chipko women in India and the Kayapo Indians in Brazil, who stood up for trees. This strongly underlines the author’s intention:  women are central to civilization and sustainability. The paper aims to establish a relationship between sustainability and trees which symbolize life, and women who play a crucial role in sustaining both nature and civilization, in a sense, an ecofeminism.

Keywords: Richard Powers, The Overstory, Sustainability, Trees, Ecofeminism.

“Sense of Place and Sense of Planet”: Local-Planetary Experiences of Climate Change in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior

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300 views

Sonam Jalan

Ph.D. Research Scholar, Bankura University, West Bengal. E-mail: sonam0726@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s10n5

Abstract

Climate change has become a harsh reality of our present times. It is happening here, there, and everywhere unbound by the spatial and temporal dimensions. The vacillating impact of such a global crisis equally demands multiple and concurrent scales in order to accurately comprehend the complexity of the problem. Borrowing the title of my paper from Ursula K. Heise’s book, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global, where she proposes the concept of ‘eco-cosmopolitanism’, this article aims at reflecting upon the globalization of the present ecocatastrophes, musing upon the local (the experiences of the working class people) and the global scale (Unnatural Migration and thereby extinction of the Monarch Butterflies) impact of the climate crisis. Ursula K. Heise believes that the ‘deterritorialization’ of the local knowledge is not always detrimental rather can open up new avenues into ecological consciousness. Giving consideration to a deterritorialised environmental vision my paper will fall back on Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior– a novel dealing with the eco-apocalypse, climate change and global warming. In providing a deeply humane account of the working people’s response to the local effects of the global crisis along with a poignant account of the impact on a planetary scale- the Migration of the Monarch Butterflies and their extinction, Kingsolver in this novel contextualizes the micro-geographically bounded human experience and memory within the larger context of the global Anthropocene thereby calling for a ‘sense of planet’ along with a ‘sense of place’- which get along with each other.

Keywords: Climate change, Eco-cosmopolitanism, Monarch Butterflies, Global warming, Anthropocene

Humans, Animals and Habitats: Liminality and Environmental Concerns in George Saunders’ Fox 8

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268 views

Raisun Mathew1 & Dr. Digvijay Pandya2

1Doctoral Research Scholar, Department of English, Lovely Professional University, Punjab (India), E-mail: raisunmathew@gmail.com, orcid.org/0000-0003-3427-0941

2Associate Professor and Research Supervisor, Department of English, Lovely Professional University, Punjab (India), E-mail: digvijay.24354@lpu.co.in, orcid.org/0000-0002-5985-9579

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s10n4

Abstract

With the equal treatment of binary oppositions related to environmental concerns, the hypocrisy of human beings continues to dominate on earth having no counterpart to compete except the ones within the same race. Intruding into the unexplored habitats has helped the race to expand their jurisdictions, often with the exercise of power and unrivalled exhibition of uniqueness. This qualitative research paper aims to interpret the environmental concerns discussed in George Saunders’ Fox 8 in the light of the characteristics of coercive liminality exercised by the invasive domination of humans over the inhabitants. The intrusion of human beings transforms natural habitats to man-made environments, thus making it exclusively accessible only for their purposes. Human invasions lead to domination and it entails exploitation that results in the displacement of inhabitants and resources from their natural habitats. Introduction of the concepts such as coercive liminality from the textual interpretation and the argument of resultant counter-liminality develop the core of the paper. The research contributes to the perspective of liminality on studies related to environmental transitions and alterations due to human intervention.

Keywords: American Literature, domination, environment, exploitation, liminality.

Pink Floyd’s Time: an aural metanarrative exploring time through form, lyric, and musical arrangement

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492 views

Shobana P Mathews1 & Vishal Varier2

1Associate Professor, Christ University.  ORCID: 0000-0001-9700-9420. Email: shobhana.p.mathews@christuniversity.in,

2III MA-English.  ORCID: 0000-0001-9966-4402.Email: vishal.varier@eng.christuniversity.in,

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s10n3

 Abstract

The inability of language to capture the essence of time is a crisis that has been expressed by philosophers starting from St. Augustine to Paul Ricoeur. Appearing on their seminal album, Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd’s Time is a profound artistic attempt which transcends this language barrier by using music to bring the listeners to a more direct confrontation with time; doing so by juxtaposing time as calibrated and as experienced through the music and the lyrics, and by making the reader experience time-based affects such as impatience, expectation, monotony, and such. As a direct function of song, time is experienced as musical time in the song, thereby ensuring that the listener’s confrontation with time is immersive, with lyrics that describe the nature of experienced and calibrated time working synchronously with the music to complete the image. In the context of its release in 1974, the 6:52 minute song was in engagement with the concept of time as well, in that it was among the pioneering ones which redefined radio broadcast time beyond the standard 3 minutes afforded to popular music tracks, with the commercially preferred listener span in mind. The matter of time thus becomes a multi-layered formal engagement in the song, at the level of lyric, recording, music and listening, thereby making possible an image of time that is polished and rounded. These aural, lyrical and production-based concepts will be addressed and expanded upon to show how Pink Floyd’s Time functions as a metanarrative in how it uses and invokes the elements of time to talk about time.

Keywords: Aurality, aural narrative, metanarrative, language, aspects of Time

Nature and Self Reflection in Tagore’s The Crescent Moon

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291 views

Ayanita Banerjee

Professor of English, University of Engineering and Management, New-Town- Kolkata. Email: abayanita8@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s10n1

Abstract

To perceive the human world in co-existence with nature and thereby to nurture freedom and constructive processes we need to rethink the transformative literature of Rabindranath Tagore, who explored an environment conscious, almost ecocritical vision of human existence inspiring a “deep ecological” sense of identification with the immediate environment. Tagore’s philosophy of nature with its wide range and variety reifies the real possibility of ‘living, learning and uniting oneself’ with the “organic wholeness of nature”. The relationship between the man and nature remains interwoven in his writings promoting an intimate, interdependent relationship revealing “the deepest harmony that existed between man and his surroundings”. The paper dealing with Tagore’s simplest collection of poetry The Crescent Moon in particular lays emphasis on the relationship of the mother and the child developing out of his traumatic experiences of childhood namely losing his mother quite at an early age and his subsequent identification with nature as an ‘alternative mother-principle’ Nature confers a psychological closure by connecting him with Mother Nature (my italics) “mother nature you have taken me in your affectionate embrace and have begun to sing your imposing music to me rich in harmony and melody”. Nature removed from the crudity of its daily entanglements activated within him a spirit of companionship and receptivity revealing to him “the deepest harmony that existed between him and his surroundings”.

Keywords– Mother- nature, symbiotic-coexistence, alternative-mother principle.

Study of Trauma and Transgression of the ‘Adult-child’ in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man

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361 views

Jharna Choudhury

Ph.D. Scholar. Tezpur University, Assam, India. Email: jharnachoudhury123@gmail.com

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0916-373

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s9n6

Abstract

Bapsi Sidhwa’s characterization of Lenny Sethi in her fourth novel, the 1991 historical fiction Ice-Candy-Man, is formulated by the heterogeneous impact of the 1947 partition of India on the psychopathology of children. This paper observes how the trope of trauma problematizes the embodiments of childhood, contradicting its axiomatic paradisiacal nature. Parallel to the chaos of communal massacre, mass migration, dysfunctional parenting and the marginality of women and children, Lenny’s traumatic experience surpasses a singular-episodic trauma, and is laden with a multiplicity of source factors, thereby generating “complex trauma” (van der Kolk et al., 2007, p. 202). The child narrator acquires symptoms of irregular curiosity, hyper-vigilance, somatic complaints, fear, PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and transgresses specific social norms. Lenny is a choreographed child, a problem-child, taxonomized as the ‘adult-child’ in the paper. Now, the question is whether to see the ensuing malfunction symptoms as a diagnostic criterion or adaptative human resilience? Drawing from Anjali Gera Roy’s concept of “intangible violence” (Roy, 2020, p. 43) the paper examines textual openings where the stages of childhood and adulthood deconstruct itself, approximates, and overlaps inside each other; taking cues from a relatively less-documented narrative angle of the child victim of partition.

 Keywords: Ice-Candy-Man, Trauma, Transgression, Partition, Adult-child, Embodiment

The New Face of Abuse?: Questioning the Fall of the Father and Assessing the Child Exploitation in Deborah Moggach’s Porky

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209 views

Poulomi Modak

Ph.D Scholar (JRF), Department of English, Cooch Behar Panchanan Barma University, West Bengal. Email: poulomimodak1992@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s9n3

Abstract

In contemporaneous world child sexual abuse is possibly the most heinous kind of child exploitation; therefore, continuous dialogue and discourse regarding the child sexual abuse should be given the primordial prominence in order to be well aware about and thereby engage with possible measures against this monster in the closet. It is in this context that the paper attempts through a detailed and critical analysis of Deborah Moggach’s controversial novel Porky to make a reading of the narratives of pain, sufferings, and trauma inflicted upon the ‘abject’ body. Further, the novelist has incorporated the havoc of non-consensual incest which concomitantly attributes the novel as a site for insightful discussion. The proposed article, therefore, interrogates family as a possible locus of sexual exploitation of the children. This reorientation of family as a disintegrated entity eventually brings forth the question of victim’s rehabilitation. Extending this, the paper finally argues any possible healing of the oppressed body.

Keywords: abusive father, body shaming, child molestation, non-consensual incest, psychological trauma

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