Women's Issues - Page 2

The Image of Syncretic Javanese Women in Digdo Irianto’s Paintings

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230 views

Nanang Yulianto1, Narsen Afatara2, Bani Sudardi3 & Warto4

1Universitas Sebelas Maret, Indonesia, nanangfirel@yahoo.co.id

2Universitas Sebelas Maret, Indonesia, narsen-afatara@yahoo.com

3Universitas Sebelas Maret, Indonesia, banisudardi@yahoo.co.id

4Universitas sebelas Maret, Indonesia, warto-file@yahoo.com

 Volume 12, Number 6, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n6.24 

Abstract

Through his paintings, Digdo Irianto unveils figures of Javanese women showing an expressive, bold and open face and body gestures. His imagination was based on a cultural change observed in Surakarta society which is heavily dominated by syncretic characteristics, evoking Javanese traditional cultures and modern culture. His conceptual imagination indicates his desire to put a woman in an honorable position where the body can be interpreted as a medium meant to sow and revive a dry soul following the presence of image embedded in modern life. Javanese women can synergize the spirit and essence of Javanese cultural values which uphold philosophical ??and practical, materialistic modern culture.

Keywords: Imagination, Javanese women, paintings, syncretic culture

A Feminist Reading of Filipino Women Poets

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449 views

Jennie V. Jocson, PhD

Philippine Normal University, Philippines. ORCID: 0000-0002-0042-2962. Email: jocson.jenniev@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 6, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n6.23 

Abstract

This paper draws on ideas from a shared identity of Filipino women writers. While a shift in 21st Century feminist reading, mainly the slant that to think about woman is also to think about gender, has become available for interrogation and re-inscription, the study on Filipino woman as a construct and a subject of self-representation of contemporary Filipino poetry remains scarce. Drawing at how women and their experiences were represented in select poems written by 4 contemporary women poets, this paper explored common patterns of women imaging using textual and thematic analysis, alongside French feminism expounded by the arguments of Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva. The findings revealed that women poets’ rhetoric, awakening, resistance, and call to action had redefined women experience as a collective whole. Collective as they seem, the poems established a strong articulation of a feminist stance, which is a resistance against subversion and marginality. The paper is of relevance both to feminist scholars and others with practical interests in women poetry as it will enable them to better understand Filipino women experience and its representation in verse.

Keywords: Filipino women, feminist, poetry, representation, imaging.

Celebrating Female Desire in the Medieval Era: an Exegesis of the Erotic Verses from Jayadeva’s G?tagovinda

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322 views

Tirthendu Ganguly

Ph.D. Research Scholar, Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University .  ORCID: 0000-0002-0957-5295. Email: tirthaforyou7@gmail.com,

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s29n4

Abstract

Discussing women’s sexual desire has long been perceived as a taboo in the East and the West as well. Undeniably, there is a stigma attached to it which, unfortunately, continues even today. However, surprisingly enough, the ancient and the medieval Indians had always been open to female sexuality before their philogynist culture was obliterated and replaced by the ‘zenana culture’ of the Mughals and the ‘Victorian morality’ of the British Raj. Even in the Medieval Era, which is often labelled as conservative and orthodox, people accepted female desire as a biological reality. Composed in twelve cantos, Jayadeva’s magnum opus, G?tagovinda, celebrates sexuality and candidly depicts female orgasm with sheer poetic acumen. Jayadeva has not only eradicated the stigma attached to it, but he has also delineated it from the aesthetical perspectives of the San?tana Dharma which makes it “a unique work in Indian literature and a source of religious inspiration in both medieval and contemporary Vaisnavism” (Miller, 1984). In this paper endeavours to analyze, assemble, and demonstrate how the poet has celebrated female psyche, female sexuality, and female orgasm in the 12th Century CE. The paper deals with the primary aspects of the book which are related to female mind and sexuality. Library method of research has been carried out to substantiate the claims that this research paper makes. As the book is originally composed in Sanskrit, the research paper contains many Indic names and words which are written in accordance with the International Alphabet for Sanskrit Translitearation (IAST) method.

Keywords: Jayadeva; Gitagovinda; female sexuality; female orgasm; female psyche.

An Existential Crutch?: Interrogating Women’s Silence in Select Plays of Mahesh Dattani

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246 views

Manisha Sinha

Ph.D. Research Scholar, Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University, Noida. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9205-533X. Email: manisha.s27@icloud.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s14n2

Abstract

Silence can stem from myriad stimuli, including but not limited to quietude, speechlessness, secretiveness or repression. The oppressed and marginalised women often resort to the ‘act’ of silence to survive in a patriarchal society. Indian playwright Mahesh Dattani has raised the social problem of misogyny in several of his plays. The women in these plays are neither timid nor shy. Yet, despite being quite vocal about various aspects, they keep parts of their lives buried in deep secrecy. Their selective silence also raises pertinent questions regarding gender-based power equations. Exploring the interconnection between patriarchy and silence in Mahesh Dattani’s Where Did I Leave My Purdah? and Final Solutions, this paper attempts to analyse as to whether silence of women in these plays is a manifestation of their agency or indirect patriarchal imposition.

Keywords: feminism, patriarchy, silence, partition literature, Indian drama.

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

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230 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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573 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.

‘Working for/from Home’: An Interdisciplinary Understanding of Mothers in India

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237 views

Sucharita Sarkar

Associate Professor, D.T.S.S. College of Commerce, Mumbai, India.

Email: sarkarsucharita@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s26n6

Abstract

Situated in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, this paper begins by looking at the recent advertisement by Amul praising mothers who are ‘working from home’ and ‘working for home’ during the lockdown, with an accompanying cartoon visualizing the iconic Amul girl sitting beside her mother who is working on her laptop while keeping an eye on her daughter; in a juxtaposed cartoon, the mother is cooking in the kitchen while simultaneously scrolling through her smartphone. Amongst my groups of women friends, the advertisement elicited strong and contradictory responses: ranging from approval of the appreciation for maternal work to disapproval at the missing father. In order to critique this advertisement, I would use the lens of Motherhood Studies, an emerging area of scholarship that is inherently interdisciplinary.  Reading the advertisement as a cultural text, I will attempt to locate the maternal stereotypes embedded in it: the merging of the stay-at-home mother and the working-mother into the ideal neoliberal mother-worker, the supermom who effortlessly balances work and home, even in extraordinary times like the pandemic and lockdown. These entangled maternal stereotypes have been reified in popular consciousness through mythic, religious, literary and filmic artefacts. A cross-disciplinary tracing of the stereotypes will reveal the motherhood constructs and the cultural expectations that mothers encounter, and also attempt to explain why and how these constructs and expectations operate. The paper will look at the possibilities of resistance to these stereotypes, germinating in feminist, or posthuman, or matricentric approaches to motherhood. I will use the critical distinction between motherhood-as-ideology and mothering-as-agency to understand maternal resistances, some of which may be located in the responses to the Amul advertisement. The paper will conclude by assessing the emergence of Motherhood Studies as a legitimate field of interdisciplinary humanities and/or social sciences.

 Keywords: cultural studies; Indian mothers; interdisciplinary; matricentric feminism; motherhood studies

 

“When spotted deaths ran arm’d through every street”: Women-Healers and the Great Plague in Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders

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196 views

Isha Biswas

PhD Scholar (English), Vidyasagar University, Faculty, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis Mahavidyalaya. Email: yoshinokurosaki@gmail.com. Orcid ID: 0000-0001-8328-4579

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s26n4

Abstract

In the late 1600s, England was reeling under the recurrence of the pandemic that had swept continent-wide in the 14th century. However, it was not the only disease lurking around. At the heels of the scarlet-ringed Black Death, came the scarlet letter of witchcraft accusations, mostly geared towards Wise Women in the margins of society- women who exhibited knowledge and skill in medicine, herbal remedies and midwifery. Set in the time when religious fanaticism and Puritanical fear-mongering was at its height, Year of Wonders presents before us an opportunity to delve into the web of lies and life-threatening allegations that formed the bedrock of the English witch trials continuing in full swing since the incursion of Continental lore ever since James I came to power. Furthermore, with midwives and female herbalists in the area falling prey to targeted sexual and physical violence in the wake of the pandemic in the story, what needs to be inspected is the inescapable link between Church-backed patriarchy’s delusional fear, jealousy and consequent scapegoating of the economically and socio-sexually marginalized woman-healers in the countryside and the failure of the male-dominated medical field in effectively containing the spread of the virus. The paper investigates further the generational flow of biomedical wisdom in a female-oriented domain which becomes significant in the presentation of the two female leads inheriting the function of the Wise Women from the original holders of the position, thus solidifying the sense of found family and sisterhood standing against the mounting social pressure to bend to the will of the Church and the men in their lives.

Keywords: Witch, Wise Women, Black Death, Misogyny, Medicine, Women-healers

Examining the Emergence of Feminist Consciousness in the Select Fiction of Contemporary North East Women Writers

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301 views

Adenuo Shirat Luikham

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Don Bosco College Kohima, Nagaland, India. Email: adenuo@gmail.com. ORCID: 0000-0003-4273-3117.

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s17n4

Abstract

An interesting development in the literary world in India in the last few decades is the emergence of writings in English from the North East. This development is simultaneously accompanied with a growing interest in the region’s writings and its people especially from mainland India. It is also noteworthy that many of the contemporary writers contributing to this nascent literary tradition are women. While the quality of any writing cannot be overshadowed or judged by gender, it is irrefutable that women write from a position where their gender often dictates their experiences. For contemporary women writers of the North East, their narratives, seated in the vehicle of fiction, become a revelation on the gendered experiences of women from the region whose issues, concerns and problems are often shrouded in a cloud of mystery and exoticized by the outside world. The paper seeks to examine the select fiction of women writers from the region and state that there is a discernible feminist consciousness that is emerging; identifying these feminist markers in their fiction allows the silenced voices of women to be heard and their growing boldness to claim a dignified existence in the midst of convoluted geo-politics that have irrevocably scarred the region.

 Keywords: North East, Feminist Consciousness, Contemporary Women Writers, Fiction from the North East

Positioning the Gendered Subaltern: Body, Speech and Resistance in Mahasweta Devi’s Narratives

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330 views

Joe Philip,1 Renu Bhadola Dangwal2 & Vinod Balakrishnan3

 1Research Scholar, English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. National Institute of Technology, Uttarakhand, Srinagar, Garhwal, Uttarakhand-246174, Email id:joephilip.phd14@nituk.ac.in. ORCID: 0000-0002-7593-046X

2Assistant Professor, English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. National Institute of Technology, Uttarakhand, Srinagar, Garhwal, Uttarakhand-246174, Email id: rbdangwal@nituk.ac.in. ORCID: 0000-0002-7929-1570

3Professor, Department of Humanities, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu-620015, Email id: vinod@nitt.edu

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s16n5

 Abstract

The postcolonial theory locates subaltern women as ‘doubly effaced’ and distanced from achieving agency to speak and participate in resistance. Due to her diversified colonized identity, much of the critical thought does not see any possibility for subaltern women participating in resistance. This line of argument implies a critical space in which the engagement with problematics inevitably leaves out subaltern women in the emergent resistance discourse. Moreover, such a position is suggestive of perceiving human activity and experience in closed terms and an intent to preserve subalternity. The present paper argues that, if perceived through a wider understanding of the concept of resistance, subaltern women may be seen to achieve agency as they communicate their plight vocally or silently and participate in resistance. Taking inferences from the literary narratives of Mahasweta Devi like Imaginary Maps, Breast Stories, the paper examines the strategies Devi employs to bring marginalized women into resistance and establishes that the ‘body’ emerges not only as a site of oppression but also as an important trope of power and resistance in her stories.

Keywords: gendered subaltern, doubly colonized, agency, hegemony and resistance.

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