Marginalized Female Protagonists in the Novels of Margaret Laurence and Shashi Deshpande

Pages:235-237
Dipika Rani (Department of English, Govt College for Women, Hisar, Haryana)

Feminism, a term first used by French dramatist Alexandra Dumas, the younger, in a pamphlet L’ Homme-femme in 1872, is a much debated, discussed subject of the twentieth century. Feminism attempts to locate, change and reshape cultural practices that are responsible for suppression of women. While at the same time it shows that phallocentrism is a cultural construct which is viewed by Fe/Male as “Natural” which perhaps can and should be deconstructed. By attempting such an endeavour, feminism focuses on analyzing and examining the suppressed status of women and the oppressive modes in a sexist culture. Feminism is not necessarily “anti-men” but is against any social system which recognizes female subordination. This, in fact, helps to create a society requiring both men and women to co-operate rather than confront and also to overcome their egotistical urge for self-assertion through annihilation of the other. Interestingly gender is the product of sexual colonialism subverting women’s sense of self-worth by telling them that their Mothering in society is preordained. In the words of Elaine Showalter, a well known American feminist critic, we are not learning what women have felt and experienced but only what men have thought women should be.