Quality of Life of Old Widows in Ashapurna Devi’s Novel Pratham Pratishruti and Subarnalata

Pages:51-52
Sangita Gautam (Michael Madhusudan Memorial College, Durgapur, West Bengal)

n term quails, i.e. what kind, sort, size, colour, etc. therefore, what is this or that life and what it may be. But the adjective quails, has its origin in the pronoun qui; hence, we might also formulate our question as: who has what sort of life? In Implicit psychology, western culture primarily equates the quality of life with good-health, a well-functioning family and then with the possession of material goods or money. According to the political elite in advanced countries, the quality of life is mainly ensured by economic-height of the GDP, symbolized mainly by costs of the shopping basket. But what about the sick, handicapped and elderly? The non-quality of their life was first noticed by medical experts in the early 30’s of the 20th century. The psychologists also became interested in researches on the quality of life. Gradually, the phenomenon of quality of life became a subject of scrutiny by sociologists, environmentalists and political scientists 1. When the construct of quality of life (QOL) was introduced in the 1980’s, the goal was to measure the impact of health problems on people’s everyday life (Power, 2003). Since then, QOL has come to be used as an umbrella term that covers all aspects of human life for example, physical and mental health, psychological state (cognitive & emotional), social relations, economic condition, recreational possibilities and occupational life. QOL is an evaluative judgement based on objective and/or subjective indicators (Costanza et al., 2008; Oort et al., 2005). At the individual level, subjective well-being (SWB) is a potent indicator of the quality of one’s life. It capitalizes on one’s emotional state (e.g., happiness) and perception of different aspects of one’s life, whether they meet the person’s standards or expectations about their life.