Stereotypes and Beyond – Women characters in R.K. Narayan’s The Dark Room, The Man-Eater of Malgudi and The Guide

Pages:99-100
Santosh Mann and Sanjay Dhangi (Department of English, Singhania University, Rajasthan and Govt College, Mohindergarh, Haryana)

R.K. Narayan is indisputably one of the greatest Indian novelists writing in English. He is a pure artist, i.e., he believes in the dictum of art for art’s sake. In his very first novel, Swami and Friends (1935) , we are introduced to a cheerful world of young school boys. His second novel, The Bachelor of Arts (1937), takes the readers to the college youth. It is the next novel, The Dark Room (1938), that shows the helpless condition of Indian women before independence. R.K. Narayan tries to give his readers the joy of a pure creative artist. As a pure artist, he interprets Indian life aesthetically with unprejudiced objectivity. Narayan’s Malgudi is the chosen region which forms the background to the works of Narayan’s novels as well as his short stories. It is an imaginary town, a typical South Indian town, which has been presented vividly and realistically in all the novels of Narayan. But this Malgudi becomes the microcosm of India by the expert treatment of Narayan.