Women Novelists in the 20th Century India

Pages:11-15
Gunjan Saini (Independent Scholar English, Hisar, Haryana)

Indian women writings in English came to the literary platform of India in which women writers are trying to define women’s role in the transitional society. We can trace the female writings of India in three literary phases. The very first phase in which we have writings of Toru Dutt, Swarna Kumari Ghosal, Krupabai Satthianadhan, and Sorabji Cornelia. The second phase which is also called as the second generation of Indian women’s writings in English marks attention with the writings of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal, Jai Nimbkar, Kamala Das, Anita Desai, and Nargis Dalal. These women writers consequently have created the influential personages from every walk of society, who successfully expose the oppression inflicted on women in society. Next, the third phase which is from the nineteen-eighties onwards has been important for narrating the lives of the female who are asserting themselves and their resistance towards the male domination and patriarchy. The main writers of this period are Bharati Mukherjee, Shashi Deshpande, Gauri Deshpande, Shobha De, Manju Kapur, Meena Alexander, Githa Hariharan, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Meena Syal, Namita Gokhale, etc. In this way, the third phase of women writings is characterized by the self-discovery and freedom, towards the subsequent search for individuality.