Feminine Fragrance: Reflections on
Women’s Writing in English
ISBN 978-93-81030-28-8.
GNOSIS, New Delhi
Worldwide Circulation through Authorspress Global Network. The book is also available online on flipkart, infibeam, alibris, amazon, snapdeal, ebay, Southasiabooks and so on
First Published in 2012 by GNOSIS, New Delhi
First Published in 2012 by GNOSIS, New Delhi
Indian writing in English has been acclaimed around the world for its innovation, radical new approaches to the art of storytelling and reworking of language. While the older generation continues to produce literary masterworks, a newer generation of writing talent has emerged, ensuring that the fount of imagination in the country has not run dry. Women writers in India are moving forward with their strong and sure strides, matching the pace of the world. We see them bursting out in full bloom spreading their own individual fragrances. They are recognized for their originality, versatility and the indigenous flavor of the soil that they bring to their work. The works of women novelists in English mirror the exact realistic picture of contemporary world where innocence is suffocating in the ‘blood- dimmed tide’ of corruption, where women are supposed to be just a doll in the hands of men, where there is a prevailing sense of gender discrimination in an average house of India, where the helpless women have to bear the brunt of patriarchal domination.
One evident trait among all the contemporary women writers in Indian writing in English is the revolutionary spirit with which they strive to write. Indian women English writers have quietly and confidently gone about putting to shape their literary endeavors letting the product do the talking, which it has done most eloquently, establishing Indian English Literature as an inextricable part of Indian literature. Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Anita Desai, Arundhati Roy, Nayantara Sahgal, Shobha De, Manju Kapur , Shashi Deshpande, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Bapsi Sidewa, Anjana Appachana, Sumathi Sudhakar, Suniti Namjoshi, Jhumpa Lahiri, Veena Paintal and Nargis Dalal have added new dimensions and depth to Indian fiction in English. In the exploration of the consciousness or the psychological state of human mind, Anita Desai has been appropriately compared to the powerful British fiction writer, Virginia Woolf. These women writers particularly shared experiences of Indian women in general and presented them into fictional form. Women’s inner-self, their agonies, their pleasures are better and more truly depicted by the women novelists. The reason may be the flowering of the educated women who began to feel an increasing urge to voice their feelings.
The present volume Feminine Fragrance: Reflections on Women’s Writing in English, is intended to focus on some of the latest perspectives on noted Indian Women Novelists. This volume comprising twenty-four scholarly papers offer a critical appraisal of some of the outstanding Indian women writers works and gives varied and analytic interpretation of their work. Above all the volume provides the whole critical and historical perspectives that have made it a commendable scholarly engagement. It marks a significant contribution to academic research on both women’s writing and Indian English literature.
