59. Uma Parvathy V

Abstract 59
UMA PARVATHY. V    

Abstract

Ecriture of dissonance and self-assertion: a reading on the prototypes of resistance in ‘The Day in Shadow’ by Nayantara Sahgal

The creative output of women novelists Indian English fiction is transgressive in nature as it resists the pre-ordained social constructs and thus is immune to the codes of gender conditioning. Their literary endeavour was to redefine the socio-cultural influence on the construction of femininity and to reconstruct the formulation of the universal and irreversible canons of dominance seen within the cultural extent of patriarchy. Novelists like Kamala Markandeya, Ruth Prawar Jhabwala and Anita Desai challenged the predictable female representations as ‘other’ through a more assertive declaration of dissent and rebellion and embarked upon a mission to emphasis female identity and experience as an inevitable component in forming novel literary as well as social perspectives.

Nayantara Sahgal is one of the predominant voices in contemporary Indian English fiction by women who likes to fight the patriarchal constructs, concepts and cultural codes that advocate a self-effacing and self-sacrificing female sensibility. This proposed paper tries to ascertain the value of Sahgal’s ‘The Day in Shadow’ in emphasizing the struggle of a young, beautiful girl trapped under the burden of a brutal divorce settlement and the agony and unhappiness she faces within a gender-biased social order. This work presents a vehement response to evade the traditionally emotive, irrational and inferior position that the rationality of male has reserved for ‘her’. The paper aims at ascertaining how the author use this powerful literary tool to make the inherent feminine qualities explicit by projecting the legitimate womanly goals and aspirations which remain submerged under patriarchal control.
As a writer Nayantara Sahgal is more concerned with the gender oppression and male domination seen in the orthodox constituents of our immediate milieu and in trying to declare female emancipation beyond established social taboos and conventions she reasserts female identity. It is attempted to examine the methods of asserting identity and the attempts in voicing the instinctive rebellion against the patterns of dominance and control. It is also proposed to identify the evident manifestations of the female self within the work and the expressions of dissent against the over-arching generalizations of womanhood and the coercive cultural practices of careful evasion.