Tradition and Modernity. Changing the Images of Women in Selected Fiction by Manju Kapur and Anita Nair

Along with a range of socio-cultural, political and economic concerns, the focus on 'self' has been an inevitable assertion of writers during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Individualistic in tone, the contemporary women novelists are trying to portray realistically the predicament of modern women torn between the forces of tradition and modernity, their sense of frustration and alienation, the emotional and psychological turmoil and complexities of man-women relationships and subtleties of feminine consciousness against the persistent patriarchal social set-up. Cognizant of the evils originating from patriarchy, a positive sense of feminine identity has been recognized by them and the result is the emergence of a new woman in Indian society and its concept in the Indian English novel which has assumed a strident posture in the contemporary writings by women. The shift from submission to assertion, acquiescence to resistance and obedience to rebellion, however, has not been abrupt and effortless. Women are still in the process of negotiation with different limiting factors and thresholds of patriarchy to claim their due space and affirm their identity. The present study is an attempt to critically investigate the negotiations with cultural norms by the women characters in the selected novels by the contemporary novelists, namely Manju Kapur and Anita Nair. Almost all the women characters, major and minor, from the selected novels have been considered and positioned as per their ideological leanings and convictions under two thematic chapters namely 'Women in the Clutches of Traditional Norms,' and 'Tradition to Modernity.' The major issues around which the novels move - education, marriage, gendered space and mother-daughter relationships - are taken up to put them within the contemporary social conditions in which women characters live. The present book is divided into five chapters to make a critical and analytical study of the select novels of these contemporary Indian women writers in English. The present work is focused on five selected novels: Manju Kapur's 'Difficult Daughters', 'Home' and 'Custody' and Anita Nair's 'Ladies Coupé' and 'Mistress'.

Dr. A. Sasikala works as an Assistant Professor of English at S.B.R.T.M Law College, Kadapa. She obtained her Doctoral Degree from Yogi Vemana University, Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh, India. She has served as Academic Counselor for Dr. BR Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, Telangana State. She presented many research papers in National as well as International Seminars on English Literature, English Language Teaching and Communicative English. Her areas of interest include Indian English Literature, Common Wealth Literature, Comparative Literature, and Literary Criticism. She has widely published in referred and reputed Journals such as The Common Wealth Review, Research Journal of English Language and Literature, and Contemporary Research in India etc.