Indian Women
Novelists in English: Art and Vision
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FOREWORD
Women’s
intense quest for identity and freedom figures large in the variegated essays
in this anthology. From the chronologically first acclaimed to the later
acclaimed literary women artists of the story telling art, independence from
fetters imposed by society and self make an impact.
It is
rather significant that women writers of the subcontinent, some in diaspora,
feature totally in this anthology. The angst of separation, dual themes of
alienation and self-discovery, cultural and geographical standpoints and
building up of identity, questions of patriarchy’s domination and feminist
ideology – all the trauma and overcoming of the trauma are contained in the
essays of renowned women writers Indian or of Indian descent.
Shri
Dipak Giri’s initiative in finding out this anthology of select critical essays
by scholars (thankfully unfettered by rank or age as scholars really should
be!) is a welcome addition to a growing rank of critical writings on known and
still quite unknown arenas of literature and literati.
The
eternal interlinking of society, language and literature, in defining human
experience, has found voices, variegated, in each and every essay here. In this
anthology, that deals primarily with the nuances of life and their treatment by
women, the novelists’ and the woman’s ‘gaze’ coincide in a powerful manner.
Shri
Giri has rendered a timely and remarkable service as an academician in
compiling these essays on women of letters and their influence on the present
ambience in Indo-Anglican literature today.
Soma Banerjee
Professor
Department of English
Rabindra Bharati University
West Bengal