Depiction of Womanhood in the Selected Autobiographies of Kamala Das, Prabha Khetan and Baby Halder

Abstract

The present study analyses the images of women in the selected autobiographies from India. Though there are many differences in the style and construction of these writers. But the issues discussed by them have the same intensity. Their methods of dealing with the women’s issues, their suppression in the male dominating society are very different in their respective styles. Yet their purpose is to reform society by getting insights through the autobiographies. Prabha Khaitan has a retrospective style of writing and the reader audience is left with the brainstorming over the issue when the autobiography ends. They never suggest the solution to the problem. Kamala Das is very bold and aggressive in presenting the problems of women in Indian middle class families and makes the reader audience restless at the end of the autobiography. They delve deep into the psyche of both man and woman in the middle class society and bring out the hypocrisy hidden in the social norms and culture based on male domination. All the writers intend to bring change in the attitudes of people leading to equality and social justice for all human beings. The autobiographies of all the writers comprise of the elements which connect the patriarchal society and the issue of a place of women in society. Also, there is a controversy reflected through the plots of the autobiographies, whether women should follow the duty or the self esteem. The issues of free will, political powers, upbringing of elite class women and their psyche, male domination as the inevitable issues are the major issues that have been analyzed through the study. The autobiographies are analyzed from a feminist point of view. Feminism is a belief that women should have economic, political and social equality with men has been taken into consideration while studying the women images in the concerned autobiographies. The four major streams of feminism, namely Liberal Feminism, Marxist Feminism, Radical Feminism and Social Feminism are referred to the analysis. The feminist concepts such as patriarchy, woman as a subject and as an object, personal is politics, woman’s subordination, suppression, oppression and woman as other and the like are taken as the touch stones. The issues of division of labour based on gender discrimination from the ancient times to the present are studied taking the social context into account. The reasons of male superiority over women and the factors that determine the social construct of images of man and woman have been inspected. The analysis of the autobiographies does not aim to compare the positions of women in the autobiographies, but to show, how it is an extension of the same issues related to women’s even after hundreds of years till the present. The autobiographies selected for the study by Kamala Das are, My Story (1973), Prabha Khaitan’s ‘Anya Se Ananya’ (2007) and Baby Halder’s ‘A Life Less Ordinary (2006) are selected for the study. The autobiographies by them have been translated into English.