Looking at Feminism and Nationalism through The Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing

Abstract

There has been a lot of scholarship exploring how the nation is gendered. Additionally, feminism and nationalism have had a contentious relationship, as feminist concerns have often been ignored in favour of larger national concerns. Benedict Anderson emphasizes the role of print capitalism in the creation of the nation. Therefore, literature, especially feminist literary criticism, can provide useful insight into the gendered discourses that constitute the nation. In my thesis I have looked at 3 fiction texts: Clear Light of Day (1980) by Anita Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (2006) by Kiran Desai, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017) by Arundhati Roy. These texts span more than three decades and give an insight into how the concerns of the postcolonial Indian woman writer (and characters) have changed with time. I have also looked at 3 non-fiction texts: Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence (1998), Arundhati Roy’s The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2001), and Sujatha Gidla’s Ants Among Elephants (2017). I have chosen both diasporic texts and Indian writing in English as the ways in which women engage with the nation in the two textual categories are very different, and juxtaposing diasporic texts with Indian writing in English can give a better understanding of how location influences and complicates the feminist engagement with the nation. I have undertaken a postcolonial feminist reading of the chosen texts. My approach is at the intersection of postcolonial feminist theory and theories of the nation-state and nationalism. I have attempted to explore how women’s writing has been shaped by the changing role of the Indian nation-state and changing perceptions of the nation.