Browsing by Subject "Western feminism"
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Item Critique of Western Feminism: A Study of Mukherjee’s The Holder of the World(Faculty of English, 2012) Aryal, MadhavIn The Holder of the World, Bharati Mukherjee presents the general predicaments of Indian women under British colonial patriarchal India through the firsthand experience of her western female protagonist Hannah Easton. Since the colonized women suffer double marginalization: political and gender, the patriarchal social norms and colonial politics that undermine women are presented as the major causes of double marginality of women in India. Mukherjee critiques western brand of monolithic and reductive notion of feminism which homogenized all women of the globe regardless of their cultural, political, and locationalaspects. Likewise, British colonialism that dominates both men and women in India and suppresses their rights is explored as the major cause of domination and exploitation of Indian women. For the liberation from colonial and cultural domination of Indian women, male-female solidarity is called in the fiction. For this solidarity, men should respect women’s freedom rights and provide them with equal opportunity welcoming all sorts of positive changes in the dominating patriarchal norms. Mukherjee implies that through the solidarity of both men and women only women should realize their potential and empower themselves for the development of strong and peaceful society. Therefore, solidarity and reconciliation between males and females is essential unlike male-female antagonism in western feminism.Item Female Body: Site of Domination and Resistance in Shashi Deshpande's In the Country of Deceit(Department of English, 2012) Yonghang, PrakashThis research is a study of the Indian novelist Shashi Deshpande's In the Country of Deceit which presents the female characters in the continual struggle for their identity and freedom in the patriarchal Indian society. Devayani, a young spinster of Indian society, is the protagonist of the novel. The continual coaxing of her relatives for her marriage shows how female body becomes a contested site of power structures of the society and shows how patriarchal norms and values control and dominate the female body by means of the institution of marriage. The discourses that spinsterhood is immoral and shameful for a family, or female should remain sexually chaste before marriage or the only way for an Indian woman to fulfill her sexual desire is marriage and so on operate in the society to stabilize the patriarchal power center as they help assert the male domination upon the female body. Devayani subverts those discourses, the stereotype of the Third World woman and the restriction imposed on her sexuality by refusing to marry the men her relatives arrange for her and having physical relation to a married police officer named Ashok. She confesses the sexual pleasure in the relation full of love and devoid of control and domination which shows that the love without affection and proper cooperation is no more than the marital rape. Devayani manifests the heterogeneity in the female experiences, with the assertion of her different stance regarding marriage and fulfillment of the desire, rejects the homogeneity of female domination and the notion of global sisterhood as assumed by Western feminism.Item Female Resistance in Taslima Nasrin‟s French Lover(Faculty of English, 2017) Sigdel Parajuli, RanjitaThe major concern of this research is to explore the journey of the female protagonist Nilanjana of Taslima Nasrin‟s French Lover, who moves from the third world India to the first world France and experiences patriarchal domination. Whether it is in Indian society or in western society, her life more or less, goes under the same sort of situations of patriarchy. She breaks up with NRI to marry Benoir hoping that her French lover is open minded than her Indian mate. Opposite to her expectation, she ultimately becomes an object of sex rather than an independent woman in both patriarchal societies. Her identity or spirit is forced to be dependent both in her own native world as well as in supposedly a free Western world. This study not only exposes the obvious exploitation and domination upon women in patriarchal society, but also this research critically analyzes Nila‟s resistance. Nila is the representative character of „new women,‟ who oppose the entire hitherto existing patriarchal ethos vehemently. The researcher examines the text from the third world feministic perspective.Item Islamic Feminist Intervention into Jean Sasson’s American Chick in Saudi Arabia(Department of English, 2016) Thapa, ShusilThis research paper deals with the issue of representation of Saudi Arabian women in Jean Sasson's novel American Chick in Saudi Arabiafrom Islamic feminist perspective. It criqutes how Sasson belittles and demeans Saudi Arabian Women. The writer brings an orientalist, ‘Sister Other’ attitude when she approaches the Saudi women. She recounts the pitiable condition of Saudi Arabia as a teenage American girl staying in Riyadh to work for a hospital. She preaches the Western version of women’s freedom and banks on the foreign influences and Western modernity to alter the discriminated condition of the Saudi women. Sasson criticizes the Islamic values time and again for being overtly patriarchal. However, she fails to understand that Islamic feminists do not want the Western, secular version of women’s freedom rather they tend to locate gender equality in the spirit of Qur’an and bring about the gender equality remaining faithful to Islam religion at the same time. To justify the claim this research employs the theoretical insights of Islamic Feminists like Anbitta Kynsilehto, Asma Barlas, Liv Tonnerson and the theorist of orientalism Edward Said.