Radha's Gendered Subalternity and Quest for Subaltern Consciousness in Shanti Mishra's A Widow's Gift

Abstract

This research is the study of orthodox Hindu elitist discourses and the silences they confer to the women and widows in Nepali society during the final decades of Rana oligarchy in Shanti Mishra’s novel A Widow’s Gift. In the novel, Mishra has examined the subalternity as the gendered phenomenon and devoted her energy to unmask the Hindu elitism that has silenced the women and the widows with their systematic appropriation. Mishra’s focus lies on the women’s agency, child-marriage and widowhood of Radha as the sites of silence. Radha, a daughter of Sharma family, has to marry at the age of nine ignorant of its consequences. She has to bear the torture in the society as she becomes widow soon after her marriage and she dies of cancer unable to cope with the perpetual torture. Donation of her all property to the betterment of the widows and women shows awareness and the attempt to come out of her subalternity. Her attempt is marked by ambivalence to articulate the voice as she cannot break herself free of the elitist discourses in which she is appropriated throughout her life.