Suppression: Women's Awareness in Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughter

Abstract

Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughter portrays the women's struggle for independent identity in the 21st century. Virmati, the protagonist of the novel, represents all the females who are trying hard for establishing their free identity. This study has been focused at making a wide research of her different activities linking them to the females fight for freedom. The theoretical tool used to prove this research is 'feminism' To prove this tool, I have mentioned the ideas of different philosophers related to feminism, library consultancy, and teacher guidance as well as searching in Google. Virmati wants to continue her study in spite of her family's objection. Virmati tries to prove herself as modern or liberated woman. She does everything to prove that women are capable to take any decision of their life. In the course of higher study she goes to Lahore but she fell in love with married Professor. In the last, I have found in this novel that Virmati could not break the male Patriarchal norms and Values. Though she is a bold, strong willed, determined and action oriented revolutionary against her family as well as her society, she gets involved in a useless love, doubtful marriage and unwed Pregnancy. Virmati is being used. She dares to cross Patriarchal threshold but she has been caught into another world where her free spirit is curbed and she accepts compromise with family as well as society. She is a loser whose actions totally alienate her from her family and she fails to create a space for herself for which she had been desired since childhood. The thesis discusses how the society refuses to give the professional achievement of Virmati the respect, recognition and identity that come with marriage and motherhood. Kapur shows the problem of women in India.