Introduction
Feminism as a concerted movement began in the late nineteenth-century and grew in the
early twentieth-century with the demand for universal suffrage and equal rights for women.
After more than hiindred years of the movement the condition of women in society has
improved visibly but there is still a long way to go for the achievement of equal human status
for women. As long as the inequality between men and women exists in society, feminism
will remain relevant. It may be pertinent to briefly recount, for the purpose of mapping
progressions, that feminism is a political movement which contests the patriarchal culture
that suppresses women in society. It focuses on the processes and strategies by which women
are marginalized and exploited and deals with all the political and social ramifications of
sexual £ind gender repression. It seeks to recognize the equality of women with men and
demands equal opportunities and rights for both. It postulates that the relationship between
the sexes is political in which one sex exercises power and control over the other and this
supremacy of men and the subjugation of women is prevalent in almost all societies. In the
beginning, feminism believed in uniformity in the condition of all women and their
oppression, however, "more recent feminist criticism warns against understanding 'women'
as a homogenous category and emphasizes the mistake of eradicating the unique
characteristics of different groupings, in the late nineteenth century the emergency of a
solidarity across national and class barriers was perceived as so novel that the common factor
of being a woman was perceived as outweighing the difference" (Knellwolf 193). Though the
term feminism originated as a political movement in the twentieth century, before it emerged
as a political movement some works were precursors which had exposed the injustices of
patriarchy against women. The first wave of feminism in the mid-nineteenth century arose
and focused on the campaign for female suffrage. This period is characterized by the demand
that women should enjoy the same legal and political rights as men. 'First wave' feminism
ended with the achievement of the right to vote in the early twentieth century.
Mary WoUstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women published in 1792 is
considered to be the first text of modem feminism. She argued that the normative definition
of femininity reflects the desire to perpetuate women's dependent position and that education
is alluded as a means of teaching women to internalize a sense of their intrinsic inferiority.
She insisted that rationality is the capacity that distinguished brute einimals from human
beings and men and women both have this capacity, thus society should provide girls the
same education as boys so that they get the opportunity to develop their rational and moral
capacities and become complete persons. She addresses women as "rational creatures" and
asserts that, "the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as human being,
regardless of the distinction of sex . . . " (10). J. S. Mill in The Subjection of Women (1869)
expressed a similar idea that women should be given the same liberties and economic
opportunities like men. Early twentieth-century feminism analysed women's position within
society, and works like Charlotte Perkins Oilman's Women and Economics (1898) and Olive
Shreiner's Women and Labour (1911) prepared the ground for the political campaign for the
right to vote, for the right to own property, for fairer legislation concerning divorce, for equal
access to education, culture, the arts, the sciences and other professions. These works
explained the links between gender discrimination and economic oppression. Virginia Woolf
in A Room of One's Own (1928) described how women are prevented from entering into
libraries and universities. She insisted that women are systematically demoralized by being
excluded from academics and are economically dependent. After the achievement of female
suffrage, the women's movement remained in comparative slumber for a couple of decades
imtil the 1960s when it regenerated with the emergence of the 'second wave' of feminism.
Simone de Beauvoir's Le Deuxieme Sex (1949), translated into English as The Second
Sex (1953) is considered a pioneering work of feminism. She criticized the concept of
biological determinism and drew a careful distinction between sex and gender. She explained
that man is taken as the positive norm and woman as the negative, second or deviant which
figures as the 'other,' forced to take a secondary position in relation to men, "He is the
subject, he is the absolute—she is the other" (xxii). She emphasized that the gender
difference does not evolvefi-ombiological factors but is the result of constant cultural
conditioning. The second wave feminism also analysed difference in the public and private
sphere. The slogan 'the personal is political' or 'sisterhood is powerfial' brought to the fore
that the distinction between supposedly 'important' public issues and 'unimportant' domestic
matters is the result of gender bias. The feminists tore dovvTi the barriers between private and
public and issues like domestic violence, child sexual abuse, pomography, rape, abortion on
demand, sexual harassment and discrimination on the groimd of gender were prominent on
the feminist agenda.
The publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) gave a new impetus
to the feminist thought. Friedan set out to explore what she called 'the problem with no
name,' the frustration and boredom many women experienced as a result of being confined to
the roles of the housewife and mother. During her study she became aware of a growing body
of evidence, "which throws into question the standards of feminine normality, feminine
adjustment, and feminine maturity by which most women are still trying to live" (28). She
asked women to have a career outside the home without sacrificing marriage and motherhood
for it. Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch (1970) exposed the socially enforced
dependence of women. These works analysed the role of culture in production and
propagation of gender stereotypes. Greer explained that women are believed to have passive
bodies and minds and are deprived of developing their own potentials by stereotypical modes
of thoughts and cultural conventions. Another influential text was Kate Millett's Sexual
Politics (1969) in which she exposed the unilateral dominance of the male sex over the
'other' or the female. In this work she synthesized cultural critique with literary anlaysis and
exposed the misogyny of literary works and criticized the chief figures of twentieth century
literature, such as Henry Miller, D. H. Lawrence and Norman Mailer, for presentation of an
aggressive type of male sexuality which reduced women to objects of sexual gratification.
The goal of the second wave was not merely political emancipation but 'women's
liberation,' reflected in the ideas of the growing women's liberation movement. The feminists
demanded that since such a goal could not be achieved by political reforms and legal changes
alone, therefore, a radical process of social change is needed to achieve it. Feminism
questioned the existing hierarchy of power structure between the sexes at both the personal
and social levels. Marilyn French in Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals (1985)
described this hierarchy: "the value structure of a culture is identical in both public and
private areas, that what happens in the bedroom and vice-versa, and that, mythology
notwithstanding, at present the same sex is in control in both places" (French 442). In
The Feminine Mystique, Friedan had pushed women to act against stereotyping and practices
sof misogyny, but in The Second Stage (1981), she called on society to recognize the
difference between the sexes and came close to replacing feminism with humanism. She
asserted that women were becoming, "In reaction to the feminine mystique of the 1960s,
victims of the \9S0s feminist mystique" (Tong 24). They embraced what Friedan perceived as
a destructive 'male' model that was no better for women than it was for men.
Feminist literary criticism interrogates the marginalization and misrepresentation of
women in literature. It seeks to make women visible and central in literature and to make
their experience an equally important subject of art as that of men's: "The feminist approach
to the study of literature pursued several goals: a revisionist engagement with history and
literary history, a revision of aesthetic standards and a radical critique of the representation of
gender and roles as part of a larger critique of cultural self-definition" (Knell wolf 197).
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in their book. The Mad Woman in the Attic (1979), discuss
the difficulties faced by women writers of the nineteenth-century. They not only faced the
overt hostilities of their male contemporaries, but also struggled with their own sense of guilt
for breaking the stereotypical definitions of gender and asserting their independence and
intellect by taking to writing. Gilbert and Gubar point out that it is not accidental that the
female protagonists in Victorian novel and poetry are neurotic or on the brink of madness. In
the nineteenth century, madness was considered as the inevitable outcome of the intrusion of
women in the masculine field of writing which was considered a privilege of men. Gilbert
and Gubar state that the women writers kept returning to the figure of madness in their selfconscious attempt to understand and justify a woman's position within Victorian culture.
A search for female writers brought to light an unexpectedly large number of names
whose forgotten works required new ways of reading. Works such as Patricia Spacks'
The Female Imagination (1975), Ellen Moers' Literary Women (1976), Elaine Showalter's
A Literature of Their Own (1977) and Mary Ellmann's Thinking About Women (1979),
investigated women's position within literary history. It was revealed as a result of these
studies that female writers before Jane Austen were erasedfi-omcultural memory because the
standards of literary value favoured the male writers' occupation with warfare or politics over
the female authors' literary works dealing with domestic themes. Christine Battersby in
Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics (1989) studied the cultural meaning of
genius and demonstrated that the masculine perspective and the gendered view of aesthetic
appreciation belonging to it are deeply ingrained in standards of artistic merit. Virginia Woolf
argues that women register and express experience differently and that there is need for a
revision of the standards used to evaluate a woman's artistic productions. Towards the middle
of the seventies, feminist literary criticism focused on literature written by women to find a
tradition of female writing. Elaine Showalter in her essay, "Towards a Feminist Poetics"
divides the feminist criticism into two categories. The first is 'woman as reader' which she
terms as 'feminist critique' and the second is concerned with 'woman as writer' which she
terms as 'gynocritics.' The feminist critique is concerned with woman as a consumer of maleproduced literature. Its subjects include the images and stereotypes of women in literature and
the omissions and misconceptions about constructed literary history. It exposes the sexist bias
or misogynistic stereotyping or misrepresentation of women in the works of male authors
which give only men's view of life and experience. The feminist critique also draws attention
to the great works of women which are not included in the canon due to a sexist bias.
Showalter reviews criticism of female texts by male critics which is rooted in sexist bias and
which Mary EUmaim terms as 'Phallic Criticism,' whereby books by women are treated as
'though they themselves were women' and are not considered worthy of serious attention.
Gynocriticism deals with 'woman as writer' and Showalter defines it as, "the study of
women as writers, and its subjects are the history, styles, themes, genres, and structures of
writing by women; the psychodynamics of female creativity; the trajectory of the individueil
or collective female careers and the evolution and laws of a female literary tradition"
(Showalter, "Feminist Criticism" 335). Toril Moi distinguishes between 'femaleness' and
'femininity' she describes 'femaleness' as a 'matter of biology' and 'femininity' as a set of
culturally defined characteristics. She defines a feminist text as one which takes a clear stand
against patriarchy and feminist criticism as a kind of political discourse committed to the
struggle against sexism and gender bias.
The prominent French feminists Helene Cixous, Luce Irigary and Julia Kristeva
also influenced the feminist thought to a great degree. Their work is characterized by an
engagement with the theories of Jacques Lacan. Helene Cixous deconstructs the patriarchal
binary thought which sees the 'feminine' side as passive, negative and powerless. In the
essay "sorties" Cixous listed some of these dichotomous pairs: Activity / passivity, sun /
moon, culture / nature. Day / Night, Father / Mother, Head / Heart, Intelligent / Sensitive.
In Cixous's view, all these dichotomies find their inspiration in the fundamental
dichotomous couple, man / woman in whom man is associated with what is active,
cultural, high and positive and woman with all that is passive, natural, low or generally
negative. Man is the self, woman is his other. Thus, woman exists in man's world on his
terms. Cixous challenges women to write themselves out of the world men have
constructed from them by putting into words the unexpressed about women. She asks them
to develop a new way of writing that is not limited by the rules that govern the symbolic
order, i.e. language. She says that this will change the way the western world thinks and
writes and with it will change women's place in the world. For her, writing is, ''the very
possibility of change, the space that can serve as a springboard for subversive thought, the
precursory movement of a transformation of social and cultural standards" (Cixous 337).
Luce Irigary agrees with Cixous that feminine sexuality and the female body are sources of
feminine writing. She used Freud's theory to critique his concept of female sexuality. He
viewed the little girl as feminine not in any positive sense but negatively as a 'little man'
without a penis. The French feminists studied the psychic development of the child
concentrating on the moment when it enters the symbolic order. In Lacan, "the Imaginary"
is the pre-oedipal domain of prelinguistic stage, which a child leaves to enter the symbolic
order signified by language and selfhood. After completing the oedipal phase, boys are
liberated from the imaginary and enter the symbolic order, but girls who do not completely
resolve the oedipal phase, remain behind in the imaginary. On the basis of Freudian and
Lacanian theories, Irigary reinterprets the women's condition. Rather than viewing the
entrapment in the imaginary as sheer negativity, Irigary suggests that there are untapped
possibilities for women in the imaginary. She insists that whatever is known so far about
the imaginary and woman, including her sexual desire is told from a male point of view.
She argues that the only woman we know is the 'masculine feminine,' the phallic
8
feminine, woman as man sees her. She suggests that there may be a 'feminine feminine,' a
nonphalhc feminine and a way to bring woman to selfhood and language that does not
have to be mediated in any way through men. These critics insisted on finding a language
and a means of representation suited to women's needs and psychic potentials. They
brought forth the concept of ecriture feminine, a female mode of expression which reflects
the physical closeness between infant and mother, "wishing to break away from patriarchal
representation and their normative function in the socialization of boys and girls, they
proposed the language of irrationality as a possible subversion of the rigours of logic"
(Knellwolf 200). This style became the antidote to literary styles and modes of
philosophical reasoning which defined women as inferior to men.
It is noteworthy that in their effort to define feminine writing, feminists returned to
biological essentialism which they had confronted and rejected in the beginning. Critics like
Juliet Mitchell and Julia Kristeva, however, reject the notion that anatomy is destiny and
resist difference in terms of biology. They believe that to collapse language into biology, to
insist that simply because of their anatomy, women write differently than men is to force men
and women into the patriarchal mode of thinking. Kristeva describes femininity as a position
which is meirginalized by the patriarchal symbolic order and women share it with other
oppressed and marginalized groups in society. She differs from Cixous and Irigary in her
radical adherence to the notion that even if the feminine can be expressed, it must not be
expressed.
A feminist analysis of many works showed that language enforces gender difference
by projecting men into the position of linguistic authority and women into the position of
objects who are incapable of achieving autonomous subjectivity. In this way language does
not remain a neutral medium of representation but is used to assert male interests. Various
studies of language advocated change in linguistic practices and removal of sexism in
language. It was realized that to give recognition to women's contribution the 'writer' and the
'reader' should no longer be exclusively referred to by the masculine pronoun 'he.' The
feminists redefined some derogatory terms for women, such as 'witches,' 'crones,' 'hags' and
'spinsters' and presented the positive revelation of such stereotypes. At the same time the
rewriting of myths and legends was underteiken which taught children to identify with their
gender roles.
The rejection of patriarchal standards was followed by a valorization of female power.
Mary Daly in Gyn / ecology (1978) emphasized women's erotic power and called for the
celebration of behaviour which had hitherto been classified as transgression. At the same time
black women recognized that much feminist work pursued primarily the interest of white
women. Audre Lorde wrote an open letter to Mary Daly for presenting black women as
powerless victims in her radical attack on the myths of western culture. Women of colour
spoke against their inferior position within the women's movement and held that when
Patricia Spacks and Elaine Showalter searched for a female tradition they were complicit
with the silencing of black women in literary history. Alice Walker in In Search of Our
Mother's Garden established a black aesthetics to make the black women writers emerge
fi-om the dual silencing due to gender and race. Women of colour described the feminist
movement as an upper-middle class, educated, white women's movement which did not
represent them. They rejected the vocabulary of the whites and called their own movement
'womanism,' a term given by Alice Walker. They turned to their own community for strength
and solidarity to fight against oppression.
Thus, the feminist movement which had started with a fight to get legal and political
rights for women and consciousness-raising among them, led to the emergence of various
strands of thought within its broad framework. In the seventies, diverse varieties of feminism:
liberal, radical, Marxist, socialist and black emerged, which often overlapped one another.
10
Liberal feminists believe that men are fellow victims of sex-role conditioning. They believe
that individuals are entitled to equal treatment, regardless of their sex, race, colour or creed
and demanded equal rights and opportunities for men and women. Liberal feminism is
essentially reformist and seeks to open-up public life to women where their entrance is
blocked by legal and customary constraints. Liberal feminists assume that men and women
have different natures and inclinations and women's leanings towards family and domestic
life is influenced by natural impulses and so reflects a willing choice. Betty Freidan in
The Second Stage discussed the power of re-conceiving the achievement of 'personhood,'
made possible by opening up broader opportunities for women in work and public life, and
the need for law, represented by children, home and the family. Friedan's emphasis upon the
central importance of the family in women's life has been criticized by radical feminists as
contributing to a 'mystique of motherhood.'
Radical feminists emphasize the difference between men and women and stress that
women are superior to men. They view men as victimizers and women as victims and hold
patriarchy responsible for their oppression. Radical feminism views gender identities as a
product of social conditioning which takes place largely within the family, 'patriarchy's chief
institution' but is also evident in literature, art, public life and the economy. They argue that
the patriarchal system oppresses women and thereafter its social and cultural institutions
should be overturned to achieve equality. They reject the idea that biology is women's
unfortunate and unchanging destiny. They look upon women's reproductive capacities and
the nurturing psychology that flows from it as a potential source of a liberating power for
women. They emphasize on the freedom to women to control childbearing and childrearing.
Shulamith Firestone in The Dialectic of Sex concludes that difference in sex arises from
biology. The basic fact that women bear babies has led to a 'natural division of labour' within
what she calls 'the biological family.' She hopes that technological solutions to reproduction
11
would do away with the biological limitations for keeping women in the home. The radical
feminists advocate the creation of a woman's culture as separate from male culture by
providing feminist alternatives in literature, art, music, sexuality and glorified qualities
associated with women such as intuition, caring and nurturing as valuable.
The seventies witnessed many radical and social experiments. Lesbian feminists
believed that men are a primary source of women's suffering and exploitation, thus women
should cut off every association with them personally and socially. The mainstream feminism
ignored the lesbian issue, so lesbians took a political stand and proposed separatism not only
as a lesbian solution but also as a means of female bonding and a woman identified culture
leading to gender equity. Jill Johnston writes, "Feminism being a theory and Lesbianism the
practice. When theory and practice come together we'll have a revolution. Until all women
are lesbians there will be no political revolution" (166). The critics Charlotte Bunch and
Adrienne Rich analyzed how education is used to force children to identify with their
respective gender roles and to suppress any forms of defiance. In her article "Compulsory
Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," (1980) Adrierme Rich analyses the cultural
conditioning to inscribe the heterosexual norms on the adolescent mind and to obliterate all
non-heterosexual desire. Her 'lesbian Continuum' offers a raised understanding of female
sexuality and points out that sexual orientation is culturally constructed. It calls for an openminded quest for one's sexual inclination. She writes, "Feminist theory can no longer afford
merely to voice a toleration of 'lesbianism' as an 'alternative life style,' or make token
allusion to lesbians. A feminist critique of compulsory heterosexual orientation for women is
long overdue." (25)
Marxist and Socialist feminists believe that the relationships between the sexes is
rooted in the social and economic structure itself and only social resolution can offer women
the prospect to genuine emancipation. Friedrich Engels in The Origins of the Family, Private
12
Property and the State (1884) suggested that women's oppression is the outcome of the
development of capitalism and the institution of private property. Capitalism is based upon
the ownership of private property by a relatively few persons, originally all male. This
brought about what Engels called the 'historical defeat of the female sex,' socialist feminists
argued that the unwaged nature of domestic work accounts for its low social status and leaves
women financially dependent on men, thereby establishing a system of social inequality.
They believed that class is a crucial factor in the determination of women's situation and all
women are not sisters, but the women of upper-middle class oppress women of the working
class. They viewed men within the same class as friends and rejected the radical feminism's
view that all men are enemies and all women are sisters. Orthodox Marxists insist upon the
primacy of class politics over sexual politics and believe that women are oppressed not by
men but by capitalism, thus they should recognize that 'class war' is more important than any
idea of a 'sex war.' But writers like Juliet Mitchell subscribe to modem Marxism, which
accepts the interplay of economic, social and cultural forces in society. In Woman's Estate
(1971) she states that women fulfil four social functions: first, they are members of the
workforce and are active in production; secondly, they bear children and thus reproduce
human species; thirdly, they are responsible for socializing children; and finally they are
objects of sexual desire. For her, liberation requires that women achieve emancipation in each
of these areas.
The diversion of feminism into various strands £ind the concomitant improvement in
women's condition led to the emergence of postfeminism in the 1980s. Postfeminism
stemmed from the images of strong, in-control, economically independent women in media
and popular culture. It presumes that equality has been achieved between men and women
and now feminism has become defimct as it has achieved its objectives. Postfeminism
depoliticizes the feminist discourse and claims that, "any needed gender equity has been
13
attained and that further feminist activity is contraindicated" (Kinser 132). It considers
feminism an outdated movement and rejects the fixed ideological assumptions associated
w^ith it. Susan Faludi presents postfeminism as a reaction against the influence gained by
second wave feminism. She writes in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women (1991),
"Just when record numbers of younger women were supporting feminist goals in the mid1980s (more of them, in fact, than older women) and a majority of all women were calling
themselves feminists, the media declared that feminism was the flavor of the seventies and
that postfeminism was the new story—complete with a younger generation who supposedly
reviled the women's movement" (11). She states that it emerged through media-inspired
images which propagated the idea that feminism is unfashionable, passe and therefore not
worthy of serious consideration. She considers it a backlash as it defends the status-quo by
presenting the images of women who do not care for equal justice. Critics have appropriated
the term postfeminism for a variety of definitions, "ranging from a conservative backlash.
Girl Power, third wave feminism and postmodem/poststructuralist feminism" (Genz and
Brabon 1). The prefix 'post' has been interpreted as the continuity of the ongoing process of
transformation or as a rejection of it. It signals a shift in the understanding of feminism and is
evoked by a generation of younger feminists who wanted feminism to be relevant to the era
they are living in.
Postfeminism is the outcome of the interaction of feminism with elements of cultural
theory, particularly postmodernism, poststructural and postcolonialism. It focuses on
individual empowerment but separates itself from collective women's rights movements. Ann
Brooks opines that postfeminism claims, "a conception of a collective feminist identity is
totalitarian and dangerous" (22). The first and second wave feminism believed that women
vindergo similar kinds of oppression and face similar problems throughout the world. But
postfeminism rejects this idea and believes in multiple identities and calls for every woman's
14
recognition of her own personal mix of identities. Sarah Gamble writes, "because it is paved
in favour of liberal humanism, it embraces a flexible ideology which can be adopted to suit
individual needs and desires" (44). According to Ann Brooks, postfeminism is the conceptual
shift within feminism from dualism to diversity and consensus to variety. She maintains that
postfeminism, "facilitates a broadbased, pluralistic conception of the application of feminism,
and addresses the demands of marginalized, diasporic and colonized culture for a nonhegemonic feminism capable of giving voice to local, indigenous and post-colonial
feminisms." (Brooks 4)
Postfeminism lacks a uniform set of ideological assumptions and there is no
uniformity in the ideas of women who are identified as postfeminists like Katie Rophie,
Naomi Wolf, Camille Paglia, Natasha Walter and Rene Denfeld. It is an evolving discourse
with many variants and represents pluralism and difference. It has no fixed definition and
debate about its existence as a valid phenomenon still continues. Sarah Gamble observes,
"Very generally speaking, however, postfeminist debate tends to crystallize around issues of
victimization, autonomy £ind responsibility" (43). It does not view men as victimizers £ind
women as victims and is against the anti-men stance of radical feminism, "because it tends to
be implicitly heterosexist in orientation, postfeminism commonly seeks to develop an agenda
which can find a place for men, as lovers, husbands and fathers as well as friends" (44).
Postfeminism also differs from the second wave in its ideas of female sexuality. The second
wave espoused a rigid sexual code £ind emphasized on the dangers and disadvantages of
sexual relations for women and the sexual abuse and objectification of women. Less radicail
views on sexuality were also a part of the second wave but mainly it viewed sexuality in
negative terms. Postfeminism, on the contrary, rejects the rigid pessimistic approaches of the
second wave and promotes, "the fimdamental female right on 'sexual pleasure and fim as a
form of critical resistance. In the light of neo-liberal society with its emphasis on 'personal
15
choice,' postfeminists point to the importance of sexual pleasure, freedom and choice"
(Adriaens 5). In the postfeminist discourse women are presented as active participants in the
sphere of sexuality. There is a shift from the sexual obj edification to sexual subjectification
of women and the emphasis on individual female gaze rather than male gaze.
Postfeminism started in the 1980s as a reaction against feminism which presented
women as victims and oppressed and in need of freedom and empowerment. Katie Roiphe in
The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism (1993), employs the backlash argument to attack
second wave feminism. She asserts that feminist preoccupations with presenting women as
victims is self-defeating. She claims:
Feminists are closer to their backlash than they think. The image that emerges
from feminist preoccupation with rape and sexual harassment is that of women
as victims.... This image of a delicate woman bears a striking resemblance to
that fifties ideal my mother and the other women of her generation fought so
hard to get away from . . . She [the image of a woman as victim] represented
personal, social £ind psychological possibilities collapsed, and they worked and
marched, shouted and wrote, to make her irrelevant for their daughter. But here
she is again, with her pure intentions and her wide eyes. Only this time it is
feminists themselves who are breathing new life into her." (qtd. in Gamble 46)
She writes that the presentation of women as victims is the celebration of women's
vulnerability instead of their sfrength. Rene Denfeld, like Roiphe, claims that feminism has
become inflexible and is irrelevant to the problems and aspirations of women in the chemged
social, economic, political and cultural scenario. She defines feminism as the 'New
Victorianism' and states that it has become as totalitarian and confining. Denfeld criticizes
the extremist ideology of feminism which insists on an unswerving belief in female
victimization at the hands of an all-powerfiil patriarchal system that is hostile to heterosexual
16
practices. She asserts that the vaUdation of the figure of female victim has stalled the
women's movement. In The New Victorians: A Young Woman's Challenge to the Old
Feminist, she argues: "In the name of feminism, these extremists have embarked on a moral
and spiritual crusade that would take us back to a time worse than our mother's day—back to
the nineteenth-century values of sexual morality, spiritual purity, and political helplessness."
(Denfeld 10)
Naomi Wolf is another well-known face of postfeminism who criticizes the
shortcomings of the feminist movement. Although, in The Beauty Myth (1990) she took a
standard feminist stand and explained how women are forced by society to achieve am
unattainable ideal of 'beauty,' but it was Fire With Fire (1993) which established her as an
ally of postfeminism. She argues that feminism has failed to recognize its gains and attributes
this failure to the backlash phenomenon. She criticizes the innate shortcomings in the
feminist movement itself due to which it could not counteract the damaging feminist
stereotypes in the media with which most women could not identify with. Feminists were
presented to be angry, unfeminine, divorced, working or single unhappy women. On the
ideological hardline amongst some sections of feminism, she says, "the definition of
feminism has become ideologically overloaded. Instead of offering a mighty yes to all
women's individual wishes to forge their own definition, it has been disastrously redefined in
the popular imagination as a massive No to everything outside a narrow set of endorsements"
(Wolf 68). Postfeminism is a rejection of the belief that feminism is based on universal
sisterhood.
In 1999 Germaine Greer published The Whole Woman, a sequel of The Female
Eunuch, in which she defines postfeminism as a market-led phenomenon which assures
women that they can 'have it all' and prepares them as consumers of pills, paints, potions,
cosmetic surgery, fashion and convenience foods. She calls it a luxury in which only the
17
affluent western-world can indulge. She reacts against the postfeminist ideology and states,
"The future is female, we are told. Feminism has served its purpose and should now be off.
Feminism was long hair, dungarees and dangling earrings; postfeminism was business suits,
big hair and lipstick; post-postfeminism was ostentatious sluttishness and disorderly
behavior." (Greer 9)
Those like Greer, who did not believe in postfeminism and wanted feminism to
accommodate itself to changing times, described themselves as participating in a 'thirdwave.' It signified continuity as well as change. As a result, many third wave women's
groups emerged in the United States. Rebecca Walker, the daughter of the novelist Alice
Walker is the foremost of the women who founded the 'Third Wave,' who did not reject their
second wave mothers but called for accommodating contradictions and diversity, "The
argument that attention to complexity is what makes the third wave of feminism new and
different has often been bolstered by the claim that second-wave feminism is overly
simplistic and dogmatic" (Astrid 150). Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake in Third Wave
Agenda highlighted that the third wave differs from the second wave in its acceptance of
pluralism within feminism. They identify the moment of the origin of the third wave in
"critiques of the white women's movement that were initiated by women of color, as well
from the many instances of coalition work undertaken by U.S. third world feminists" (qtd. in
Gamble 54). The term 'third wave' emerged in the 1980s along with postfeminism but
whereas postfeminism emerged as a result of images of independent women in media, the
third wave originated as a result of the realization of a need for negotiating prominent space
within feminist thought for consideration of race-related subjectivities. Heywood and Drake
observe that pluralism is an important element of third wave feminism, "We know that what
oppresses me may not oppress you, that what oppress you may be something I participate in
and that what oppresses me may be something you participate in. Even as different strands of
18
feminism and activism sometimes directly contradict each other, they are all part of our third
wave lives . . . " (qtd. in Gamble 52). The very invocation of the adjective 'third,' however,
indicates a link with previous feminist waves and a continuation of feminist principles and
ideas, though in a modified way keeping in view the changed times.
Third wave feminism rejects the second wave feminism's idea of universal feminist
identity, "Third wave feminism speaks to a generation of younger feminists—bom in the
1960s and 1970s—who see their work founded on second wave principles, yet distinguished
by a number of political and cultural differences" (Genz and Brabon 156). Rebecca Walker in
To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism stresses that the young
women who refuse the feminist label realize that an ideal woman bom of prevalent notions of
how empowered women look, act, or think is simply another impossible contrivance of
perfect womanhood, another scripted role to perform in the name of biology and virtue. The
third wave feminists found that the second wave imposes politically correct codes of
behaviour. The third wave feminism accommodates diversity and change, and allows
multiple identities and one's own perspective. Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards write
in Manifesto: Young Woman, Feminism and the Future, "we're not doing feminism the same
way that the seventies feminists did; being liberated doesn't mean copying what came before
but finding one's own way—away that is genuine to one's own generation" (130). The
postfeminism and the third wave have a similarity as both challenge the second wave's antifeminine agenda. Second wave feminism believed that feminism and femininity are
oppositional and one of these identities, feminine or feminist cem be achieved singularly. The
second wave endorses 'body politics' the implication of which is described by S. Genz as, "a
rejection of practices that draw attention to differences between male and female bodies,
refusing to shave the legs and underarms and rejecting cosmetics and revealing, form-fitting
clothing £is they are a creation of patriarchy. Postfeminism critiques these body politics and
19
re-evaluates the tension that existed between feminism and femininity, establishing a link
between previously opposed alternatives, carving out a new subjective space for women,
allowing them to be feminine and feminist at the same time without losing their integrity or
being relegated to the position of passive dupes" (qtd. in Adriaens 6). The third wave and
postfeminism advocate the celebration of femininity and emphasize the use of it as a source
of women's power.
The third wave is linked with political activism and fights against social injustice
which still oppresses women. It is considered an extension of the second wave feminism and
takes into account the opportunities and dangers for women in the changed economic,
political and technological world, which the feminists of the first and second wave could not
have anticipated. The third wave of feminism renews feminist commitments and at the same
time distinguishes itself from its second wave. The metaphor 'wave' suggests that the third
wave links with the previous movement £ind a continuation of the same by taking into
accoimt diversity £ind difference. Stevi Jackson and Jackie Jones affirm that the feminist
theory for the future must continue to acknowledge the specific actualities and global
contexts which shape women's life in a changing world. They observe that the key challenges
facing feminist theory today are, "imderstanding diversity among women and understanding
the complex changing world within which women are variously located." (10)
The third wave represents the aspirations of women brought up in an environment
where equal rights of women is a given. The vocabulary for talking about sexism,
reproductive rights, sexual autonomy, fair-treatment, lesbian, gay-bisexual-transgender
issues, workplace equity, global awareness and intersections of race, class and gender are
what these women have grown up with. The most significant aspect of third wave is that it
represents a complex effort to negotiate a space between second wave and postfeminism,
"Third wavers came of an age in a world where feminist language is part of the public
20
dialogue, but authentic feminist struggles are not accounted for in that dialogue except in
terms articulated by the mainstream, which still perpetuates a conservative and sexist status
quo. Young women have to have a feminism that can counter the dangerously sophisticated
pronouncements of the failure and inadequacies of feminism coming out of postfeminism."
(Kinser 135)
The history of Indian feminism can be traced back to the early nineteenth-century
when social reformers raised voice against the unjust social practices which dehumanized
women. The unique feature of the feminist movement in India was that it was initiated by
men and only later joined by women. It was Raja Ram Mohan Roy who condemned the
practice of sati and campaigned to get it abolished. He favoured education for women and
believed in their right to property. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar raised voice against the
pathetic condition of widows and supported widow-remarriage. Pandita Ramabai was a
woman scholar and social reformer who raised voice against Hindu traditions suppressing
women and promoted the cause of women's education. Beginning with these reforms, a
review of the status of women in society started and efforts to bring them at par with men
caught momentum. Socio-religious reform associations which sprung up during this time
stressed on women's education and self-reliance. Issues like child-marriage, dowry, purdah,
condition of widows and other evil customs oppressing women became the centre of focus.
Many women's organizations started functioning to improve the condition of women. But the
emphasis of all these reforms was on making women better wives and mothers and their
place was fixed inside the home. Indian national movement brought women out of their
homes to the public domain and they not only participated in it but led it from the front.
Malashri Lai in The Law of the Threshold traces the three stages of Indian feminism
which moves from 'interior space' to 'doorway poise' to 'exterior adjuncts.' She asserts that
the intervention of the Indian National Movement and Mahatma Gandhi disturbed social
21
order for a limited period of patriotic zeal but even there, none questioned the old premise
that a woman's place was essentially at home and her language was one of silence. Most
women activists returned to the home after Independence. Issues like education for women,
equal wages, equality of opportunity, dowry, rape, domestic violence, female foeticide,
inheritance laws, and political, legal and economic rights were the main concerns of the
women's movement in India after Independence.
The issues pertaining to women have found expression in the works of male as well as
female writers. Indian women writers, writing in English, have placed women at the centre of
their narratives and have told the realistic tales of their lives, throwing light on the struggles
and aspirations of Indian woman. Kamla Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabwala, Kamla Das,
Anita Desai, Nayantara Sehgal, Bharti Mukherjee, Shashi Deshpande, Namita Gokhale et al.
have written on women and the exploration of the consciousness of the individual heroine is
used as the principal narrative device in their works. Women aie usually considered to write
about very limited experiences of domesticity, child-bearing, man-woman relationships and
relationship within family. Virginia Woolf explains this difference as, "It is probable,
however, that both in life and art the values of woman are not the values of a man.Thus, when
a woman comes to write a novel, she will find that she is perpetually wishing to alter the
established values—to make serious what appears insignificant to a man, and trivial what is
to him important" (81). Namita Gokhale observes that when women wield the pen or the
keyboard, they tend to remain confined and bogged down in the dimensions of love and the
lack of it, domesticity and its oppressions, biology and its outrages. It is believed that there
are certain similarities in women's literature because women have historically been subjected
to similar oppressions £ind deprivations and they must have experienced similar agony and
anger within themselves. Many critics Eire beginning to agree that, "when we look at women
writers collectively we can see an imaginative continuum, the recurrence of certain patterns.
22
themes, problems, and images from generation to generation" (Showalter, "Female
Tradition" 273). But critics like Erica Jong express dissatisfaction with the depiction of
women as helpless victims in literature. She insists that the heroines of new feminist fiction
will somehow manage to restrict destruction, their outlook and behaviour will presage a new
social order that integrates the best aspects of female culture with selected male values.
Feminists believe that literature should show women involved in activities that are not
traditionally 'feminine' to speed the dissolution of rigid sex roles. Women should be shown
not only in new occupations but with corresponding changes in their personality and
behaviour.
Feminist literary criticism demands that literature should augment consciousness
rising by providing realistic insights into female psychology and self-perception, and should
expose the ways of patriarchal control over them. A feminist text will have women's
experiences, ideas, visions and achievement at the centre and will bring out some form of
reappraisal of the position of women in society. An analysis of the three stages in women
writers' writings appropriately termed as feminine, feminist and female is given by Elaine
Showalter in her essay "The Female Tradition." The first phase is the phase of imitation of
tradition and its views on social roles, second phase is the phase of protest against these
standards and values and a demand of autonomy, and finally there is a phase of selfdiscovery, freed from dependency of opposition, calling for a search for identity. Showalter
writes, "These are obviously not rigid categories, distinctly separable in time, to which
individual writers can be assigned with perfect assurance. The phases overlap; there are
feminist elements in feminine writing, and vice-versa. One might also find all three phases in
the career of a single novelist" (274). This progression from feminine, feminist to female
phase can be identified and an overlapping of these phases is discernible in the texts of
women writers. The three Indian women novelists selected for this study are Mridula Garg,
23
Shashi Deshpande and Manju Kapur. Mridula Garg is a renowned Hindi writer. She has
written novels, short story collections, plays and collection of essays and is a regular
columnist in various magazines. Some of her books are translated into English and other
foreign languages like German, Czech and Japanese. She has been felicitated with many
awards for her writings. The novels selected for this study are translations of her Hindi
novels. A Touch of Sun is a translation of her Hindi novel Uske Hisse Ki Dhoop and
Chittacobra is a translation of the novel of the same name first published in 1979. Country of
Goodbyes was published in Hindi by the name Kathgulab. She writes on women issues and
environment and her novels are known for the unconventional and bold themes she chooses.
Shashi Deshpande is an esteemed Indian English novelist. She has written many novels,
collection of short stories and children's books. Her novels A Matter of Time, Small Remedies
and Moving On have been selected for this study. She explores the complexities of
relationships in her novels peirticularly man-woman relationships. Manju Kapur is one of the
important English novelists. She has five published novels. Her first novel Difficult
Daughters, published in 1999 was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. The
other two novels of her which are included in this study are A Married Woman and Home. In
the works of these three writers, the protagonists are invariably women from the upper
middle class of Indian society who encounter the struggles and dilemmas which shape their
destiny in a transitional society caught up between tradition and modernity.
The present study deals with the three women novelists: Mridula Garg, Shashi
Deshpande and Manju Kapur, in the chronological order of the publication of their first
novels. The objective of this study is to trace the progression of the women protagonists in
the selected novels of each novelist, from feminism to postfeminism. The study seeks to
exeimine the impact of the various phases of feminism on the protagonists and to understand
how the tenets of the 'waves' impact them directly or how they may relate to them by
24
ascription. It further seeks to correlate, wherever appropriate, the progression of successive
protagonists with the corresponding progression in the feminist movement. The first, second
and third chapter document the relational progressions, individual progressions and
progressions in the home-work balance of the protagonists, respectively. The journey of the
protagonists can be traced in three stages: they travelfi"omfantasy, dependence and their
private world to reality, freedom and the public sphere with an in-between transitional stage.
We find these women standing at different positions on the feminist map. In the first stage
women are shown as living in a world of fantasy, as sentimental beings preoccupied with
relationships. They defy tradition and social norms but their man-centred existence
emphasizes their inherent femininity. The women in this first stage are depicted as seeking
emancipation through the men in their lives. In the second stage we find women escaping
from one relationship to another, feeling a sense of failure and gradually realizing that no
individual but their own self can make them feel whole. They finally turn to creative
expression to give meaning to their lives. The third stage brings to the fore women who
understand their needs and assume responsibility for the self. These women exhibit qualities
of power, success and freedom in making choices and decisions. They break the myth that
women seek their identity inside the house or in relationships with men. Instead, they seek
their identity in their vocation. They cross the 'threshold' and enter the social sphere with
confidence. Here, work and a purpose of life become central to a woman's life and the need
for self-fulfilment becomes equally important. Thus, the third stage depicts women who are
independent, self-reliant and powerful, meeting the challenges of life on their own and
asserting their individuality. They do not reject the traditional 'feminine' attributes for an
androgynous society gives equal value to 'masculine' as well as 'feminine' traits. The impact
of the ideology of the various waves of feminism and postfeminism is clearly perceived on
the characters in the three stages.
25
The first chapter charts the journey of the evolution of the consciousness of the
protagonists of Mridula Garg's A Touch of Sun, Chittacobra and Country of Goodbyes. In
A Touch of Sun Manisha seeks fulfilment in romantic love and relationships but realizes the
futility of her search. She finally overcomes the feminine desire to achieve transcendence
through a man and imderstands that her work as a writer can bring her the fulfillment she
longs for. Garg shows that it is true for women as well as for men that the realization of one's
fiill potential can lead to a meaningful existence. The protagonist of her next novel
Chittacobra also shows excessive indulgence in sentimentalism. Manu too, like Manisha,
realizes that dedication to a purpose would be the source of her emancipation. Both these
women are unconventional in their approach towards marriage and relationships, but it is
their gradual progression from the personal to the social realm, a kind of consciousness
raising of these characters, which makes these novels feminists texts. The portrayal of these
characters is influenced by the idetis of the second wave feminism which aimed at creating
awareness among women about the subtle social conditioning which makes them dependent
on men and keeps them satisfied with their subservient status in society. The women
characters in Country of Goodbyes exhibit the next stage where the four women from
different backgrounds are in search of themselves in different contexts. An analysis of the
events of their lives and experiences reveals the various dimensions of the subjugation of
women in society and their struggles for self-empowerment. As the novel appeared at the end
of the twentieth-century, the impact of the emergence of postfeminism and the third wave
feminism on it is also studied and described.
The second chapter traces the progression of the feminist consciousness in three
novels of Shashi Deshpande. In A Matter of Time, Kalyani, Sumi and Aru resist their
subjugation in their own different ways and it is established that women make efforts to carve
an independent existence for themselves and achieve success despite the restraints of the
environment and tradition. It is observed that the women characters in Small Remedies are
26
more assertive and empowered as compared to the women in A Matter of Time, though they
also struggle against the tyranny of tradition and social conventions while making
independent choices in life. The further distance covered by Manjari in Moving On is studied
keeping in view the changing feminist sensibilities. The third chapter maps the development
of women characters in Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters, A Married Woman and Home.
The amount of success the characters achieve in their journey for emancipation from the
clutches of oppressive conventions or in finding their own voice, place and standing is
studied in this chapter and the influence of the evolution of the feminist ideology is
examined. The conclusion makes the comparative analysis of the progressions mapped in the
preceding chapters and sums up the finding of the studyfi-omthe feminist perspective.
27
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