Chapter 2 [tHe WOMAN QUESTION Women writings in India are inextricably linked with the woman, question’ and Indian English short siories, like other writing by women, correspondingly reflect the varying Issues in keeping with their contemporary .¢. Hence in this chapter an attempt will be made to trace the trajectory of times the ‘women question’ in India and foreground the various issues associated with it ‘The woman question’ is a term that is associated with the social change that questions the established ‘essentialist’ identity of women and their fundamental roles, that have come to be recognized as the ‘normative jn the social consciousness since time immemorial. The term was first used jin France: the "Querelle des femmes" and was used in England in the Victorian age after the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867. The rudimentary roles and the private/public dichotomy was questioned when the \ndustrial revolution brought thousands of lower class women into factory jobs, thereby ing the traditional ideas of a woman's role and position. Thereafter United Kingdom, Canada and Russia in the destabi new era of it gained momentum in U.SA., nineteenth and twentieth century when education ushered in a uctive rights, bodily awareness and issues of women's suffrage, Teprodi edical rights and marriage autonomy, property rights, legal rights, mi 32 iW:fominated the cultural discussi a the cultural discussions. This gradually took the shape of a movement and came to be understood as and associated with feminism in the west. However the trajectory of the ‘woman question’ in india ts different ‘and peculiar as it is rooted in the indigenous soil, Firetly, because women in India have enjoyed @ good status in earlier times, and secondly question’ has not exclusively been a concern of women alone. Rather “the woman question’ has been a central concern for men as well though it is ‘marked with variations in attitude and agenda across times. It has been rightly said that the position of women is a true index of the cultural and spiritual level of a society and in ancient India, women enjoyed a respectable status and were given equal opportunities. In Vedas, women have been called updeshiri of knowledge and have been revered as a teacher. They were also considered capable of being administrators and judges. Many of the seers to whom the hyms of the Rigveda were revealed were women; to name only a few, Lopamudra, Savitri, Devayani, Kamayani, Indrani ete. During the Vedic period, the brahmavadinis were the counterparts of the brahmacharis. Thus women enjoyed equal opportunities and even the right of choice: Just as boys acquire sound knowledge and culture by the practice of Brahmacharya and then marry girls of their own choice, who are young, well-educated, loving and of like temperament, so should a girl practice Brahmacharya, study the Veda and other sciences and thereby perfect her knowledge, refine her character, give her hand to a man of her own choice, who is young, learned and loving. (Atharveda 11.16.3.18) 33olar Gargi was one of the privileged invitees to the King Janaka ‘The renowned lady sch ‘first ever Known world conference on Philosophy, convened by of Videha, where she challenged the venerable Yajnavalkya in a public debate on Theology. ‘several women in ancient Indian literary texts have been portrayed as exceptionally bold and independent. However, writers of later text chose to freeze bold and talented women in certain moulds that were uncomplimentary and not in keeping with their true selves. With the growth iq literature that portrays women in a condescending manner, the of Varalgyé i image of Indian women suffered a damage. Woman was supposed to drain the male of all his vitality and cause Bindukshaya dreaded by all males. Thus gradually misogynistic attitude became more pervasive and the world for became more constrictive. Women's education also received a women ‘setback due to the detoriation of the religious status of women and lowering of the marriage age. Instead of education, women were being channelized towards domestic arts, culinary arts and household. The situation worsened with the advent of Muslims and evils like pardah system, sati pratha and child marriage came into practice. The condition of women become bad to worse as patriarchy and tradition tightened their hold on female sexuality = The fundamental principle of the Hindu social organisation was. to construct a closed structure to preserve land, women and. ritual quality within it. As these three are structurally linked so it is impossible to maintain all the three without stringently organising female sexuality. (Nur Yalman 580). The eighteenth century, also referred to as the age of ‘intellectual stagnation’ was marked with irrational bigotry and retrogressive measure against women. Polygamy was prevalent and the condition widows 34worsened. The custom of tonsuring became compulsory which symbolically defeminised and de-sexed widows. However, with the establishment of the East India company and the , the British civil servants colonizers, under the garb of the ‘Civilizing Missioi projected the Indian patriarchs as ‘barbarian’ and highlighted thelr indifference towards the degenerated state of Indian women. This shook them out of their stupor and they became active agents in bringing about positive changes in Indian tradition, reconstituting patriarchy and ‘recasting! women : the extra ordinary energy with which the colonial intelligentsia debated questions of social reforms concerning women, for example sati, widow remarriage or child marriage, Le. issues which concerned primarily upper caste, middle class women, cannot be understood as separate from and indeed is deeply embedded in, the wider changes in the political economy of colonial India. (Nair 49) Thus social reform movement, initiated by men, played a significant role in changing the status of women through legislation along with a change in social attitudes. Raja Ram Mohan Roy took up the cause of widow re- marriage and abolition of sati. lshwar Chandra Vidya Sagar, Mahatma Phule, Dayanand Saraswati, Swami Vivekanand and others worked together for the betterment of women through social and religious reforms. "They focused on the plight of the large number of widows (often young widow Brahmin girl), who were socially restricted to a life of hardship and self-denial and not allowed to remarry" (Tharu and Lalita 150). 35However, with the passage of time, the social reform movements which were exclusively related to the cause of Indian women's upliftment ‘and growth, gradually got subsumed into the nationalist movement: Fearful of the limited, but significant, advances made by British women in the latter part of the nineteenth century, as well as. the creasing clamour for constitutional changes by Indian themselves, the colonial zeal for reform was considerably diluted at the turn of the century. Analysis which pay attention to these compulsions complicate our understanding of social reform, clearly acknowledging limitations, so that reform may no longer be seen as unequivocally "good" for women in particular or Indian society as whole, but as instituting new possibilities even as it defined new boundaries. (Nair §1) Thus the questions regarding women's position and status in the society did not arise the same degree of public passion and movement as they did only a few decades before. As Partha Chatterjee rightly observes: the mid nineteenth century attempts in Bengal to ‘Modernize' the condition of women, then what follows in the period of nationalism must be regarded as a clear retrogression. Modernization began in the first half of the nineteenth century because of the penetration of westem ideas. After some limited success, there was perceptible decline in the reform movements as popular attitudes towards them hardened. (Chatterjee 116) Consequently, the movements related to the Indian women's upliftment were procrastinated by the nationalist - politics. Several 36nationalistic and political movements took up the issue of woman's question’ in the late nineteenth century as a problem of Indian tradition: If we can reconstruct this framework of the nationalist ideology we will be in far better position to locate where exactly the women's questions fitted in with the claims of nationalism .... the relative unimportance of the women's question in the last decades of the nineteenth century is to be explained not by the fact that it had been censored out of the reform agenda or overtaken by the more pressing and emotive issues of political struggle. The reason lies in nationalism's success in situating the ‘Women's question’ in an inner domain of sovereignty, far removed from the arena of political contest with the colonial state. (Chatterjee 117) Indian nationalists in the late nineteenth century gave stress to retain and strengthen the distinctive spiritual essence of the nation - for this firstly they made the distinction between inner and outer domain: The world is the external, the domain of the material, the home: represents one's inner spiritual self. One's true identity. (Chatterjee 120) Thus the outer domain related to man and inner domain was associated with women. Being the home maker, women were made to take the main responsibility for expressing and nurturing the spiritual quality of the national culture. Along with this major responsibility, the Indian women were also governed with their inherent feeling of duty that was not to loose their essentially feminine virtues. These nationalistic movements advocated the new patriarchy, which conferred upon women the honour of a new social 37responsibility. While on the other side due to the pre-dominance of British colonizer in the outer domain, the Indian intelligentsia perceived the inner - domain as the place of peace and solace. In this transforming period an urge was felt on the Indian intelligentsia to uplift the condition of Indian women. With this mindset they initiated a new movement towards the repositioning of the Indian middle class women. It projected women as a “new woman’ who combined both the traits first as a self-sacrificing Hindu wife and mother and secondly, as the ‘perfect lady’ who reflected the Victorian image. The Indian women with their new found abilities felt that whichever path they choose they will always remain under the hold of patriarchy. Thus the ‘Woman question’ took a definite and proper shape with the realization of self-identity by individual women. They acquired various ways to express their feeling ‘and thoughts. There was a gradual growing tendency among the young women not only to be equal to men, but to be like them in all other area. Indian women took advantage of their limited education and used it as a tool to express their inner - suppressed feelings and their condition. Thus they took to writing as the medium to communicate their private feelings with the society. Women writings of that period were considered as the most appropriate way, that covered all that untouched areas associated with the Indian women, their writings gave voice to their unsaid sufferings and inner trauma: What emerges from the writings then, is a subtle and closely textured sense of the struggles and counter struggle through which women's subjectivities took shape as new worlds were formed around them. (Tharu and Lalita 154) This was the time when women writers published their autobiographies - expressing their stories of struggle against traditional set 38up and pleading for better education for women. The major autobiographies of that time were Raj Laxmi Debis ‘The Hindu wife’ (1875), Ramabai Saraswatis "The High-Caste Hindu Woman" (1886), Shevantibai Nikame's ‘Ratanbal : A Sketch of a Bombay High Court Hindu Wife (1894), Krupabai Sattianadan's ‘Kamla’ (1894) and ‘Saguna' (1895). These autobiographies were regarded as ‘testimony of their individual experiences'.These autobiographies focused on the tensions and contradictions built for the colonized women and how their movements were restricted: Most of them wore confined within the social universe of the home, with multiple, invisible inner thresholds regulating their ability even within it. (Kosambi 4) With education and exposure, women took up their own cause and now the ‘woman question’ came to be tackled by women themselves. Pandita Ramabai Ranade gave her strongest feminist statement in the Bombay provincial council for women's voting right: Women do not prepare any longer to content themselves with the second place in life which men have assigned to them. They are determined to come to the front, to take part in the various movements of the country. Not merely social but Political also, for the betterment of their country. (Kosambi 71), Thus the period of late nineteenth century to early twentieth century is known and marked as era of rapid change or transitions where efforts were made to redefine the meaning of culture, custom and tradition to recast Indian society as more progressive. Though the women's writing of this period were not focused enough to build a movement: 39There was no effort to formulate a common agenda or push for change in unison. Nor was there much of a correspondence across their individual variants of Feminism. (Kosambi 40) yet within their restricted area in the family and society, some of the nineteenth century women writers like Pandita Ramabai, Tarabai Shinde, Ramabai Ranade took up the cause of women with their effective and empathetic writings. These women writers shared their deep desires for the support of a world which was beyond the circle of their traditional family. Gradually the Indian women with the advent of the twentieth century, became well-aware about their positioning and conditioning in the society and started raising their voice for their equal status in the society. Thus ever since the nineteenth century, ‘woman question’ has. occupied centre-stage and there has been a constant shift in the image and position of women. While on one hand, because of colonial modernity and reformist efforts, women were retrieved from abyss of ignorance, on the other, the nationalist agenda again confined them to the inner sphere and laid upon them the onus of cultural and spiritual purity. "But it also provided through education, new idea and some material opportunities, limited spaces for women that allowed their resistance to emerge” (Chakraborty 190). This was the genesis not only of the woman's march towards selfhood and identity but also of the never ending conflict between tradition and modernity. Though men continued to speak on women's behalf, now women themselves insisted that their points of view had to be reckoned with (Orsini 305). As a result, some progressive legislations that gave women better rights were passed. The Age of Consent Bill rocked the society but it was 40nevertheless path breaking. Child Marriage Restraint Act, Married Women's Property Act, Sati Abolition Act, etc, were the forerunners to the rights guaranteed to women by the Constitution and other laws. Participation in the Freedom Movernent also resulted in a strong women's movement that fought for greater spaces for women in society. Consequently, significant social legislations were passed to secure and uphold woman's bodily integrity and mental well being. Dowry Prohibition Act, Representation of Women (Prevention) Act, The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act and various Acts related to crimes against women like Harassment at workplace etc. were aimed to ensure women's safety and maintain their dignity. However, despite sincere and arduous efforts of the reformers before independence and legislations after independence, there were still many aspects and elusive women's issues that did not and could but fall within the legal orbit. The aspects related to woman's self and personhood, dignity, freedom and choice within the family needed urgent attention that came to be reflected in their writings since the nineteenth century and continue to do so. "Women's voices emphasized subjectivity and demanded that the family be an affective unit which acknowledged their feelings and their right to belong and to be heard" (Orsini 305). It is this aspect of the ‘woman question’ that the Indian women writers take up in their writings irrespective of the genre. Ml Changes in the social context both at the external level and at the internal level - emotional and mental, are reflected in the Indian English short stories. Unlike the freedom movement that was a unifying factor before independence, post-independence era was marked by inequalities, complexities and disillusionment which began to be reflected in these short 4stories. The rural and urban divide widened and the urban middle class became prominent. The materialistic pursuit gave rise to new situations, new conflicts and the configurations of relational matrix began to change. Joint family transformed into nuclear family and growing aspirations and economic demands brought women into the public sphere. This led to greater exposure and new facets of women began to emerge palpably. All this came. to be reflected in the short stories and there was a visible thematic shift from ‘ethical dimensions’ to the ‘human situation’ in these stories. Every creative writer, being a part of the contemporary times, is invariably impacted by the milieu and draws upon the material environment for his/her raw material: Even if unconsciously, the writer's sensibility graphs those invisible hurts which connect one event to another. From the material context arises the atmosphere, the spirit of the times which the writers sensibility catches. (Sahni 9) Thus the short stories became more realistic, socially, oriented, inward looking and portrayed subtle emotions. “The hidden powers of language emerged, and portrayal of a mentality centered on self acquired importance” (Sahni14). The women writers identified with the changing socio-cultural situation/ condition of women and gave voice to their precadiments, budding aspirations and the ensuring complexities in their short stories. "They lent a new dimension of sensitivity and perception to the short story in English. They found its limited canvas quite congenial to their sensibilities in confronting their brief, often muted experiences" (Kumar 6). 42Their stories confront the contemporary life and convey the pulse of modernity. Modernity designates a state of mind, a pull towards the future and is temporal. It is not only the contemporary women writers who have engaged themselves with the ‘woman question’ in their short stories but way back in the nineteenth century K. Sattianadhan took up the cause of Indian women in her short stories. The year 1898 etches out in the literary landscape as it heralds the substantial subsequent contribution of Indian women writers towards Indian English short story. Kamala Sattianadhan published her first short story collection entitled Stories of Indian Christian Life in 1898. Another women short story writer who looms large on the literary scene is Cornelia Sorabji. Her short stories are a true picture of the then contemporary Indian society portraying both Hindu and Parsi characters from different strata of society. In keeping with the milieu, Comelia Sorabji portrays women characters who have not only been conditioned but have also accepted and imbibed the patriarchal mindset. Her short story collection entitled Love and Life Behind the Purdah was published in 1901. The collection deals with various issues which are related to Indian womanhood. Almost in all eleven stories, Sorabji showed Indian women seeking western education. Her women characters are typical self-effacing and self-sacrificing Indian women who are struggling against rigid social customs and traditions like sati partha and child marriage. One of her short stories ‘Greater Love’ portrays a traditional rustic Hindu wife named Mathashri who is plagued with guilt due to her infertility. In order to fulfill her husband's strong desire for a son she willingly envelops death, thus clearing the way for her husband's second marriage. \n another story, 'The Fire is Quenched! she narrates the pain and anguish of an oldParsi woman whose son and daughter in-law are ex-communicated from the Parsi community. Through her stories Sorabji highlighted that suffering and death were the forms of protest for Indian women of that period. Ela Sen is considered as one of the prominent short story writers of pre-independence period. She has one short story collection entitled Darkening Days published in 1944. Her stories are mostly concerned with the effect of "Great Bengal Famine' of 1943. All the stories have been written with a realistic approach. Sen's skillful writing techniques and her command. ‘on language enable her to beautifully blend the purpose of the story with the essential techniques required for a perfect short story. In one of her story *Co-Wife' Ela pinpointedly depicts the effect of famine on a couple who are struggling to maintain their relationship. Attia Hosain is considered as another notable short story writer. Her maiden short story collection entitled Phoenix Fled and Other Stories (1953) is a collection of twelve short stories. The stories present the life-style of Muslim women: The Muslim joint family is a tangible presence in almost every story. Presided over by the Begum, who is vigilant, sharp but kind, and with relatives floating in and out, the Muslim joint family as presented by Attia Hosain, revolves round the Zenana and the servant quarters. (Melwani 53) Almost in every story Hosain has Portrayed women characters in different situations. As in 'Time is Unredeemable' Attia depicts Bano's character with a sympathetic concern, Bano is married to Arshad, who is settled abroad. In nine long years Atshad's communication with Bano is through few formal letters. Bano learns everything to please her learned 44husband. She locks herself in her room on her husband's arrival after a long period in the hope that he would inquire about her but when Arshad comes, he shows least interest in Bano. Thus Attia Hosain brings out an image of a woman who never gets a chance to leave the restricted place "Home". In ~The Loss’ she has portrayed an image of old woman who takes care of the narrator and is regarded by him as his foster mother. In ‘The Daughter-in- law Hosain presents a picture of superstitious belief. She writes in her stories about the beliefs which are maintained or sustained particularly by ‘Muslims: ‘She weighed rice against silver coin inscribed with the names of four champions of the prophet and gave it to each person, each person has to chew it for a while and then spit it within a circle. This is a means of identifying a thief. The rice would have drawn blood from the thief's mouth. (The Daugther-in-law 34) In ‘Phoenix Fled’, Hosain has presented a picture of the changing world from an old woman's point of view. The author has minutely portrayed the love and attachment of an old woman for her own native land. Ruth Parwer Jhabvala is another major Indian short story writer whose works Like Birds, Like Fishes and Other Stories (1964), A Stronger Climate (1969), An Experience of India (1972) and How | Became a Holy Mother and Other Stories (1976) are rooted in the Indian climate and milieu. ‘Passion’ from Out of India: Selected Stories (1976) voices the several audacities of women characters. Her short story collection East into Upper East is considered as her most mature work. It contains fourteen short stories, six set in India and the rest in America. She highlights the basic human craving for emotional support. The dominant tone in her short stories 45is of pathos and disillusionment which is common to both the west and the Indian sub-continent. Her story ‘Sixth Child’ describes Babu Ram, a father of five girls hoping to have a boy; the sixth time is full of remorse on the birth of a sixth girl child. Her story ‘Monkey on the Hill of God’ narrates a strange story of Kashinath, a poor athlete who marries an ugly daughter of a rich businessman. Their trip to a hilltemple and their encounter with holy monkeys making strange gestures to women pilgrims leads to catharsis of Kashinath. Padma Hejmadi is known as one of the remarkable women writers of the seventies. Almost all the stories in her collection; ‘Coigns of Vantage’ deal with the theme of the conflict in an individual who grows up under two entirely different traditions, the native and the western, She depicts a picture of conflict between tradition and modernity and advocates the Gandhian philosophy of finding and adopting the *Mid Way’ of two opposite extremes. She appeals through her stories to move forward towards the moral transformation in the rapid changing social situations. Thus with her thought provoking stories Hejmadi makes a strong impact on her readers. Anita Desai in her two short story collections entitled Games Twilight and Other Stories (1978) and Diamond Dust and Other Stories (2000) explores the psychology of her characters in her stories. In ‘Studies in the Park’ Desai depicts a young boy's pathetic condition as he feels hurt when, he is repeatedly harassed by his family. In almost all of her stories she is concerned with the individual and portrays different kinds- lovely, shy, sensitive, alienated characters in her stories, Desai's use of language, symbolism and imagery make her stories appealing. Desai's style is a humor, evocative but simple and she Portrays her simple character that leave lasting impact. 46‘Shashi Deshpande has substantially contributed towards short stories and has written six collections of short stories besides several novels. Deshpande deals with various emerging issues related to women in her writing: She does not confine her writing to women of a certain class. She draws her characters from all strata of society and her women cut across all ages. Her characters occupy various positions on the domestic and social scale, ranging from total servility to complete liberation. (Melwani 137) Deshpande writes about the conflicts in a modern woman's life. The conflict arises because the modern Indian woman wants to make her own position and individuality in the family and in the society but she is equally bound with the traditional roles forced upon her. In “The Inner Rooms’ she describes a historical character Amba who was forced to end her life after a young girl facing rejection from her suitors. Similarly in ‘The Awakening’, Alka finally acknowledges “her father's suffering and struggles to feed his family and forgoes her dreams and ambitions in repentance. The compromising wife in °! want' represents the middle class dilemmas about the choice a woman has to make for the sake of her family. In another short story “A Day Like Another’ she depicts the problem of infidelity very poignantly. The wife does not protest and is ready to negate her pain for the family. Deshpande presents a picture of a docile and neglected wife in the short story ‘Antidote of Boredom’. ‘Here me Sanjay’ is unique as it brings out all the qualities of its writer who blends in it the elements like imagery, narration, myth, theme very subtly. Deshpande depicts an image of a successful and educated woman in ’A Liberated Women’ who is a doctor 47profession - it becomes the cause of the break-up of this marriage. It can be mon said that Deshpande's woman characters represent the voice of co and gets married to a man of her own choice. But as she gets success in her Indian middle class women. Thus Deshpande, with her excellent writing skill and technique presents different sensitive issues related to women in her short stories: At the core of her stories there are helpless and timid women jictimized by the male chauvinistic system in several ways. Though who are vi they are aware of their subservient position, they are ready to suffer and make compromises with the situations. Another Indian short story writer who became the representative of audacious feminine voices of Indian women is Kamla Das. She has eleven volumes of short stories to her credit in Malayalam and one in English theme of man-woman relationship. In ‘In December’ Das depicts the women's experience and her sense of unfulfillment even in the midst of happiness with her lover. In the title story ‘A Doll for the Child Prostitute! she captures the ghastly scene of a brothel where a child is pushed into the hell of prostitution. She pinpoints their longings to be loved and cared but all child prostitutes are not in a position to demand even their right to survive. Das has ironically named the characters after Hindu Goddess Radha, entitled: A Doll for the Child Prostitute. The short stories deal mainly with the Rukmani, Sita, Saraswati and Mira. Das's stories are marked with. suggestiveness. Almost all the stories are presented from women's point of view. In the story ‘Iqbal’ she deals with the issue homosexuality which is considered as a stigma in the Indian society. Das depicts the assertive wife who shows her superiority over her husband’s homosexual friend because she has the capacity to bear children for him which the other lacks. Similarly *Sanatan Choudhari's Wife’, ‘Leukamia’, ‘A Little Kitten’, ‘Darjeeling, ‘The Sign of the Lion’ are described from the perspective of a woman. 48Seen eee eae eee i erry eae ey women characters are fire brands. She highlights distressed and tormented women who are courageous enough to break free from the male centric society. Her women are full of feministic zeal to the extent of questioning the time-honoured values of chastity and docility. In her short story volume The Other Woman she paints emancipated women who do not budge from challenging the social codes of morality and its double standards. *Prison’ reflects the dilemma of a married woman Gauri who is torn between wifely ethics and the attraction for the other man. In ‘Absolution’ the husband Ram exhibits and celebrates his infidelity by presenting varieties of flowers to his wife each time he goes astray. There comes a time when she retaliates by plunging herself in an extra-marital relationship with Ram's friend Dilip. Mehta uses the characters name ironically and allegorically since there is a reversal in Sita's character. She is a liberated woman who ts not ready to undergo an ordeal unlike the legendary queen Sita. Sujatha Bala Subrahmanian has only one though effective short story collection to her credit: The House in the Hills. Subrahmanian's stories are marked with artistic craftmanship. She displays an economy in word usage. ‘Mother’ is the story of a silent but dominating mother who reacts on her son's separation and later on his death very calmly. Subrahmanian presents a touching story of a husband in “A Time for Hunger’, who allows his wife to buy mirror to fulfill her desire, with the money he gives her to buy rice. He does all this when they are facing very pathetic situation. ‘The Zamindar of Pallipuram' is considered her best story in which she depicts the false image of a zamindar, who has lost every thing but not his false pride. Raji Narasimhan with her one short story collection entitled The Marriage of Bela depicts the experiences of day to day life. Her use of 49language, atmosphere and characterization are the key elements of Narasimhan's short stories which make them impressive and effective: Unlike Raji Narasimhan, Juliette Banerjee writes about lower middle class Anglo-Indians and westernized middle class Indians in her short story collection The Boy Friend and Other Stories. In almost all of her stories she captures the spirit of Calcutta. Another notable woman writer of this period is Her first short story collection The Nude and Other Stories, Nergis Dalal. created a niche for itself after “The Nude! bagged a national prize while “The Sacrifice’ got international acclaim. Dalal's stories are neatly constructed and she uses language, humor, images and dialogues very aptly in her stories. Bharti Mukherjee has written two volumes of short stories Darkness and The Middleman which are remarkable for their treatment of themes of racism and indians. Sunita Jain's short story collections A Woman is Dead and exile I Eunuchs of Time tread the path of Shashi Deshpande's style. Her women characters are docile and family bound. Women writers who belong to the period of nineties and onwards are good in number in comparison to the previous decades. They proved their writing skill in their remarkable piece of short story collections. Their collections get the recognition due to their imaginative and expressive powers. Vera Sharma is the author of two short story collections: The Unrepentant and Other Stories (1982) and Naina and Other Stories (1989). She portrays effectively the changes that are taking place in the society and how these changes affect the decisions of the common man. Taking up the same theme of change in the society another short story writer Lavanya Sankaran published her only short story collection entitled: The Red Carpet and Other Stories. Shree Ghatage's short stories collection entitled Awake When All the World is Asleep explores the various demands of an individual 50from the society. Gauri Deshpande is another major short story writer whose The Lackadalsical Sweeper and Other Stories short story collection: published in 1997, is a volume of sixteen stories. All the stories in a way oF another depict the helpless and poor condition of the middie class Indian woman caught between her own desires and social responsibilities. years are ‘Other short story collections by woman writers In recent ‘anita Nait’s Satyara of the Subway and Other Stories, jay Lakshmt's Pomegranate Dreams and Other Stories, Susan Visvanathan's Something Barely Remembered and Other Stories Uma Parmeshwaran's Fighter Pilots Never Die, Shine Antony's Planet Polygamous, 36 Tales of Infidelity, Manju Kak's First Light in Colonelpura, Subhadra Sen Gupta's Good Girls Make Bad News, Kalpana Swaminathan's Cryptic Death and Other Stories. Thus, as is evident from the above, women have been prolific short story writers and have substantially contributed to the Indian English short story. Right from the nineteenth century to the present, women have captured and tried to reflect the Indian socio-cultural seismograph. Though they have c a kaleidoscopic vie\ engaged with the ‘woman question’ Issues like man-woman relationship, woman to ionships and fidelity, covered almost every aspect of Indian experience and have given .w in their short stories, they have primarily remained and have delineated multiple experiences of women. woman relationship within the family, extramarital relat tradition and modemity, physical and conflict between 1g self of women and many other unsaid sexuality, psychological violence, the emergin: experiences find voice in these short stories by women. mala Das, Anita Desai, There are few short story writers like Kar ‘oshi etc. who have received much critical Shashi Deshpande, Sumti Namj umber of research articles in edited books have been attention and a ni 51published. However, so far there vets excise on nan natn sot cy era ser entitled "Women Short Story Writers in English” by TN. cea submitied in 1989, Gulbarga University, Gulbarga. Another ‘ull ane published work is Women in Indian Short Stories : Feminist ee (2003) by Usha Bande and Atma Ram. tt throws light on the images of women in Indian short fiction including stories from Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi and Indian English Literature. A number of Tesearch papers on the related subject have been published in a volume edited by Jasbir Jain titled: Gender and Narrative in 2002. A further significant published work on the Indian English short story genre is Krishna Daiya's book entitled Post- Independence Women Short Story Writers in Indian English (2006). \t depicts how the selected Indian women writers of post independence period have adopted different thematic concerns, characterization and style in their short stories. A recent book entitled Themes in the Indian Short Story in English-An Historical and a Critical Survey (2010) by Murli Das Melwani gives @ historical and critical detail of the Indian English short story writers from its origin in India upto 2006. However, a full-length and an in-depth study of the post-nineties Indian English short stories by women writers has. not been attempted so far. During the last decade of the twentieth century and the beginning of this century, Indian English short stories by women writers have reached a milestone with Jhumpa Lahiri's award winning collection The Interpreter of Maladies Stories from Bengal Boston and Beyond. Writers like Shauna Singh Baldwin, Manjula Padmanabhan, Githa Hariharan, Anjana Appachana have consolidated their position in this field and provide a kaleidoscopic view of Indian woman's life. These writers present new perspectives as they depict the shared experiences of women's denigration and exploitation and 52the ensuing conflict and give voice to their silences. White other Iterary works of these writers have drawn critical attention, their short stories have merely been considered in the form of review or few articles. A full-length and detalled study of these writers has not been attempted so far and it is hoped that a comprehensive, comparative and in-depth study in this area would be a fruitful exercise, These women writers explore the woman question from different angles and deal with many issues that affect them both as women and as writers in thelr short stories. Since every writer's sensibility is impacted by and responds to the socio-cultural milieu and draws upon one's experiences, it becomes imperative to go into the bio-bibliographical details of the selected writers before discussing various aspects in their stories, The first Indian woman short story writer selected for the present work is Anjana Appachana who is of Indian origin and lives in the United States of America. She has written a collection of short stories entitled Incantations and Other Stories and a novel - Listening Now. She was born in india and is of Coorg (Karnataka) origin and received her education from Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya, Delhi University, Jawaharial Nehru University and Pennsylvania State University. Her first book incantations and Other Stories (1991) Contains tales deeply rooted in the contemporary milieu of India. One of her short stories entitled *Sharmaji’ was incorporated in Mirror Work: Fifty Years of Indian Writing, a collection edited by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West. Appachana received the O. Henry Festival Prize and a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in the US. Her debut novel entitled Listening Now (1997) deals with six women narrators who tell the love story of Padma and Karan, spanning over the Period of sixteen years and is set in Bangalore, Delhi and Lucknow, 53setatement. While incantations and Other Stories is marked by under achana uses the ‘and a laconic humour, in Listening Now, Anjana Appach .ed emotional intensity of this novel and yy thelr very opposite quality: excess. The sustain: the excess of dramatic moments overwhelm the readers b) dance. The narrators are all women-mothers, daughters, sisters and abun fiends who have listened to each other carefully, shared laughter, swapped memories and fears, and who can even sense each other's silent secrets. ‘Another short story writer selected for study - Githa Hariharan was porn in 1954 at Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu and brought up in Bombay. She received her education in Bombay and New Delhi and later went to the United States. She also worked as a staff writer in WNET-Channel 13 in New York and from 1979 she worked in Bombay, Madras and New Delhi as an editor in a publishing house and thereafter as a freelancer. She, along with her husband, won the right to have their children named after her (instead of carrying the father's name). In this famous case argued by Indira Jaisingh, the Supreme Court agreed that the mother was also a ‘natural guardian” of the child. In 1995, Hariharan questioned the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act as discriminatory against women. The case, Githa Hariharan and Another vs. Reserve Bank of India and Another, led to the revised judgment by the Supreme Court. Githa Hariharan’s literary corpus consists of novels, short stories, essays, newspaper articles and columns. Her first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night (1992) received the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1993. Her other novels include The Ghosts of Vasu Master (1994), When Dreams Travel (1999), In Times of Siege (2003), and Fugitive Histories (2009). A compilation of short stories, The Art of Dying, was published in 1993. , followed by a br i i] ee 3 i y @ book of stories for children, The Winning Team, in 2004. GithaHariharan has also edited a volume of stories in English translation from tos major South Indian languages, A Southem Harvest (1993) and has ponies a collection of stories for children, Sorry, Best Friend! (1997). Hariharan’s fiction has been translated into a number of languages including French, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, Greek, Urdu and Vietnamese; her essays and novels have also been included in anthologies such as Salman Rushdie's Mirror Work: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947-1997. Githa Hariharan has been a Visiting Professor in several universities, including Dartmouth College and George Washington University in the United States, the University of Canterbury at Kent in the UK and Jamia Millia Islamia in India, where she is, at present, Scholar-in-Residence. The next writer under consideration is Jhumpa Lahiri, a daughter of Bengali Indian immigrants born in London on July 11, 1967. Her family migrated to the United States when she was three. Lahiri grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island, where her father Amar Lahiri used to work as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island. Lahiri's debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her first novel The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the Popular film of the same name. Born as Nilanjana Sudeshna she is well known by her nick-name Jhumpa. Lahiri is a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by the U.S. President Barack Obama. Lahiri’s mother wanted her children to grow up knowing their Bengali heritage, and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta. Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown School, and received her B.A, in English Literature from Barnard College in 1989, Lahiri then Teceived multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A, in English, M.F A. in Creative Writing, M.A. in Comparative Literatureand a Ph.D. in Seestudies. She took a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, mm 1997-1998. Lahiri also taught creative writing at Boston University and Lahiri married Alberto fror the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2001, rvoulias -Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor of TIME Latin Prensa, New York's Vout ‘america and now Executive Editor of El Diario/La largest Spanish daily newspaper. Initially, Lahiri's early short stories faced rejection from publishers Her debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies was finally released in 4999. The stories address sensitive predicaments in the lives of Indian immigrants, such as marital difficulties, miscarriages, and the generation gap in United States immigrants. The collection was highly appreciated by ‘American critics, but received mixed reviews in India, where reviewers were alternately enthusiastic and upset for not finding Indians in a positive light in her work. Interpreter of Maladies sold 6,00,000 copies and received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000. In 2003, Lahiri published The Namesake, her first novel. The story spans over thirty years in the life of the Ganguli family. The Calcutta born parents emigrated as young adults to the United States where their children Gogol and Sonia, grew up experiencing the constant generational and cultural gap with their parents. A film adaptation of The Namesake was released in March 2007, directed by Mira Nair and starring Kal Penn as Gogol and Bollywood stars Tabu and Irrfan Khan as his Parents. Lahiri's second collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, was published on April 1. 2008. Upon its publication, Unaccustomed Earth was ranked number one on The New York Times best seller list. Lahiri published a number of her short stories, mostly fiction, and a few non-fiction including The Long Way Home ‘Cooking Lessons’, a story about the importance ofith her mother In The New Yorker Mage7in® e PEN American Genter, food in Lahir's relationship wi ation since 2005, Lahiri has been the Vice president of thi ‘an organization designed to promote friendship and intellectual cooper: i rs ‘among writers. In February 2010, she was appointed as one of the membe of the Committee on the Arts and Humanities. wage and her Lahir's writing is characterized by her simple lang ica who face the dilemma d their adopted home. characters are mostly Indian Immigrants in Americ her between the cultural values of their birthplace an Lahiri’s fiction is mostly autobiographical and often draws upon not only ‘own experiences but also those of her parents, friends, acquaintances, and others in the Bengali communities with which she Is acquainted. Lahiri poignantly portrays the battles, conflicts, anxieties, and biases of her characters and captures the nuances and details of immigrant psychology and conduct. Until Unaccustomed Earth, her main focus was on the first-generation survive in a country very Indian American immigrants and their struggle to si different from theirs. Her stories describe their attempts to get their children acquainted with the age old culture and traditions of India. However, Unaccustomed Earth departs from the previous track as Lahiri’s characters embark on new phases of evolution. These stories scrutinize the fate of the second and third generations as succeeding generations adapt themselves to the American culture and are comfortable in building perspectives outside the country of their origin. Lahiri’s fiction shifts to the needs of the individual. She shows how later generations depart from the restrictions of their immigrant parents, who are often devoted to their community and their responsibility to other immigrants. She has also received a number of prestigious awards for her various works: 571993 1999 1999 1999 2000 2000 2000 2000 2000 2002 2002 2008 2009 She has authored English Lessons and Other Stories and the novels What The Body Remembers and The Tiger Claw. Her short stories, poetry, ‘Trans Atlantic Award from the Henfield Foundation ©. Henry Award for short story “Interpreter of Maladies” PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for Interpreter of Maladies “interpreter of Maladies” selected as one of Best American Short Stories ‘Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters ‘The Third and Final Continent’ selected as one of Best American Short Stories The New Yorkers Best Debut of the Year for “Interpreter of Maladies” Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut Interpreter of Maladies James Beard Foundation's M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for “Indian Takeout” in Food & Wine Magazine Guggenheim Fellowship “Nobody's Business” selected as one of Best American Short Stories Frank O'Connor _ International Short Story Award for Unaccustomed Earth Asian American Literary Award for Unaccustomed Earth Shauna Singh Baldwin was born in Montreal and brought up in India. and essays have been published in literary magazines in the U.S.A. , Canada, and India, From 1991-1994 she was an independent radio producer, hosting 58MBA. from “suinno!” the East-indian radio show. Baldwin holds an Marquette University. Her first novel, What the Body Remembers was published in 1999. It has been translated into eleven languages, and was awarded the 2000 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for the Best Book, Canadian Caribbean region. The Tiger Claw, published in 2004, was nominated for Canada's prestigious Giller Prize. What the Body Remembers brings forth the Sikh perceptive of partition. Baldwin very candidly portrays the women's experiences of partition in this novel and shows how women became the symbol of community's ‘izzat, which in turn subjected them to violence by the ‘other’ community. Baldwin's awards include India's Intemational Nehru Award (gold medal) for public speaking, and the National Shastri Award, a silver medal for English prose. She also won the 1995 Writer's Union of Canada Award for short prose and the 1997 Canadian Literary Award. English Lessons and Other Stories received the 1996 Friends of American Writers Award. Manjula Padmanabhan, an eminent short story writer is a multifaceted personality. She was born in Delhi (1953), grew up in Sweden, Pakistan and Thailand, and now lives in Delhi. She is a playwright, journalist, comic strip artist, and children’s book author. She is well known for her play Harvest. She has also written other plays as Lights Out! (1984), Hidden Fires, The Artist Model (1995) and Sextet (1996). She has authored two collections of short stories- Hot Death and Cold Soup and Kleptomania. Her most recent book, published in 2008, is entitled Escape. Manjula Padmanabhan is also illustrator and cartoonist besides being a playwright and novelist. She has illustrated 21 children’s books. Her play, Harvest, was selected from 1470 entries in 76 countries for the Onassis Prize in 1997. 59Estrangement and marginalization play a major role in her works. Harvest is @ futuristic play which deals with the sale of human organs and exploitative bonds between developed and developing nations and has been. filmed by Govind Nihalani. Her short stories are marked by an ironic sense of dark humour. Padmanabhan's latest book, Getting There is a semi- autobiographical novel about a young woman illustrator in Bombay. She describes it to have been inspired from the events of her life between 1977 and 1978. Almost none of it is completely factual, but as a whole it is more. true than false. Her cartoon strip Suki has also been published as a book in 2001, and the etchings have been featured in an exhibition in Delhi. After having deliberated upon the trajectory of the ‘woman question’ in India and the thematic concems of woman writers in their short stories in a historical perspective, in the next chapter, an attempt will be made to foreground Indian woman's predicament who has always found herself liminally placed between tradition and modernity. »WORKS D Chatteriee, Partha. Nation and its Fragments. Delhi, OUP, 1995. Chakravarthy,Uma. “Conceptualising Brahminical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class and State." Economic and Political Weekly 28 (1993):579-85. Chakravarthy, Uma. “Towards a Theory of Brahminic Patriarchy." EPW. Vol. II V. 4° (2000). Hossain, Attia. “The Daughter-in-Law." Phoenix Fled and Other Stories. London, Virago Press Ltd., 1988. Kosambi, Meera. /deological Constructions and Reconstructions-Crossing Threshold. 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