The Study of Postcolonial Feminist Mahasweta Devi

Mahasweta Devi’s short story, “Giribala,” is about the life of Giribala, a girl of Talsana village located in India. Born into a caste in a time when it was still customary to pay a bride-price, Giri is sold to Aulchand by her father. From this point on, we see a series of unfortunate, tragic events that take place in Giri’s life as a result of the circumstances surrounding Giri’s life. There are many issues in Giri’s life in India that Devi highlights to readers. First, the economic instability of the village leads to an extremely poor quality of life for the lower, working classes. Next, the cruel role of women determined by men in society is to either satisfy the sexual desires of men or to reproduce offspring who can work or be sold off to marriages. There are also other social norms and beliefs which discriminate against women that will be discussed.

Mahashweta Devi is an extraordinary woman who has written, worked and fought for the marginalised tirelessly for the past six decades. She is a strange mix of an activist and a writer who has carried both duties fiercely all her life. Away from the spotlight, she keeps working for the welfare and betterment of those whom the media and mainstream conveniently keep forgetting. Her writing is disturbing because it shows the reader her or his own true face.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel, The Palace of Illusions is the epitome of feminism. It retells the story of Mahabharata from the view point of Draupadi, the daughter of King Drupad. The delicate threads of her life have beautifully been interwoven to bring forth a grasping story. Chitra Banerjee has herself written “I would uncover the story that lay invisible between the lines of the men’s exploits. Better still I would have her one of her tell it herself, with all her joys and doubts, her struggles and her triumphs, her heartbreaks, her achievements, the unique female way in which she sees her world and her place in it.”(XV).

Ihara Saikaku’s Life of a Sensuous Woman written in the 17th century and Mary Woolstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman written in the 18th century are powerful literary works that advocated feminism during the time when women were oppressed members of our societies. These two works have a century old age difference and the authors of both works have made a distinctive attempt to shed a light towards the issues that nobody considered significant during that time. Despite these differences between the two texts, they both skillfully manage to present revolutionary ways women can liberate themselves from oppression laden upon them by the society since the beginning of humanity.

During present times, society has been created for the majority group. Society has been used in order to use forms of sexual norms and use of gender to shape our lives. Ultimately, ones identity becomes most important and directly correlates with the struggles and limitations they will encompass in life. Therefore, forcing people to choose between which identities will be less problematic. The dominant majority in society uses power and politics to run the lives of the less powerful. Even though all women are oppressed for their gender, some have more of a plight. White women have been known to use their power dynamics to oppress those of racial minorities, even when oppressed they. Women of color have been oppressed on all fronts in life. One can't fight fire with fire, but fight fire with water, fight racism with solidarity. According to Nadine Naber, “There are basics that many Western Feminist do not even address. So, I do get frustrated sometimes by some feminist who try to impose their agendas on others or try to dictate to other women what they should be concerned with (page 164).” In order to understand feminism for women of color, especially Arab and Arab American women, one must understand the class and race struggles. As the bottom of the ladder, the women of color feminist movement have suffered. Nevertheless, the women being silent from the movement. Therefore, we must reflect and understand the need for unity that will overcome the grip that is suffocating us.

Feminist concentrate primarily on ‘gender inequality’. The feminist theory is strongly influenced by the Marx theory.

In today’s society, women impact the world around them in many different and significant ways. Some women influence their communities with great force while others never notice their true importance in their societies. In India, Mishri Yadav is bound to her life as a modest, confined woman who cannot talk to men and must remain in the shadows. In the United States, Michele Noonan is bound to her life as a caretaker for her family who can express herself in whichever way she feels. These two defined people show the importance of how women are viewed extremely different as their countries vary. Some women, such as those in India, are viewed as lower than men with less value, knowledge, and potential. These places do not believe that women contain

The first reflection of feminism is ‘Gatha’s life of poverty. “The shadow of political tyranny and economic malaise loomed over the country” (DoHarris 6)1.Those living in Guyana struggled to

Even though black women were disadvantaged not only by race but by gender, they still found the courage to speak out. Black feminists aim to redifine the importance of Black women’s culture. This places a greater emphasis on the role of historically specific political economies in explaining the endurances of certain cultural themes because : The actions that the oppressed take against their oppressors are far more complex than previous social theory. Black women may conform to their opression while simultaniously rejecting their at the bottom.(Washington) Rebecca Washington states

After studying the first unit of the class, I learned about different feminisms. I now know about liberal feminists, who “campaigned for equal rights of citizenship and for the end of discrimination,” (); socialist feminists, who “attributed women’s oppression to capitalism and focused on women’s economic exploitation,” (); and radical feminists, who “identified male power or patriarchy as the source of female subordination,” (). These forms of feminism developed new attitudes and goals throughout the different waves of feminism in the past two centuries.

In the first reading, “Women’s Studies and Transnational Feminism,” the author discusses how beneficial it would be to have a global perspective from women all around the world and their personal stories. It would bring greater change if women’s stories weren’t only heard mainly from the U.S, but rather told by international women about their experience with oppression and way of living. According to the author the viewpoint of all the women globally is described as “transnational”, a way of challenging current basic understandings of supposed everyday women (specifically western women) and fighting to reconstruct this system to become an advantage to other women around the world. Rather than focusing on “global feminism” which doesn’t

Using the elements of fiction and truth a mass amount can be gained from understanding how women fit in with the government/patriarchy. From novels comparably, A Passage to India and A Handmaid’s Tale, these two reflect different times: a realistic time of Indian Imperialism and a Utopian fantasy that could indubitably become the future of tomorrow. How do they correspond with the role of women? Both either represent or differ from the true, unseen representation of women amongst the power of the elite, against the suppressors of the minority, and the

This paper will analyze the topic from a feminist theory perspective, specifically Marxist feminist theory, which defines gender inequality with women’s position in society.

Feminism in India is a set of movements which defining, establishing and defending equal political, economic and social rights and equal opportunities for Indian women. Feminist criticism was not inaugurated until late in the 1960s.Behind it, however lie two centuries of struggle for the recognition of women’s cultural roles and achievements and for women’s social and political rights marked by such books as Mary Wollstone Craft’s A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women (1792), John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection Of Women (1869), and the American Margaret Fuller’s Women in The Nineteenth Century

She makes an important point when trying to go beyond the female (otherness), by paying careful attention to differences among women themselves, and by putting emphasize on the multiple realties that women faces, and by that trying to uncover universalist interpretations (Parpart and Marchand 1995:6). She reveals the inadequacy of binary categories by showing us how power is defined in binary terms, between the people who have (men) and the people who do not (women). This is a consequence of seeing women as a homogenous group, and contributes to the reinforcement of the binary division between men and women (Mohanty 1991:64). By assuming that women are a already constituted group with the same experiences and interests, gender is looked upon as something that can be applied cross cultures (Mohanty 1991:54), and it also produces an assumption about the “average third world woman” as poor and uneducated, in contrast to the educated, modern Western women (Mohanty 1991:56). Implicit in the binary analytic lies the assumption that the third world woman only can be liberated through western rationality. Mohanty is making an important point when emphasising the need to challenge these objectifications (Udayagiri 1995:163).