Home: Depiction Of Social Reality In Manju Kapur’s Novel

Abstract

The portrayal of women in Indian English fiction as the silent sufferers and upholders of the tradition and traditional values of family and society has undergone tremendous change in the post independence period. Manju Kapur’s novel, Difficult Daughters, A Married Woman and Home, displays a new confidence in using the fictional mode for creative expression and depicting social reality. Taking into account the complexity of life, different histories, cultures and different structures of values, women’s question, despite basic solidarity, needs to be tackled in relation to the socio-cultural situation. The impact of patriarchy on the Indian society varies from the one in the west. Manju Kapur has her own concerns, priorities as well as her own ways on dealing with the predicament of women protagonists. Kapur, being one of the modern day women authors, has expressed herself freely and boldly on a variety of themes without adopting feminist postures. Her novels furnish examples of a whole range of attitudes towards the importation of Indian tradition. However, the novelist seems to be aware of the fact that the women of India have indeed achieved their success in sixty years of Independence, but if there is to be true female independence, too much remains to be done. The present paper attempts to portray the reality of a typical Indian family in Manju Kapur’s Home.