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- Title
Women's Terrible Subalternity in Select Narratives of Northeast India.
- Authors
Das, Nigamananda
- Abstract
The paper aims at examining Indira Goswami's The Man from Chinnamasta (2006), Mitra Phukan's The Collector's Wife (2005), Mamang Dai's The Legends of Pensam (2006) and Easterine Iralu's A Terrible Matriarchy (2007) from feminist point of view. All the four narratives explore the suffering of innocent women. Though both patriarchal and matriarchal control co-exists in the ethnic world of Northeast India, it has a strong Tantric tradition from time immemorial; As such it is mostly matriarchal, Goddess Kamakhya being the presiding deity of the region. The ethnic diversity has brought out changes through the ages. For various reasons the status of women of the region has not been different from the same in the mainstream of India. The marginality of women has been reflected by the abovementioned four women writers in various contexts. Indira Goswami reflects the life and sufferings of Dorothy Brown, the wife of the enlightened Principal of Cotton College, Henry Brown, who kept illicit relations with a Khasi woman and neglected his wife. Mitra Phukan's protagonist Rukmini, wife of Siddharth, the district collector had to suffer similar fate and incessant mental agony. Mamang has depicted the sufferings of Adi women for various superstitious reasons which can be depicted as the incarnations of the Evil. Her Pinyar, the widow, suffered the most. Pinyar's daughter-in-law was very badly attacked by her husband and could save her life due to the intervention of the neighbours. Even a modern girl Arsi curses her fate being born in this part of the world. Easterine Iralu through her girl protagonist Lieno depicts the severe gender discrimination where the grandmother neglected Lieno to the worst extent, always caring and preferring the boys. The grandmother's matriarchal hegemony makes Lieno revolt silently. The various aspects of women's marginal status and subalternity have been analyzed in the paper.
- Subjects
NORTHEASTERN India; NARRATIVES; WIFE Collector, The (Short story); CHINNAMASTA (Book); ECOFEMINISM; PATRIARCHY
- Publication
Labyrinth: An International Refereed Journal of Postmodern Studies, 2013, Vol 4, Issue 3, p175
- ISSN
0976-0814
- Publication type
Article