A New Woman is a feminist ideal who has evolved in the late nineteenth century and had a reflective power on feminism into the twentieth century. The term ‘New Woman’ was coined by an American writer, Sarah Grand in her article The New Aspect of the Woman Question, published in the North American Review in March 1894. The term was further popularized by British-American writer Henry James, to describe the growth in the number of feminist, educated, independent career women in Europe and the United States. . The term New Woman at all times referred to women who exercised control over their own lives be it personal, social, or economic.
Many women writers in India through their writings have given a new dimension for the emancipation of women and had tried to give a new identity to the women of all walks of life. The chosen writer Shashi Deshpande is one among them, whose protagonists undergo turmoil in the patriarchal society and her female protagonists transforms from a subordinated women to new women. Her novel The Dark Holds No Terrors is a totally different novel in the sense that it explodes the image of man as the superior force …show more content…
She has been an unwanted child. Her brother’s death makes her all the more unwanted. She is on a perpetual war with her mother who could never forgive her for being alive when her brother was dead. ‘Saru was caught in the hands of an adamant mother unforgiving her own daughter’. Treated as a second-rate citizen in her own home owing to sexual discrimination, she develops a deep and severe hatred towards her mother. The sibling rivalry between herself and her brother Dhruva verges almost on the unnatural ‘He is different. He is a boy’. These words establish the tradition-bound Indian mother against whom Saru has to rebel all her life. Her impotent anger makes her rage against her mother, ‘If you are a woman, I don’t want to be one
Many women writers in India through their writings have given a new dimension for the emancipation of women and had tried to give a new identity to the women of all walks of life. The chosen writer Shashi Deshpande is one among them, whose protagonists undergo turmoil in the patriarchal society and her female protagonists transforms from a subordinated women to new women. Her novel The Dark Holds No Terrors is a totally different novel in the sense that it explodes the image of man as the superior force …show more content…
She has been an unwanted child. Her brother’s death makes her all the more unwanted. She is on a perpetual war with her mother who could never forgive her for being alive when her brother was dead. ‘Saru was caught in the hands of an adamant mother unforgiving her own daughter’. Treated as a second-rate citizen in her own home owing to sexual discrimination, she develops a deep and severe hatred towards her mother. The sibling rivalry between herself and her brother Dhruva verges almost on the unnatural ‘He is different. He is a boy’. These words establish the tradition-bound Indian mother against whom Saru has to rebel all her life. Her impotent anger makes her rage against her mother, ‘If you are a woman, I don’t want to be one