What Makes a Woman? “Woman” From the Perspective of Women Writers in Malayalam

Abstract

What women writers in Malayalam crave to unveil is not an imaginatively constructed tale of woman in contemporary society but the very authentic description of their first hand experience as a 'woman' in patriarchal society. Woman could be a passive entity or a goddess figure or in patriarchal terms a passive, weak, timid, fickle-minded temptress or a prostitute. These concepts are imprudent constructs of man about woman. Those male writers who even attempt to delve deep into the problems of women were only concerned about portraying her craving for boundless love and sexual passion, restraining from any attempt to spit out the factual miserable condition of woman in a male-dominated society. Woman's individual or personal desire, the social code which limits these desires from fulfilling it are gone unspecified in the works of male writers. The life experienced by women alone, their undone dreams, their struggle to make both ends meet, their effort to raise their individuality, yearning for selfless love and their benevolence all go unnoticed in the fictional works of early male writers. The legend of women should not be limited in an aura of fanciful images fashioned by male but the true chronicle or history of women must be unearthed by a woman herself and the women writers of Malayalam stand testimony to this endeavour. The major women writers of Malayalam fiction are Saraswathi Amma, Rajalekshmi, Lalithambika Andarjanam, Valsala, K.B Sree Devi, Sara Thomas, Kamala Das.