Patricentric Conformism: an Exegesis of Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters

Abstract

Literatures being the reflection of life, the Postcolonial women writers often represent the new women of India and their quest for identity in their novels. While portraying the confident, ambitious, enterprising and individualized women who demand attention, equality and peace, Manju Kapur, in her novels, has dared to trespass the set doctrines of gender inequality. Her novel the Difficult Daughters focuses on the struggle of an educated young woman of middle class against the norms of a family that cherishes the old values of arranged marriage. The protagonist is a woman who is shredded by conflictual forces and torn apart by oppositional structures in real life and caught between the dilemma of family duty and personal desires. The novel draws a parallel between Virmati’s struggle for freedom and identity along with India’s struggle for freedom. Feminism as a social movement challenges the patriarchal orthodoxy by bringing to the limelight the imbalance in society and by providing women with the same rights and opportunities as men, in order to take their rightful place in the world. Intellectual starvation, economic expression, commercial exploitation, domestic domination, physical abuse, sexual harassment, and lack of personal freedom continue to affect the lives of women in spite of laws to the contrary. Against such a backdrop, this paper tries to explore the patriarchal orthodoxy present in society reflected in the novel Difficult Daughters in the light of the Postcolonial feminist theories. The paper also attempts to unravel the physical and psychological imprisonment of women in the society in the light of the character, Virmati.