Abstract:
Countries get made and broken by the various conflicts which are the consequences of political
agendas and ideologies. Some of these conflicts have major roles to play in historical fiction. In
turn, we understand the human condition of the past by analysing the historical fictions from
different regions of the world. Historical fiction elucidates the political, ontological and social
plights of those who are caught and trapped in the conflicts – women, bear on their bodies, the
consequences of wars fueled and fought by aggressors as imprints. Some women take measures
of survival—creating individual narratives in history which are usually buried under the
language of valour and defeat of the nations. For my thesis, I will investigate women’s positions
during and after wars, the language around women’s violation and how they are represented.
Representation of these women (violated bodies of wars), constructed by societies, pave the way
to form historical and political ideologies – weaving an acceptable collective memory of nation
building. The language around these women leaves out silences that can be, in turn, analysed
further to establish their political plights. This thesis looks into the position of women in wars by
analysing three texts of historical fiction. There are three chapters, each dealing with one of the
texts – the first is a short story about a woman from occupied France during the second world
war; the second is on women from the Partition of India in 1947; and the last is on women from
Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971.
