Construction of womanhood : reading Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), The God of Small Things (1997), A Golden Age (2007) and The Good Muslim (2011)

Abstract

Women’s social position is effected by patriarchy. This thesis will try to show different aspects of patriarchal society that effect the construction of womanhood keeping men in the superior position. . Three distinctly different societal conditions (a society going through decolonizing process- just after the emancipation act, a society filled with class/caste distinction trying to establish communism and a society going through a war of independence) have been explored here in order to find how all of them have negative impacts on the construction of the women characters. At first it has been explored how a racially and culturally intertwined society, leads to the problem of space and identity along with the problem of patriarchal domination that creates hollowness and madness in the protagonist. Secondly, it depicts the violation of women’s rights (i.e. education & inheritance of property) as a form of patriarchal domination in every step of life (girlhood, womanhood, motherhood) of a woman. Thirdly, it demonstrates the violation of women’s virtue to establish a power structure in a male dominated society where the woman has no position. Thus the common theme in these three chapters is the social subjugation of women. This has been done through looking at four novels: first, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys; second The God of Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy and third, A Golden Age (2007) and The Good Muslim (2011) by Tahmima Anam.