POST-FEMINISTIC
ASPECT: A QUEST OF SELF AND FREEDOM IN THE MODERN ERA THROUGH PREETI SHENOY’S THE
SECRET WISHLIST
R. Shanthini
Sona College of
Arts and Science,
Salem
Abstract:
The present paper
emphasizes not only the struggle of feminist writers to give voice to the
problems and issues of women in Indian Society but also the emergence of the
treatment of women in Indian Writing in English in the post-feminist era. Preeti Shenoy is one of the most recent and
prominent Indian women novelists who effectively portrays women's issues. She
boldly depicts and explicitly challenges the male domination and the pressure
experienced by women in society. Various themes in her novelsare still to be
discovered. The paranoia, love, relationships, feminism, patriarchy, and gender
discrimination in her novels need to be given more attention. The protagonists
of her novels are generally shown as bold and beautiful women who courageously
challenge society with their strength. They play an important role in the
family and society by making them equal to their male counterparts both
mentally and financially. The present paper investigates trends in
postmodernism especially the new emerging inclinations in post-feminist writing
from Preeti Shenoy’s select novel “The Secret Wish List”.
Keywords: Post-Feminism, Finding True Self, Gender
Discrimination, Financial Freedom, Indian Woman and Individuality
Feminism in India
goes for characterizing, setting up, and defending equal political and social
rights just as equal open access for Indian women. Feminism in Indian Fiction
in English is, as typically measured, a splendid and over-the-top idea dealt
with quietly under confined environments.
Indian journalists have frequently raised their voices against social
and social inequality that obliged women’s freedom and executed institutional
withdrawal of women. Kamla Das investigates the women's predicament enduring in
their day-to-daylives. The present paper investigates trends in postmodernism
especially the new emerging inclinations in post-feminist writing from Preeti
Shenoy’s select novel “The Secret Wish List”.
Preeti Shenoy is one of the most recent and prominent
Indian women novelists who effectively portrays women's issues. Her
contribution towomen's empowerment and the realistic depiction of their lives
is undeniable. She boldly depicts and explicitly challenges the male domination
and the pressure experienced by women in society. Many more themes in her
novels are still to be explored. The paranoia, love, relationships, feminism,
patriarchy, and gender discrimination in her novels need to be given more
attention. Overall, Preeti Shenoy’s work is excellent and merits much more
critical acclaim.
Shenoy’s contribution towards women's empowerment and the
realistic depiction of their lives is undeniable. She boldly depicts and
explicitly challenges the male domination and the pressure experienced by women
in society. Most of the women’s lives are still vulnerable and conservative
when compared with few modern women in society. Women are still not proficient
enough to prompt their thoughts regarding their lives. But now, women have been
leisurely annoying to stand for themselves. Her novels deal with her own pieces
of knowledge as well as the experiences of many people in society. The
protagonists of her novels are generally shown as bold and beautiful women who
courageously challenge society with their strength. They play an essential role
in the family and society by making them equal to their male counterparts both
mentally and financially. Preeti Shenoy has mastered the art of storytelling as
Time of India has acclaimed her as an “excellent story teller.”
Shenoy believes that literature must be applicable to
fashionable society and its concepts. Therefore, in her novels, she depicts
characters male or female that are drawn from the social landscape. Many
examples of this can be seen in her works, which have significance to current
society. It is broadly recognized that literature and society are two sides of
the same coin. Even critics who contribute to New Historicism agree that every
piece of art must be understood and analyzed in a close framework with its
society. Without contemporary importance, literature cannot survive. The
objective of literature is to provide supervision to its bibliophiles.
Post-Feminism in India
The word
‘Feminism’ appears to drive by on to a powerful consciousness of independence
as a woman and attention to feminine tribulations. The shattered of women is a
focus statistic of the past and it is the chief cause of all psychological
ailment in civilization. Followed by Feminism the term Postfeminism is widely used as a term to describe
ideological and social decisions by individuals which draw on various, and
often contradictory, ideas in the feminist tradition, so that they may designate themselves as a feminist while not
essentially making decisions informed by feminist
theory.
Multifarious skillful women of letters have
contributed to sustaining the true spirit of Indian fiction in English, Indian
women, her contrariety, and dilemma against the obligator of coeval India have
been inscribed by feminist novelists in some way or the other. According to
Amer Nath Prasad, “Indian women novelists in English and other vernaculars try
their best to deal with, apart from many other things, the pathetic plight of
forsaken women, who are fated to suffer from birth to death.”
The fifties testify the dimension of Kamala
Markandaya’s ovation that she has given her novels the touch of globalization.
According to Srinivasa Iyangar, “Kamala Marakandaya neither repeat herself, nor
turns her fiction into formula.” In her
novels like Nectar in a Sieve and A Silence of desire, she efficaciously
illustrates the dualistic pulls the Indian women is liable to among her
requirements to proclaim, her prestige as human being and her duty as a
daughter, wife and mother. In the sixties, prior to the feminist agitation,
another noteworthy women contributor Nayanthara Sahgal initiated in her writing
career. The niece of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru and daughter of Vijayalaxmi Pandit,
Nayanthara Sahgal raises her issue of rape in A Situation in New Delhi, a
premarital relationship in Storm in Chandigarh, Adulterous desires in
The Day in Shadow and in novel after novel, recognized the importance of
both communication and sexual delight. Her novels explore delicately the
surface and the root of women’ sufferings.
Among the modern novelists, Shobha De is very
frank outward and straight forward in the delineation if incidents. She is
famous for specifying the sexual mania of materialistic world. In the novels
like Socialite Evening, Starry Nights, and Second Thought. She
tries her best to expose the moral and spiritual breakdown of the modern
society. In which a forsaken woman longs for pleasure and desire to fly freely
in the sky of liberty. According to Bijay Kumar Das,
Shobha
De’s “Shapshots,” is a world of women where women begin to look at things from
their point of view. They literally metaphorically play with men sometimes are
played my men. The novel depicts the love-play between men and women in great
deals. ‘Morality’ is a dirty word for the characters in the novel, for they
believe in enjoyment of life. Throwing the norms of the society out of the
window.
The novels of contributors like
Anita Desai mark the beginning of post feminism and also a pivotal phase of
development in Indo-Anglican fiction. It is the gradual shift from the external
to the inner world of the individual. Broadly speaking the women protagonists
of Anita Desai in Cry, the Peacock, Voices in the City, Fire on the Mountain
and Clear Light of the Day are eminently prudent and perceptive.
They are no the edge of conceptual crises in their attempt to take care of home
and children and enquire about sentiment completion for them. K.R. Srinivasa
Iyangar observes: “her preoccupation is with the inner world of sensibility
rather than the outer world of action.” The variety of protagonists depicted in
the modern Indian English novels are educated intellectuals who are ready to
decide the norms on their own. They analyze their lives and through
introspection reach self-realization.
Key Concepts and Characteristics of
Post-Feminism
Post-feministic ideology is a new-fangled form
of empowerment, individual excellence,
independence, consumer culture, fashion, hybridism, humor, and (sexual)
pleasure, and the transformed attention on the
female body can be measured as important for this contemporary feminism.
Post-feminism lies within the world of academic paradigms and can be located on
the connection between post-modernism, poststructuralism, and post-colonialism.
In the present state, post-feministic interpretations are appropriate for every
field a person could probably think of. Brooks in his book Post-feminisms:
Feminism, Cultural Theory and Cultural Form [5] states that “Post-feminism is not
against feminism, it’s about feminism today.”
In the early 1980s, the media began to
categorize women in their teens and women in their twenties as the
“post-feminist generation”. After twenty years, the term post-feminist is still
used to denote to young women. Post-feminism is an exceedingly deliberated
topic since it suggests that “post” refers to “dead” or “after” feminism.
Postfeminismreveals sexuality and says that women can also be authorized
through working in the sex industry as strippers and adult film stars.
Post-feminism is fueled by developments in abortion, employment and fertility
laws and concentrates on promoting the impression of empowerment, celebration
of feminists, freedom of choice and liberation.
The Secret Wishlist
At first the story revolves
around Diksha, who once used to be a very passionate girl. She was ambitious,
enthusiastic and always positive. Her life was full of excitement and
adventurous which she shared with her husband Tanu. Whenever they were together
the rest of the world didn’t matter. In short, her life, which makes her feel
more important and special. She finds herself doing things she had ever
imagined. She was caught in a chain of events the ine innocent mistake turns
her world upside down. And the life she just had started exploring is snatched
from her. It leads her to a life seems isolated. Being helpless and hopeless
she surrenders to destiny and marries Sandeeep. And spends the rest of her life
attending to the needs of Sandeep and Abhay, their 9 years old son. She had
almost engrossed in this daily routine until one day her cousin Vibha made her
realize that she should step out and enjoy life and do something for herself.
From this comes up the secret wish list, that once again leaves her with
unexpected twist and turns of life and pushes her into a dramatic chain of
events. And with it returns her past which she could not forget all these
years.
The paper focuses on the
three eminent characters for the novel. ‘The Secret Wishlist’ the Protagonists
Diksha, her cousin Vibha and Diksha’s Mother in Law. Diksha was a housewife,
submissive, dependent woman who is scared of her husband. She compares her life
with her cousin Vibha an independent and smart woman. Sandeep is Diksha’s
insensitive husband who has no emotions. He is so conservative and selfish. He
even decides his wife’s clothes, what to wear and what not to wear. He doen’t
share any emotional bondage, neither with his mother nor with his wife or son.
Diksha leads her life only to satisfy her parents, her husband and family and
has nothing than that. Here, this is not only a condition of Diksha but also
the condition of many women in our society who faces all the struggles
silently. Everyone expects that a woman should be caring, loving and kind
towards others but they fail to understand that women too have hearts which
longs for love and care. According to Linkedin survey, a Modern Woman’s Success
can be defined a
First comes career, then comes marriage, then
comes baby in the baby carriage. For nearly three quarters of women world wild,
this is the order in which they measure accomplishment. Over the years,
however, the female mindset is changing from housewife to boardroom member, as
women in workplace seek to have it all in life- continuing to claim the
corporate ladder with family it now’
Diksha is contented and accustomed to this until Vibha
forces her to find out her desires and ask her to fulfill them. Vibha tells to
Diksha that, “We must all really live our lives, Diksha. We should do what
males us happy. I kept pushing myself in career, as I wanted to prove that I
was as good as my man” (P 74). The words of Vibha move Diksha to an extreme
extend. Women are adaptable and this has no age limit. The change is mindset of today’s woman in nor
seen only in the younger generation but also in the early ones.
Dimension of modern Woman
An
exemplary character in this is Diksha’s Mother-in-law. In Diksha’s words “She
is truly modern, my mother-in-law. She is so practical and correct in her
thinking.” Her mother-in-law is adaptable to the changes in the society has a
positive outlook. She an understandable lady who supports and encourages her
daughter-on-law when she wants to learn salsa dance. She accepts that people
change according to the changes in the society, and that it’s not wise to stick
to conservation thoughts. She is not happy with the narrow mindedness of her
son. She also observes detachedly, who is on the wrong side. She feels bad for
her son’s curt and cold nature, his insensibility and his orthodox thoughts.
She is the one who stands by her daughter-in-law when she wants to walk away
from his son. This is a peculiar depiction of a new woman who could understand
the emotions of her daughter-in-law and supports her in her decisions. This
dimension is new to society and it takes us all by surprise.
Diksha
and Vibha, Preeti Shenoy descries the life of both the women. They have
dissimilar life-style. Vibha is not like a maidservant like Diksha. She can go
from one place to another independently. She has servants in her house. She
takes decisions according to herself. Diksha doesn’t relish any of these
luxuries. She is a part and parcel of an arrange marriage wherein Diksha says,
“Circumstances were not similar for both of us, but both had ultimately bowed
down to parental pressure in the great Indian marriage system and arranged
marriages, the much earlier than her.” (28-29)
Numerous studies apply Mary Wollstonecraft’s A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which the author defends the rights
of women. Wollstonecraft’s notion is founded on the advocate of educational and
social fairness for women. To start with, Wollstonecraft perceives how their
family members extravagance women. We read, “Strengthen the female mind by
expanding it, and there will be an end to blind compliance; but, as blind
compliance is ever sought for by influence, dictators and sensualists are in the
right when they attempt to keep woman in the dark, because the previous only
want strivers and the latter a play-thing” (Wollstonecraft 1995, 93). Shenoy’s
interpretation of the character of Diksha in The Secret Wish List look like to
the above excerpt. Diksha is the wife of Sandeep who concentrates only on work
and does not fulfill any of Diksha’s wishes. She, in turn, always acts in blind
obedience and believes her husband, thus playing her role as a wife and mother
flawlessly. Still, she recognizes the lack inside her: “For many years, I have
suppressed my desires. I have not even allowed myself the luxury of dreaming”
(2012a, 75-76). Diksha is a complex character, passionate and intelligent, but
her role as a mother and wife seems to keep her “in the dark,” to use
Wollstonecraft’s words. Her family members splinter Diksha’s dreams; no one is
anxious about her desires or determinations, and they would rather hand over
all the duties to her. Finally, Diksha converts a “play-thing,” ruled by
others. In this intelligence, Diksha mirrors Wollstonecraft’s impression.
If women are by nature
inferior to men, their virtues must be the same in quality, if not in degree,
or virtue is a relative idea; consequently, their conduct should be founded on
the same principles, and have the same aim. Connected with man as daughters,
wives, and mothers, their moral character may be estimated by their manner of
fulfilling those simple duties; but the end, the grand end of their exertions
should be to unfold their own faculties, and acquire the dignity of conscious
virtue.
Women are thus well-thought-out to possess virtue similar
to that of men; they ought to struggle to exercise their will and live with an
aim to improve their virtue and strengthen their ethics. Likewise, Shenoy
portrays the role of women as moral and righteous beings in her work.
Importantly, Wollstonecraft also discovers females’
associations with their parents. She perceives that “Females, it is true, in
all countries, are too much under the dominion of their parents; and few
parents think of addressing their children in the manner, though it is in this
reasonable way that Heaven seems to command the whole human race”
(Wollstonecraft 1995, 247). The portrayal of women, they are subjugated by
their parents. Likewise, in Shenoy’s The Secret Wish List, Diksha’s parents
absorb about her love issue with Abhi, which is the reason why they send Diksha
to Kerala, where she finishes her education. During her second year of college,
Diksha’s parents organize a marriage for her. Diksha notes: “the way they
forced me to get married even though I was only in the second year of college,
has killed something within me” (2014b, 64). Subjugated and suppressed by her
parents, Diksha does not have authorization to select her life partner. As can
be seen, Shenoy’s representation of Diksha’s necessity on her parents resembles
to Wollstonecraft’s replication.
Conclusion
Isolation, frustration and feelings of being reviled in
women: Preeti Shenoy is a strong observer of women’s circumstances. She
designates each and every moment of women’s lives strongly. She says about
isolation, frustration and their feelings. In the novel ‘The Secret Wish List‟,
Shenoy discussions about presence of women, in the minds of their husbands in
an optimistic and undesirable ways. Due to this negative emotional state, they
feel stuck in Indian families and societies. One example can be seen in this
novel; Vibha calls Diksha to inform about the death of her husband (Mohan).
When Diksha perceives this sad news, she asks her husband to let her go to
Hyderabad so that she can comfort her friend at such critical time, but her
husband disregards everything. He possessing a very unresponsive arrogance asks
about his son’s school actions and his own performance etc. He does not let her
go to appointment her friend. Through the character of Diksha, Shenoy shows the
feebleness, irritation, annoyance and prevention of Indian women in some
conventional societies; “I feel angry. The person closest to me, someone who is
almost like my sister, has lost her husband and he is more bothered about his
presentation and about Abhay.” (65) The Secret Wish List
The present study concludes on a note that the postmodern
youths, their dreams and aspirations for a new social order are dealt by Preeti
Shenoy. Her novels deal with urban characters. Their fictional world is quite
impressive without any gory scenes or hardcore realities except in some novels.
Their themes and treatment impress the youths who are otherwise caried away by
fictitious moments and long to have hyper-world with all comforts. The Post
Modern of these writers do not go in search of a fair world for they create
their own world to be fair though it is foul at times.
Works Cited
Brooks A, Post- Feminism: Feminism, Cultural Theory
and Cultural Forms. London and New York. 1997. Print.
Das, Bijay Kumar.
Post Modern Indian English Literature. New Delhi. Atlantic Publishers &
Distributors (P) Ltd. (85) 2013. Print.
Iyengar,
K.R. Srinivasa, Indian Writing in English, New Delhi. Sterling
Publishers Private Limited. (450) 2004. Print.
Prasad, Amar Nath, A Brief History of
Indian Women Novelists in English. Indian Women Novelists in English. New
Delhi. Atlantic Publishers and Distributors. (2) 2001. Print.
Shenoy, Preeti. The Secret Wish List. Chennai: Westland,
2012. Print.