Quotidian Life of Indian Women: A Brief Study of Selected Novels of Upamanyu Chatterjee

Abstract

Women’s lives form an integral part of the cultural ethos of a nation. The deification of femininity and motherhood in the form of the Goddess and the omnipotent Mother is inherent to the Indian cultural and religious milieu. In addition to this, during the nation formation period, the projection of the nation as a mother who sustains and succours her children was inevitable to arouse the emotions of the populace. This prominent positioning of the woman gives impetus to study the Indian women’s ground realities to understand her status and position in the national milieu. It is a belief that modern Indian women enjoy social and economic freedom and have equal status with their men. However, the yoking of women with a rigid code of conduct in the outer (world) and inner (home) domains is noticeable on examining their daily lives. One way of studying women’s quotidian life in a nation is through a study of its portrayal in various media. Literature is one such media through which one gains knowledge of a nation. The novel is a genre that grew simultaneously with the idea of nationhood and was instrumental in the objectified portrayal of diversity within national borders. Thus, the novel is a suitable location for analysing and comprehending the nation’s cultural milieu. Therefore, this paper attempts to understand the quotidian life of Indian middle-class women by mapping the women’s quotidian lives as portrayed in Upamanyu Chatterjee’s novels to understand women’s position in the Indian social matrix.