From Emancipation to Silent Submission: A Study of Some of the Prominent Female Characters of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Abstract

It is often said that Ruth Prawer Jhabvala writes about the ironical situations that obtain in the urban middle class Indian life, particularly in undivided Hindu families, as also about the impact of East-West encounter in India. It is also true that R.P. Jhabvala cannot be considered an ‘insider’: nevertheless, it is because of her long stay in India that she has to be considered as a writer who has seen and written about this country from the inside.In her novels, the women characters feel that they grow smaller everyday trapped in a myth of the role of wife and mother. Jhabvala as a major woman novelist is less concerned with personality delineation of her women characters.This paper attempts to show how her some of her female characters don’t go against tradition without any firm conviction.