BEGC 111
Women’s Writing
IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment July 2023 & January 2024
Section A
Explain the following with reference to the context:
Q. 1. The Eyes around – had wrung them dry, And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset-when the King Be witnessed in the Room.
Ans. Context: These lines are taken from I Heard A Fly Buzz-When I Died by Emily Dickinson.
Explanation: We experienced the feelings of a dying person as we read this poetry. A fly is frequently used to refer to death, both as a noun and as a verb.
It depicts some striking contrasts between the dead’s inertness and the fly’s mobility. The poem’s opening stanza establishes the scene: the mourning are still, the air is motionless, and the storm or death has already begun.
The speaker discusses the mourners in the second stanza. Their breathing is firm, and their eyes have become dry. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
It implies that they are no longer crying and are keeping their emotions in check after seeing the very last second.
The phrase “last onset” is absurd. Last is the conclusion, whereas onset is the start. She is therefore preparing for an afterlife and her transition from this world to that world.
Why does she think it will be a fresh start? due of the King’s appearance in the space. The speaker will be guided to paradise by the King.
Q. 2. I measure every Grif I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes-
I wonder if it weights like Mine-
Or has an Easier size
Ans. Context: These lines are taken from I Measure Every Grief I Meet by Emily Dickinson.
Explanation: This stanza uses metaphors. Here, the smile resembles the appearance of light emanating from a lamp (patient) with insufficient oil (life). Can time really make the agony go away? she thinks.IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Or the anguish can linger for years until it transforms into a greater, more enlightened pain in opposition to love.
Death, according to her, is the sole cause of grief that only hits you in the eyes once among all other reasons.
The other grieving is worse than passing away. The speaker mentions exile, despair, lack in life, and anguish of “want” or wishes.
Even though the speaker is unsure of the type of sadness, she recognises that understanding the grief of others can be consoling.
In the last stanza, the speaker refers to mourning as a style, and she wonders aloud whether other people experience sadness in a similar way to herself. The ballad-style poem comprises ten stanzas.
The rhyme abcb is used in the alternate odd stanzas. The poem’s tone is established by the hyphens. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Words in poetry using capital letters, such as Grief, Mine, Harm, Date, Despair, Death, Pain, Love, Cold, Cross, etc., underline the poem’s main subject.
Internal rhyming can be seen in words like “measure,” “meet,” “wonder,” and A”weighs.”
Q. 3. The Language I speak
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queerness
All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
It is as human as I am human, don’t
You see?
Ans. Context: These lines are taken from ‘An Introduction’ by Kamala DaS.
Explanation: The narrator boasts of her linguistic proficiency: “I speak three languages, write in two, dream in one”, to prove that she is a capable writer and fully aware of her role and responsibilities as one.
Her Indian identity and linguistic ability is emphasized to reinforce her claim of writing in English. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
The following illustrations advance her claim further:
…The language I speak
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queerness, All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
It is as human as I am human, don’t You see?’
The narrator claims that the language belongs to its users, regardless of their nationality, despite any grammatical, structural, or phonological abnormalities.
The narrator explains that because he or she is human, the language is “as human” (prone to error).
By stating that “it is valuable to her as cawing/Is to birds or shouting to the lions,” she makes a compelling case for using English.
She speaks English so naturally that she can express her “joys”, “longings,” and “hopes” in it. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
The narrator is so incensed by the criticisms of her use of language that she uses a series of images to further clarify her point and show what English writing is not like.
She says that English…not the deaf, blind speech/Of trees in storms or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the/ Incoherent muttering of the blazing/Funeral pyre…’
Q. 4. You need no book, Rasha Sundari
no paper Or pen either
you have the black, smudgy kitchen wall
for your magical scribbles
lines, ellipses, curves
all of them your secret codes for
a whole new world.
Ans. Context: These lines are taken from poem ‘Don’t wash by Lakshmi Kannan’.
Explanation: The last four lines of the poem make reference to the illiterate’s perception of writing as strange and full of “magical scribbles” that resemble a complicated maze of geometric patterns, including “lines, ellipses, and curves.”
Women can only enter the world of knowledge, which is “a whole new world,” by choosing not to wash off this writing.
The poem aims to inspire women to embrace societal criticism without fear of what others would think. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Women can only live in a world where they are treated equally, have access to reading and writing, and are empowered by “hidden codes” by taking calculated risks.
The poem examines social taboos and stresses their value, stating that women are not barred from doing something because it is immoral or terrible but rather because doing so provides men the power to prevent women from achieving positions of authority that would threaten their hegemony.
SECTION-B
Q. 5. What are the issues that Mary Wollstonecraft touches upon?
Ans. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, has the following themes. Education for Girls: The primary goal of this essay is to provide a robust critique of Talleyrand’s treatise on education and the female education model put out by Rousseau and other contemporaries who believed that women were artificial, weak, and incapable of sound reasoning.
The idea of education in dependence that Rousseau promoted for women in Emile was categorically rejected by Wollstonecraft.
She believed that a woman should be intelligent in all ways and that she should be. She makes a compelling case that women in the 18th century were not treated equally to men. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
As women did not have full access to education in the eighteenth century, this situation was not brought about by the weakness of the women involved, but rather by the insufficient educational system.
They were believed to be primarily housewives who only lived for their husbands. Women were effectively limited to domestic duties solely, as we have already shown how the roles of women were constrained by the powerfully regulated system of patriarchal views.
Women were supposed to exhibit traditional virtues and submit to authority. Girls were instructed to groom themselves to maintain their beauty and softness in order to captivate their husbands.
Their upbringing was carried out in a manner that preserves their outward beauty. These treatment of women showed that they lacked mental freedom and had a highly unhealthy outlook on life. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Such fostering is what Wollstonecraft refers to as “barren flowering”, and it is the result of a deceptive educational system.
She says it was disappointing to find that women in that era simply wanted to inspire their love, when instead they could have had nobler aims and great spirits with a broad worldview. This shows her care for women.
Marriage and Beauty: In her essay, Wollstonecraft emphasises marriage as a practise, criticising it for the way that 18th- century society had altered it.
She makes the connection between marriage and beauty, suggesting that females were raised and educated to preserve their attractiveness in order to attract suitors or husbands. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Girls were raised with such values, which later caused them to fall in love with immoral men due to their youthful desire.
Mary makes a compelling case that women were instructed to transform their weaknesses into virtues in order to captivate men, despite the fact that doing so would make their lives a living misery.
She claims that since childhood, women have been shaped in this way to attract suitors.
She contends that such behaviour would have a long-lasting harmful impact on society as a whole and would elevate sexual fulfilment and conquest over a partnership that ought to have been built on respect for one another.
Reason and Rationality: Reason is one of the main issues for Mary Wollstonecraft. She held that the ability to reason served as the basic foundation of human cognition, enabling us to discriminate between what is right and bad and defining a person as a rational being as opposed to an animal.
Animals lack the ability to reason. Human beings progress because of reason. Mary Wollstonecraft frequently counsels women to use their reason, and this is why.
In addition, Mary Wollstonecraft aspired to apply to women the fundamental principles of Enlightenment philosophy.
She makes the case that if they want to manage their emotions and achieve virtue, they must strongly cultivate their capacity for reason.
Mary Wollstonecraft makes the case that education and logic are inextricably linked. People can better themselves as human beings with the use of education.
On the other hand, reason enables humans to surpass other creatures. As a result, both are closely linked to one another and necessary for the human being to be an independent, liberated, or progressive being.
She introduces virtue as the third entity in this. She contends that one person elevates themselves above other people through virtue.
She also contends that human beings can develop virtue with the use of their naturally occurring capacity for reason.IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Q. 6. Comment on the changed perspective in Chandrabhati’s Ramayana.
Ans. In this Ramayana, Rama himself is gently pushed back to a corner where he is hardly visible except in relation to Sita.
The narrative pattern clearly and unmistakably follows the story line of Sita’s life and the tale as it stands is unabashedly a Sita- tale under the traditional guise of a Rama-tale.
The only episodes of the Ramayana depicted here are the episodes of Sita’s life, beginning with the supernatural birth of Sita, going through her tales of woe.
‘Sita’s Baromasi’ mentions her childhood, her marriage, her life as an abducted woman. It describes her pregnancy, exile and her entry into mother earth.
In the original Ramayana, Rama’s birth is narrated first and the purpose of his appearance on earth to destroy the evil Ravana.
Chandrabati breaks the pattern by beginning her epic with Sita’s birth story. Chandrabati devotes only two comparatively shorter, later sections to the birth of Rama, his three brothers and one sister, the evil Kukuya who has the Bengali (and Sanskrit) term for evil (ku) pronounced twice in her name.
In Book II, Sita herself is the narrator. She sits in the inner apartment of Rama’s palace, talking to her girlfriends, who ask her all kinds of questions about her personal experiences.
Having returned from Lanka, Sita is now at ease and talks freely about her childhood, her marriage, her life with Rama as a bride, and in the exile, and her life in Lanka as an abducted woman. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Rama’s achievements the breaking of Haradhan and the entire epic battle are only summarily referred to (not described) through Sita’s ‘Baromasi’ (the song of twelve months, relating the incidents of one’s life to the seasonal changes).
The heroic code is thus gently broken. There are no gory battle scenes, no details of heroic achievement given at all. Most of the epic actions are referred to through the conceit of dream, as dream messages.
This section is most interesting because in an epic the battle is of central importance. But in Chandrabati Ramayana, twice mediated through feminine sensibility, once by Chandrabati’s as the composer, and once by Sita’s as the narrator, the epic battle loses all its glory and gets only a few lines to itself.
Maximum colour and space are spent on the interludes of Sita and Rama in the forest. After her return from Lanka, there are four more important events in Sita’s life: pregnancy, exile, childbirth and voluntary death or entry into Mother Earth.
All these experiences are described in great detail.
Her Sita wins the battle by fighting with the traditional weapons of value supplied by the dominant ideology of Chandrabati’s time, whereas Chandrabati herself, as the narrator-composer is challenging the same values in the very structure of the narrative.
We have here a narrative about a woman, narrated by a woman (by two women, in fact) meant for female audience.
Yes, the text was originally intended for a female audience as the recurring formula here is ‘shuno skhijana’ (listen girlfriends), not ‘shuno sabhajana’ (listen, members of the court) nor ‘shunu sarbajana’ (listen one and all) as the regular formulae go.
Hence, the producer of the text is a woman, the product depicts a woman’s life and the intended consumers are women.IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
The Chandrabati Ramayana also does not tell us about the route of Rama, but it tells us all about the life journey of a woman – a complete biological life-cycle her birth, her marriage, her pregnancy, childbirth, maturity and death.
It is a woman’s text, for the selection of episodes, for the highlighting and detailing of intimate feminine experiences (like the pregnant woman’s craving for chewing burnt clay), like pregnancy, childbirth (Mandodari’s description), maternal feelings, the woman’s desolation and desperation at being neglected, worship of local goddesses and the performance of religious rituals.
Chandrabati even uses bratakatha-style formulaic language when describing Sita’s ritualistic performances.
As narrators, Sita and Chandrabati differ in that one is a character, the other is an outsider. Sita is an ideal representation of the dominant ideology but Chandrabati is a dissenter. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
She openly questions, challenges and punctures the ideology of her time in her personal intrusions, and also in her selection of episodes, depth of detail and silences.
But she does not criticize Sita for acting according to the dominant ideology.
In Indian epics the epic battle is between good and evil, and in a patriarchal system (which produces the epic) both are represented by male characters.
In Chandrabati Ramayana also, there is this war of good and evil – but both are represented by women, Laksmi and Alaksmi, Sita and Kukuya.
Chandrabati Ramayana is what we call a silenced text a poor literary work because it was a Ramayana that did not sing of Rama.
Today, a re-reading of the narrative exposes an obvious failure to recognize Chandrabati Ramayana as a personal interpretation of the Rama-tale, seen specifically from the woman’s point of view.
Q. 7. How does Artibal critique patriarchy in her story?
Ans. Susie Tharu and K. Lalita say the modern autobiography “exhibits certain ambivalence” where often “the accent is personal… the pre-occupation with intimate (and) even the confessional.”
Emphasis on the personal often obscures the fact that the autobiography always draws on the repertoire that cultures provide at particular junctures in their history.
This almost seems true of Ramabai-although she is careful in chronicling the social, cultural and historical anxieties of her times, she does it in relation to the issue that affects her mission. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Meera Kosambi also comments on this aspect and points to the “efforts to plot her entire past on the meridian of Christianity”, especially in her later writings.
Her autobiography can undoubtedly be viewed as innovative because it delves into unknown emotional waters.
She is well aware of her role as the “place” where caste, class, and national beliefs, all influenced by patriarchal rules, battle it out.
She set out to create herself as an exemplary figure who does not simply report and rehash her triumphs and experiences, deviating from the typical trajectory of the classic “masculine” autobiography.
Her voice that emerges from this marginalised area likewise deviates from this trajectory.
Instead, it is a heartfelt depiction of the development of her feminist consciousness, as well as her confidence in particular social reforms, as well as her choice and practise of religion. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Her autobiography’s message shouldn’t be restricted or perceived as proselytising. Ramabai was assured by Christianity of a place where freedom was the cornerstone of society and its dissolution would bring about its demise.
Ramabai was motivated to work for sociocultural, religious, and women’s rights changes by the concepts of equality and justice.
The readers can clearly see how Ramabai is far ahead of her father, the “orthodox reformer,” in her goal of social reform in this moving personal account.
She demolished the bastion of patriarchy, “stood the persecution with… characteristic manliness,” and “cared little for what people said and did whats she thought was right,” much like him.
Pandita Ramabai has been both disparaged and praised, read and silenced, evoked in historical accounts and left out of them. She has also been both appropriated and ignored.IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Q. 8. Can The Yellow Wollpaper be described as self-confessional literature? Elaborate.
Ans. Even more than the physical ones, the narrator’s mental restrictions are what ultimately make her nuts.
She is compelled to conceal her worries and anxiety to maintain the appearance of a happy marriage and to appear to be triumphant in her battle with depression.
The “resting cure’s” forced stillness and inactivity are the part of her treatment that she finds the most intolerable from the start.
She is compelled to become utterly passive and is not allowed to use her thinking in any manner. John repeatedly reminds her to exercise self-discipline and control her imagination because he thinks it may run away with her.
Writing is especially forbidden. Naturally, the narrator’s eventual insanity is the result of her inventive potential being suppressed rather than being expressed.
She even goes so far as to keep a private notebook, which she frequently refers to as a “relief” to her mind, demonstrating her ongoing desire for an emotional and intellectual outlet. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
According to Gilman, a mind that is forced to remain inactive will eventually destroy itself.
It is not unexpected that Gilman crafted her novel as a critique of this useless and brutal course of treatment for depression given that she nearly lost her life due to S. Weir Mitchell’s “resting cure” for depression.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” serves as an example of how an already anxious mind can deteriorate and start preying on itself when it is restrained from productive labour and driven into inactivity.
To his credit, Mitchell, who is specifically identified in the narrative, heeded Gilman’s advice and gave up the “resting treatment.”
Beyond the particular method outlined in the narrative, Gilman intends to condemn any approach to medical treatment that disregards the patient’s concerns and views her solely as a passive recipient of care.
Given that John is both the narrator’s husband and her doctor, there is a strong connection between a woman’s subjugation in the house and her subjection in a doctor/patient relationship. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Gilman suggests that even when the husband or doctor intends to help, both forms of control can be easily exploited. Women who are the silent objects of this authority are all too frequently infantilized or worse.
SECTION-C
Q. 9. How does Sunlight on a Broken Column reflect the society of that time and place?
Ans. The first three sections are told in linear time. In order to catch up with the events that have happened over the previous fourteen years, it goes backward in the fourth chapter.
The final section works in the opposite direction from the preceding three, which proceed forward-looking.
However, neither the reversed linearity nor the broken linearity are straightforward, direct routes. It goes in the following way:
Time present
ch. 1 Baba Jan’s illness
ch. 2 15th birthday Uncle Mohsin’s life Nandi incident
HOU WAT
Nandi’s character←… ch. 3 Laila summoned fear of Baba Jan’s death Baba Jan’s friends
Ch. 4 meal time
Ustaniji and memories of childhood
This demonstrates that time moves on. It is always changing.
The novel is filled with occurrences as a result of memories, anecdotes, descriptions, anxiety of what might happen in the future and reported incidents.
Beginning with a close-knit family that is reminiscent of undivided colonial India, the patriarch of the family (Baba Jan, followed by Uncle Hamid), and his power over the home, can be compared to the rule of British colonisers over India.
Next, the escalating hostilities between family members represent the widening gap between Muslims and Hindus. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
The breakdown of the family is correlated with the escalating political tensions. Laila’s release from Ashiana’s oppressive patriarchal dictatorship, which symbolises the nation’s emancipation from colonial powers, comes next.
Finally, it might be argued that Hosain tells the tale of “the house of my childhood and adolescence” through the theme of home.
Laila’s story is one of several about those who stayed behind, reflecting those who did not experience the violence and migration that followed the division of the Indian Subcontinent but were nonetheless left to observe the country’s slow disintegration as a result of partition.
The zenana and mardana (the men’s quarters) are separate areas of the house. To further explain, the term “zenana” is derived from the Persian word zan, which means woman, and “refers to the apartments of the house in which women of the family are secluded” in order to maintain the family’s honour and shame.
Architecturally, zenana literally means “the interior of the house’ – the rooms are in the inner courtyard, away from the public and the male domain of the house.”
In order to highlight the segregation caused by this tradition, which imposes not only limited mobility in terms of physical space assigned to women but also limits their intellectual growth because they are essentially shut out of the outside world, the zenana/purdah culture is purposefully made to permeate every aspect of Hosain’s novel.IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
The idea of purdah is ingrained in Muslim women’s daily life in this novel, which portrays the world of Muslim nobility in colonial India in the 1930s.
It is crucial to note that although the word “purdah” technically refers to a curtain or a veil, in the context of culture, it “indicates a gendered sociospatial formation, a code of conduct, and a unique spatial regime for women.”
As a result, “multiple homes within the household, separated by ideological boundaries” are created.
Additionally, it is possible to interpret purdah culture as a result of patriarchy’s insistence on seeing female bodies as sex objects that need to be covered and restrained.
At home, the purdah ensures that women are confined not just inside the house but in an entirely distinct area as well, serving as a weapon for organised isolation and repression of women.
In actuality, the term “purdah” can be used to describe the confinement of Indian women.
In addition, Hosain’s novel’s purdah culture “emphasizes the unequal status of women with regard to men and denies them the freedom to shape their lives according to their own wishes.” IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Furthermore, it should be noted that the purdah concept is mobile in contrast to the zenana, which is a fixed location.
This point is made in the scene where a servant shouts “Purdah! Purdah!” before Laila and Zahra to warn onlookers to turn away as they travel down the alleyway to visit a relative.
Regarding this incident, a different and more compassionate interpretation of purdah could be that the idea of seclusion “can be and is actively deployed to allow women choice over their movements and the terms of their sociability.
Zenana can also be seen as a unique planet unto itself: Not necessarily a counterculture, but a mini-culture.
Although “an autonomous unit in itself, the existence within zenana is based upon a great level of social interaction,” Zenana strives on the bonds of female companionship. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
However, because they do not question the isolation of women based on their gender, such readings may be viewed as problematic because they are predicated on the acceptance of the concept of seclusion.
Q. 10. What do you think women’s writing seeks to express?
Ans. The late 19th-century feminist ideal known as “The New Woman” had a significant impact well into the 20th century.
The term “new woman” was coined by the Irish writer Sarah Grand (1854-1943) in 1894 to describe independent women demanding radical change.
In response, the English writer Ouida (Maria Louisa Ramé) used the term as the title of a subsequent article.
Henry James, a British-American author, further popularised the phrase when he used it to characterise the rise in feminism among educated, independent career women in Europe and the US.IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
The capacity for women to participate in a wider, more active world was made possible by hobbies like biking, which also required physical modifications in activity and attire.
The most significant effect on the New Woman came from the suffragette movement of the 19th century, which sought to give women political rights.
Opportunities for women in education and the workforce have grown as western nations have become more urbanised and industrialized. Feminist theory’s emergence has also sparked the creation of new women.
The movement was launched in the 18th century when Mary Wollstonecraft released A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
The book was one of the earliest persistent feminist arguments in the history of the globe and questioned many of the preconceived ideas of femininity prevalent at the time.
It was inspired by the ideas of equality and liberty that the French Revolution symbolised. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Wollstonecraft was one of the first advocates of gender equality because she placed a strong focus on female education – the sort that instils enduring qualities rather than manufactured graces.
Contrary to modern feminism, she did not advocate for women’s liberation from the domestic sphere. In the US, Margaret Fuller echoed Wollstonecraft’s efforts by focusing on the importance of educating women.
But unlike Wollstonecraft, she espoused the idea of non-specific gender roles and pushed for equality for women and African-Americans. Virginia Woolf is another faminist. Feminist thinkers are still influenced by her ideas today.
She was a pioneer in the “androgynous” creative mind movement. The best artists, in Woolf’s opinion, were always balanced or, as she put it, “man-womanly” and “woman-manly” – between the two sexes.
She was also the first thinker to advocate for a reading style that was woman-centric, allowing women to read as women without having to adhere to male aesthetic and value standards. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Women writers in 19th century England produced groundbreaking works, including those by Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Kate Chopin, Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Bronte and Maria Edgeworth.
For the past few decades, these works have been regarded as foreshadowing the challenges and themes of contemporary feminist inquiry.
The writings of American novelists from the same era such Louisa May Allcot, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Winifred Holtby were even more innovative.
African-American literature produced a significant amount of work during the twentieth century. Different issues than those of the White writers of the time distinguished the texts of African- American authors.
Racial injustice, severe beauty standards, desire, maternity, interpersonal relationships, misogyny, gender roles, violence, incest, community and society, and God were all topics that authors like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and Zora Neale Hurston addressed in their writing.
Toni Cade Bambara and Gloria Naylor, among a generation of other young novelists, were influenced by these pioneers of Black women’s literature.
Black Feminism claimed that feminist arguments must take race into account as an analytical category. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Black feminist philosophy was pioneered by thinkers like Patricia Hill Collins, Hortense Spillers, and Hazel Carby.
Shortly after, post-colonial feminism took a step further and expanded the concerns of Black feminists to include problems encountered by Chicana and Asian American women as well as women from other cultures and countries.
When considering gender-related issues in India, the concepts of the nation and the household repeatedly come up.
Critics like Partha Chatterjee and Sudipta Kaviraj have highlighted how the “interior” was designated as the realm of women because they were in charge of upholding the sanctity and cleanliness of the home.
The “outside,” on the other hand, belonged to men, and one of their tasks, particularly during the colonial government, was to protect the “inside” from the corrupting influences of the “outside.”
Equally controversial among feminist critics is the practise of viewing the nation as being equivalent to a mother figure.
Many of them have stated that under the appearance of protecting her/it from harm, it enables the guy to rule the woman and the nation.
Furthermore, even while the nation state guarantees women a certain set of rights, these rights often conflict with the community’s personal laws, which frequently take precedence over the former. IGNOU BEGC 111 Solved Free Assignment
Gayatri Spivak described how the men of the family strove to exert as much power within the house by controlling female libido using the word “asceticism.”
This ascetic self-control was intended to uphold a certain ideal of womanhood exemplified by Sita and Savitri, two mythical heroines.
Women “are built as the symbolic carriers of the community’s identity and honour, both personally and collectively,” according to Nira Yuval-Davis.
So any moral transgression on their part is penalised more severely. Due to the importance of the family and the society, Indian feminism faces a significant difficulty.
It must develop women’s autonomy and freedom without excluding them from their families, communities or culture.