Intellectual and Psychological Journey of a Woman -- A Study of ManjuKapur’s Novel Difficult Daughters

Abstract

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, many changes emerged in the society especially for the women. However Indian society is always patronized by patriarchy.Women always remained silent and totally subordinate. They had been denied their basic rights, individuality and self-reliance. In Indian English fiction there emerged a group of Indian women novelists who raised many issues related to emerging new woman, in their novels. Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Gita Hariharan, Nayantara Sehgal, Manju Kapur etc. are some of Indian women novelists who have portrayed the life of women with a new perspective. They show them as strong women of emerging modern society. The present paper studies Intellectual and Psychological Journey of the protagonist of her novel ‘Difficult Daughters’. In this novel, Kapur explores the psyche of her educated middle-class protagonist who is trapped between tradition and modernity.The protagonists in the novels of Manju Kapur express their resistance in many ways and thus they try to challenge the existing codes.