Women Liberation and its aftermath in Nayantara Sahgal’s novel "The Day in Shadow"

Abstract

Women Liberation not only eradicates the oppression on gender but also creates a way for them to gain equal economic, political and social status. Women Liberation movement started nearly a hundred years ago. Throughout the world, millions of women especially young women, students and working women have challenged some of the most essential features of their century-old repression. Nayantara Shagal is a post-independent writer. She mainly dealt with feminism in all her fictions. She is a prolific writer who has written eight novels which gave her the due credit, two biographies, two political commentaries and a large number of articles in various newspapers and magazines. Shagal is a recipient of the prestigious `Sahitya Akademi Award' for her novel ‘Rich like Us’ (1985), the `Sinclair Award' and the 'Common Wealth Award for Eurasia' for her novel ‘Plans for Departure’ (1986).  She returned the `Sahitya Akademi Award' in 2015 for some issues. According to her, women had to fight for their individuality and self-respect. They are made victims of orthodoxy. Her fiction is closely interwoven with the fabric of interpersonal relationships not in the political and social milieu of India. Various dimensions of human relationships particularly that of men and women are the main themes one finds in all her novels. She owes her expertise in dealing with such themes and interweaves them with able concern and broad perspective. At present there are large numbers of women writers ready to delineate the sufferings of women in the male dominated society through their novels. This helps the readers to be aware of the pain and suffering women undergo inside and outside the world and are ready to share the feelings.