Liberal Feminism as Reflected in the Select Short Stories of Anjana Appachana: A Perspective
https://doi.org /10.5281/zen od o.14973883
Author(s): M. Sarika & Dr. R.V. Jayanth Kasyap
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14973883
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Volume 16 | Issue 1 | Feb 2025
Pages: 178-188
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The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 16, Issue-I, February 2025 ISSN: 0976-8165
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030
Liberal Feminism as Reflected in the Select Short Stories of Anjana
Appachana: A Perspective
M. Sarika
Research Scholar,
Department of English,
Yogi Vemana University,
Kadapa.
&
Dr. R.V. Jayanth Kasyap
Associate Professor,
Department of English,
Yogi Vemana University,
Kadapa.
Article History: Submitted‐27/01/2025, Revised‐04/02/2025, Accepted‐19/02/2025, Published‐28/02/2025.
Abstract:
Anjana Appachana is one of the significant writers of the Indian Diaspora who gained wide
acclaim with her collection of short stories Incantations and Other Stories (1991) and her popular
novels Listening Now(1998) and Fear and Lovely(2023). Her fictional works discernibly focus on
seminal themes like gender issues, isolation, marginalization, displacement, supremacy,
suppression, and dominance of the male over the female in patriarchal society. One can find an
ardent urge for the liberation and empowerment of women in her writings. To trace the streaks of
feminism in her works is always a meaningful exercise. Anjana explores the predicament of
women and the problems of existence through her writings.
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Liberal Feminism as Reflected in the Select Short Stories of Anjana Appachana: A Perspective
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https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10448030
Liberal feminism believes that equality between sexes can be achieved through education and
by eradicating rigid patriarchal norms. Prominent liberal feminists such as Mary Wollstonecraft,
John Stuart Mill, Helen Taylor, and Simon De Beauvoir propagated liberal feminism to emancipate
women from cultural, traditional, and financial constraints through their writings. The present
paper titled Liberal Feminism as Reflected in the Select Short Stories of Anjana Appachana makes
a humble attempt to examine the feminist issues in some of her selected short stories in the light
of liberal feminism and its implications.
Keywords: Gender Inequality, Liberation, Equal rights, Gender issues, Dominance
and Suppression.
Introduction
Anjana Appachana is considered to be an eminent fictional writer of the Indian
Diaspora. Her works include “Incantations and Other Stories” a short story collection
and two novels Fear and Lovely and Listening Now. Her collection of short stories
depicts the struggles and challenges on account of gender inequality in India. The
protagonists in her stories seek liberation from traditional norms and taboos. Liberal
feminists believe that education plays a vital role in reducing gender discrimination.
They strongly affirm that providing equal education opportunities to women is essential
to achieve equality between the sexes. Giddens in his work Equality and Social
Inequality (2001) opines that discrimination exists because of low access for women for
the rights to get education and employment. (Giddens,2001)
Most of the prominent feminist activists like Wollstonecraft, Simon de Beauvoir, John
Stuart Mill, and Charles Fourier opposed the oppression of women and gender bias and
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argued that women should get equal opportunities in all spheres as men and should be
treated without discrimination.
Historical Context of Liberal Feminism
The concept of liberal feminism originated in the 17th and 18th centuries to empower
the legal and political rights of women. It emphasizes the individual rights of women
and their freedom. It brought various remedies for gender inequalities through social
and legal reforms. The dominant aspects of liberal feminism are freedom, democracy,
equal opportunities, and equal rights. Liberal feminists suggest that gender inequality
exists both at domestic and social levels. The family can be seen as a social institution
according to liberal feminists. The most prominent writers include Mary Wollstonecraft,
John Stuart Mill, and Harriet Taylor and Harriet propagated liberal feminism. Among
them, one of the liberal feminist activists who gained a global reputation is Mary
Wollstonecraft, a British writer and philosopher who explores about importance of
women’s education in her famous writing A Vindication of the Rights of Women. In
her writings, she is vocal about women’s education which is in her opinion crucial for
their self-reliance. However, another important advocate of liberal feminism is Stuart
Mill, an eminent philosopher and political economist legitimate right to vote in his essay
On the Subjection of Women who is vociferous about women and their civic and legal
rights.
A host of women writers from the Indian diaspora address the themes of gender
inequality, particularly the traditional roles assigned to women in both Indian society
and within the diaspora community. They raise their voice for women’s roles in family,
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marriage, and society, highlighting the need for equal opportunities in education,
employment, and social participation. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni portrays internal and
external struggles faced by women who are urged to define their ways owing to cultural
constraints in her novels The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart. One can trace the
similar situations in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, where the protagonist embarks on a
journey to self-discovery, moving from a traditional Indian village to the United States
and seeking liberation by committing a murder.
Anita Desai is known for her deeper exploration of psychic issues and her works
Clear Light of Day and Fasting, Feasting, delve into the roles of women within the
family, their search for identity, and the struggle for independence in patriarchal
societies. Kiran Desai in her novel The Inheritance of Loss, explores the post-colonial
identity of her characters and the convergence of culture, gender, and modernity,
advocating for the retrospection of traditional roles for women. Anjana, one of the
renowned novelists in True Colors prescribes the predicament of women in her work
Incantations and Other Stories. Anjana is concerned with the problems and challenges
faced by Indian women. The characters of her short stories are docile to the rules of
tradition that are imposed on them in a patriarchal male-chauvinism society.
The present paper takes a look at the features of liberal feminism in selected short
stories of Anjana. Bahu centers around the predicament of a woman in a patriarchal
family as a daughter-in-law. It is all about a newly married girl who suffers from
ferocity with her mother-in-law and her intimate partner. One can trace the situations
that she came across in the viewpoint of liberal feminism. The daughter-in-law in the
story is unnamed as she has no significance in her in-laws’ home and her identity is
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merely by her husband Sidharth. She survives under social, political, and economic
constraints. She is denied her freedom to express her wish to meet her parents and her
desire to continue her job but those were denied and her entire hopes become crestfallen
after entering her in-laws’ house. She has her own choices and aspirations but
circumstances never allowed her to pursue them. Even her privacy is at stake and the
following lines reflect her anxiety about it:
“Her husband and she never had time for spending time together and if she desires to
get time with her husband the in-laws and relatives also accompany with them (p.12).
Her voice is curbed and not allowed to speak her opinions (p.14). Her husband feels
superior and wants her to blindly obey him and satisfy his mother. She becomes
victimized and treated with discrimination and it gets intensified with the arrival of her
sister-in-law. Her mother-in-law believes that bahu is supposed to perform all the
domestic chores and it is her responsibility. At the same time, she wants her daughter
to be compatible with doing no work. The discrimination is evident in the following
lines:
On the third day, my mother-in-law came to our room and told us, my heart is breaking
to see my poor daughter working in the kitchen. The poor child does not want to see her
mother work. She is working chapatis with her own hands for us (p.24).
On account of the indifferent and negligent attitude of her husband made her become a
victim of oppression. It is at this juncture that liberal feminism can be traced. Owing to
tough circumstances Bahu seeks liberation as she longs for freedom. She has become a
victim of male chauvinism. She feels so disturbed because of conjugal unrest in her life.
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Liberal feminism depicts the family as a social institution in which men and women
have to share the responsibilities equally but here in this story, on account of chores,
she feels isolated and detached from her family and friends. The recklessness,
irresponsibility, and ignorance of her husband push her into depression. Her wish to
work remains unfulfilled owing to traditional constraints and lack of freedom. The
domestic abuse by her in-laws makes her stay away from responsibilities. Her feelings
and emotions are ignored. She becomes emotionally drained as she does not want to
remain as a traditional bahu. She receives no support, comfort, and psychological relief.
The male domination in the house makes her docile and silent. The society and the
family-imposed restrictions on her that adjustment is necessary in marriage and Siddarth
also says that if you can’t adjust in our family, please don’t take it out on me. (p.25).
She yearns for protection and Siddarth’s attention but fails to get them. He never
supports his wife but rather blames her to make his family happy. She has no privacy
and independence (p.30). She does not want to remain a good bahu with the ill-
treatment of her in-law’s family. Her urge for liberation is noticed when she says:
I could not change it. Especially since Siddarth accepted it. Did I then also accept it?
Could I? How could I go backward? Acceptance would mean that I would live this way,
always. It would never mean that I could accept it as the right thing to do. How then
could I do it, day after day, year after year? For whom and why?
She wishes to liberate herself and wants to be an independent woman yearning to lead
a life on her terms. At the end of the story, she rejects everything and walks out of the
house with confidence due to those unbearable traditional constraints. Eventually, she
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decides to quit the clutches of her in-laws’ family. She wants to live her life (p.29). Her
anguish is explained in the following lines;
I could not leave this city. Where else could I find such a good job? I had just four
years’ work experience and jobs were so hard to come by, I could leave and take up a
barsati one to a woman separated from her husband. I would have joined the slender
bandwagon of ‘those women’. No, it would not be easy to find a place (Incantations,
p.31). She feels happy about her decision and lives independently after leaving her in-
laws’ home. She quits her in-laws house to live independently and peacefully. Bahu is
portrayed as the one who liberates herself from traditional fetters and seeks to lead life.
The next short story collection that offers insights about liberal feminism is Her Mother. It depicts
the life of Indian middle-class people especially those who aspire to go the West to seek greener
pastures. It voices the anguish of a mother towards her daughter after her daughter leaves abroad
to pursue a Ph.D. The entire story revolves around the prescription of a mother to her daughter in
the form of letters. In this story, gender discrimination is portrayed by Anjana as men are allowed
to go abroad to study while women are not supposed to go there on account of traditional
restrictions. In this story mother is unnamed and the mother calls her daughter, Rani Bati and she
does not want her daughter to break traditional rules as she obeys values and culture.
She wishes her daughter to be a woman of performs household chores and fulfills the desires of
her husband and his family once she gets married. She wants her daughter to be a common woman.
The mother wishes her daughter to be a woman who should know all household chores.
However, her daughter Rani leaves her mother’s home to become independent and pursue
education abroad. In the entire story, one can witness the clash between a traditional mother and
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a daughter who wants to embrace modernity. It is clear that the mother is imposed with societal
restrictions and she wants her daughter to preserve culture. Anjana exposes the discrimination in
restricting women from seeking opportunities abroad and fixing marriage as a precondition.
(p.167)
As the story progresses, the mother tries to insist her daughter not to follow the culture of America
but to adhere to all norms. Instead of supporting her daughter to pursue higher education mother
blames and disapproves of her (p.169). Moreover, the mother never wants to allow her daughter
to marry Americans as they don’t know the value of marriage. In the entire story, the mother is
against her daughter’s decision due to Americans’ ill practices such as leaving their parents in old
age, abusing their wives, and receiving provocation from their parents(p.171-172).
Rani is always in conflict as she differs from her mother and as she seeks independence. She
desires to achieve higher positions rather to be like her mother who is confined to household
chores. As a result, she liberates herself from the clutches that are ingrained in society.
The most rendering of all the stories in the collection is “Incantations”. It highlights
the unspeakable truth of abuse, guilt, and self-recrimination. It centers around the
narrator’s elder sister Sangeetha who is exploited by Abhinay, her brother-in-law during
her wedding despite which she gets married to Nikhil. After her wedding, Sangeeta
expresses her agony with her twelve-year-old sister Geeti recounting how “every
morning…Abhinay raped her and at night Nikhil did” (Appachana 120). She conceals
about her exploitation with her parents as Abhinay insists her no one would believe her
if she disclosed it. She explains her trauma with her sister Geeti and confesses she could
not resist it.(p.112).
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Her parents obliviously find nothing wrong with her since she hides her pain and
pretends like a woman who is very happy with her husband (p.121). Meanwhile, she is
scared of society as she will be ill-treated for losing her virginity. She hesitates to
express her pain because she thinks of the humiliation and disgust of their parents by
society and words like despoiled woman by people once it is known (p.115).
Her sister opined that Sangeeta conceals her agony with her parents since she would be
treated as a woman who does not protect the values and morals of society (p.115). As a
result, Sangeeta becomes a victimized young woman who does not find enough
confidence in her husband to share her horrid experience of rape and has to undergo the
dual trauma of marital rape as well as the repeated rape by her brother-in-law daily in
the absence of Nikhil until she decides to end her life before killing her brother-in-law.
One can trace the dimension of liberal feminism when she is denied individual freedom
and autonomy in the hands of Abhinay and Nikhil. She cannot liberate herself from their
clutches on account of terror and violence. She remains subordinate to her exploiters
rather than emancipating herself from the clutches of them. Liberal feminism ensures
individuals fair and just treatment without discrimination or exploitation. But here in
this story, Sangeetha never tries to escape from her trauma since she is weak and accepts
suffering showing resistance. Her suffering, which had been consuming her slowly, and
unable to bear the agony any longer, she ends her life after killing her brother-in-law.
She had never felt comfortable sharing her heart out to him. Sangeeta would have been
alive, and possibly, happy if she freed herself from that trauma and made an attempt
from sexual violence.
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Anjana implicitly and skillfully puts forth the feminist concerns in Incantations
and Other Stories which come under the pursuit of liberal feminism. The very first story
Bahu explores the hardship of the daughter-in-law seeking liberation to come out of the
mire created by circumstances. Her mother reflects the passionate desire of a daughter
to pursue higher education abroad and to become financially independent by resisting
the taboos of society. Incantations is about the predicament of Sangeeta who is exploited
by Abhinay and how she liberates herself by killing her brother-in-law and ends her
own life. A careful reading of other fictional works also offers sufficient scope to look
at the aspects of liberal feminism and such an exercise will be truly fruitful.
Works Cited:
Appachana, Anjana Incantations and Other Stories, New Delhi: Penguin,2006
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory
Manchester University Press,2009.
Abbey, R.2011, The Return of Feminist Liberalism, Montreal &Kingston: McGill
Queens University Press.
Johnson, Lesly and Justine Lloyd. Sentenced to Everyday Life: Feminism and the
Housewife. Oxford, NY:Berg,2004.
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Sultana, Rebecca. ” Tradition and Modernity as Played Out in Anjana Appachana’s ‘Her
Mother”. Indian Women’s Short Fiction. Eds. Joel Kuortti and Rajeswar Mittapalli
.New Delhi: Atlantic,2007.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1998. A Vindication of the Rights of Women, New York: Norton.
First published in 1792.
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