Valuing culture: Patterns of gender discrimination in Indian women's fiction

The present paper will be an attempt to examine the issues related to society and culture. Is Gender an offshoot of culture? What is meant by the gender of culture? Is man versus woman as simple a corollary to nature versus culture? As we examine the major changes in women's writing over the past couple of years we all see a distinct shift in parameters. Both in Hindi as well as English women writers have been focusing on the need for change in perspective, a growing awareness in terms of the needs of women. This paper will focus on the recent trends in writing. By looking at the major cultural shifts in the writings of Indian English writers like Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande and Manju Kapoor and Hindi writers like Prabha Khaitan, Mridula Garg and Rajni Gupta, the paper will focus on issues of difference and deference. While accepting the credo of cultural diversity they argue that certain practices and traditions have actually been responsible for the subjugation of women. Culture expects women to conform to certain specific norms and values. Using culture as a tool for interpreting gender women writers seem to be sharing a common perspective. Themes of love and marriage, demands of motherhood have been successfully reinterpreted and redefined in the light of individual autonomy and idnetity. Have these writers been able to look at the power structure and define it in relation towomen? Within a specific socio-cultural milieu many gender differences emerge and space needs to be reallocated in terms of the public and private domain.