SEARCH FOR SELF IN MANJU KAPUR’S DIFFICULT DAUGHTERS

Abstract

This paper deals with the search for self in male dominating society. The purpose of this paper is to study new women in the novels of Manju Kapur. Women in Indian society remain under patriarchal pressure. They are more categorized and prejudiced due to gender .We  can see budding of new women in Manju  Kapur’s novels. She tried to carve them their own identity in this man’s world . It is only the male ego that fills the woman with inferiority   complex through the ages. Since ages women is used to exploit and suppress in this male dominated society. A country can never progress without the active participation of women. Men always see women as the weaker sex, as their object of pleasure property. Now modern women prefer to exercise their choices, desires and break   away the shackles of their traumatic experiences. In Difficult Daughters, Kapur’s Protagonist Virmati, an educated middle class girl explains her rebellious ideas against patriarchy and tries to gain her self. She experiences a journey of her inner self. Difficult Daughter’s by Manju Kapur is the story of a woman who struggle for her identity . Her duty towards her family, her desire to be academically well equipped, her illicit love affair with a married man and her attempts to shape her own destiny stands at the core of the novel. Manju Kapur’s novels focus on women characters struggling to break the shackles of patriarchy and are in search of self against the dogmas of social and cultural critical thinking. Manju Kapur portrays the situation of women in male dominated society.