Literary Representations of the ‘New Indian Woman’

This article discusses the levels of autonomy and self-definition of the ‘new Indian woman’ in the contemporary literature written in English by Indian women writers. The article will analyse the role, position and influence of the natal family in this delicate and highly experimental identity negotiation by contemporary middle class, single, urban Indian women. The focus of this article is on young, single women who have careers or waged employment, and who thus function in both private and public spheres. Caplan (1985) contended that for Indian women, the family alone represented their economic and psychological source of security. The article explores how the contemporary literature portrays changes in this setup and how aspiring new Indian women at the turn of the century perform cultural balancing acts to defend ever greater levels of personal autonomy, while maintaining (even, in some instances, consolidating) their place within their families. The article finds that despite the burgeoning of the middle class in urban India, which sees a radical economic shift towards increasing numbers of single women working outside their homes, as yet there has not been any equally radical shift in the social, cultural or familial situation subsequently; neither has there been a radical change in women’s roles nor societal expectations of them. However, emerging narratives of the last decade show that some small but significant shifts are occurring at this most fundamental level of identity negotiation, and that the identities of women may be more fluid than they had previously been permitted to be.