Concept of Fallenness and Patriarchy in Anuradha Sharma Pujari’s Novel “Kanchan”

Abstract

Patriarchy places women in a marginalised position. Women always bare same feeling and same status of their lives in patriarchal oppression and exploitation. Men often speak about virtues and vices of women and on the basis of that categorise them as chaste or unchaste. Women in patriarchal society should be pure to get societal honour. The society decides what a woman should do, how a woman should behave and these views are the cultural determinant of a society or a community. If a woman challenges these lessons of morality, she will get the identity of fallen woman in a patriarchal society. The novelist Sharma Pujari through the portrayal of Kanchan as a fallen woman does not want to condemn her fundamental disorder but attempts to expose the exploitation and oppression that exist in sexual practices and thereby wants to challenge it. A patriarchal society mirrors some cultural views and attitudes of sexuality. On the basis of these norms a woman is relegated to the rank of fallen woman. The man being the superior section of the society proves his male power in the emotional, physical and material sphere of a woman’s life. This power of patriarchal authority determines the fallenness of a woman and thereby deprives her from availing the pleasures and securities which are only permissible for a wife. The culturally constructed feminine myth looks at her as an exception. People’s psyche is moulded by this cultural affinities constructed by patriarchal system. The novel Kanchan describes the discrimination on gender relation and sexual responses between two genders that exists in a patriarchy. Anuradha Sharma Pujari narrates the complexities in the life of the woman character who tries to come out of her destitute situation by using her body. Adopting a feminist perspective this research article attempts to discuss the construction of the idea “fallen women” by patriarchy and the experiences and struggles of the marginalised protagonist Kanchan in the novel Kanchan.