Women in Tamil Magazines

Abstract

Even though the printed version of books started to come in the tenth century, still palm leaves were used to compile the literature. Due to the evolution of printing of books, the conventional types of byhearting and remembering slowly started to dilute. However, only limited books were available before the evolution of printed books. Those available books were also meant for educational purposes only. Books related to entertainment and libraries apart from education campuses were not available at that time. At this point in time, the people started to enjoy the benefits of a printing press where a large volume of books was made available to the public. The newly printed books were not only meant for educational purposes but also for entertainment purposes. In the recent Tamil context, there are two major topics that were highly spoken namely Feminism and Dalitism. In the two-thousand-year-long history of Tamil literature, the space for women and their literature was limited. Expect for the sanga ilakkiyam, the role of women in Tamil literature is scarce. After the Indian independence, many women literates were identified. The flow of literature in the current generation is mostly based on fiction. Due to the domination of the printing press, the volume of books in Tamil was increased in fiction-based books with less importance to grammatical-oriented books. Every script was initiated by men and later it is passed onto women.