From Silence to Speech: Shifting Representations of Women in Indian Writing in English from Medieval Antecedents to Contemporary Postcolonial Fiction

This paper examines how representations of women in Indian Writing in English (IWE) have evolved, tracing a path from the silenced and mythologised figures of early colonial texts to the complex female protagonists of contemporary postcolonial fiction. Using feminist literary criticism as its main framework, and drawing on the work of Elaine Showalter, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Susie Tharu, the study argues that the portrayal of women in IWE is not a simple progression from oppression to liberation. Rather, it is a layered and contested process shaped by literary form, colonial history, caste, class, and religious identity, resulting in diverse expressions of female voice and agency. The analysis focuses on key works by Toru Dutt, Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Arundhati Roy, Shashi Deshpande, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, positioning them within the wider context of feminist literary history and postcolonial cultural politics in India.