The Subaltern Women Protagonists Depicted in Historical Sinhala Novels (With Special Focus on Women Authored Texts)

A unique feature inherent to contemporary Sinhala Women Novelists is their fascination with History. Consequently, a trend of writing historical novels based on the period of the Kandyan Kingdom and the British Colonial era has emerged. The mainstream women novelists of the new millennium focused mainly on subaltern women protagonists, the representatives of a voice-less class who live on the periphery of the nation-state. Hence, these texts conceptualise reality through the voice and experience of an underprivileged subaltern class and gender. Further, they operate within the paradigms of subaltern histories, privileging subaltern subjectivities that question and challenge the identities the elite ruling groups bestowed upon them. The woman Novelists Shrewdly reveal the hidden text of the nation in their oeuvre. Accordingly, these literary texts can be found in the context of subaltern histories. This research is intended to analyse the roles of women protagonists that give rise to issues concerning gender, social stratification, and cultural hegemony. How women Novelists were inspired and conditioned by historical and sociological sources for depicting convincing characters was examined, and an attempt was made to capture the continuing interaction among author, text and History. With a view to grasping the uniqueness of Sinhala women Novelists, creative dexterity in reconstructing the historical sources and perceiving the metamorphosis that has taken place, their Novels were compared with mainstream South Asian Women Authorised texts. It was revealed that interdisciplinary studies across customary subject divisions, including History and cultural anthropology, have a significant impact, influence and conditioning over the subaltern protagonists and their quest toward self-identity.