The Female Voice: Re-Reading the Select Short Stories of Raja Rao

Raja Rao (1909-2006) is one of the greatest Indian fiction writers of the past century. He has written many short stories that deal with the problems of Indian women. The present paper will focus on the select short stories by Rao and will evaluate the plight of women in Indian society as has been depicted by him. The paper will also showcase how patriarchal norms affect women’s conditions and also the sort of status they have been invariably and generally allotted in the society. The stories that have been included for the study are: “Akkayya”, “The Little Gram Shop”, “Javni” and “Nimka”. The women in all these short stories suffer a lot due to patriarchal social norms. Women are not regarded as equals to men in this society. They are made only to take care of the household chores like cleaning the vessels, and mopping the floor etc. They have no right to education and are thought to be a procreative machine to have children and to nurture them by sacrificing their bodies. From the feminist point of view, all these stories throw ample light on the plight and condition of women in Indian society. Their exploitation, suppression, and suffering can easily be witnessed in all these stories. The female characters in all these stories belong to rural areas. The condition of the Indian women living in rural areas is more miserable and pitiable than that of the women in urban centres because the literacy rate of the women in rural areas is substantially low as compared to the women residing in urban areas. They are deprived of the basic needs in their lives.