Gender Patriarchy in Selected Novels of Mulk Raj Anand and Amitav Ghosh

Gender Patriarchy in Selected Novels of Mulk Raj Anand and Amitav Ghosh Shruti Singh Ashvini Josh In this essay, I analyze how gendered patrilineal systems manifest in selected works of both Mulk Raj Anand and Amitav Ghosh by investigating how pressures related to caste and class structures, domestic authority, colonialism/nationalism, migration, and ecological instability have impacted women's lives. I examine how some of the women in Anand's works exist within prominent structures of social realism (ex: discriminative household experiences; caste-based physical characteristics; plantation economies; patriarchal erotic orders) while the women in Ghosh's novels are defined more broadly within historical trajectories (Partition memory; Burmese exile; indentured servitude; opium dependency; Sundarbans and Transnational Displacement). Applying feminist literary criticism, post-colonial feminism, and intersectionality, I argue that the characterizations of patriarchy in both authors demonstrate that patriarchy is not a singular problem of the family; it operates as an interrelated network of social arrangements. I discuss Anand's The Old Woman and The Cow; Two Leaves and a Bud; Coolie; The Private Life of an Indian Prince; and other references to Untouchable, as well as Ghosh's The Shadow Lines; The Glass Palace; The Sea of Poppies; The Hungry Tide; and additional works in the Ibis Trilogy. Anand operates within an urgent, realistic and reformist mode whereas Ghosh mainly utilises historical, polyphonic and sometimes obscure modes; both writers, however, demonstrate how women’s bodies, voices, work and memories have ultimately become arenas in which power is contested between men and women. This paper also offers some critical caution about the use of male authors to represent female experience, i.e. male authors’ representations of sympathy for females are not automatically synonymous with feminist representations; however, the works discussed in this paper are important because they render visible the patriarchal system not as a counter to private power; rather they portray patriarchy as a public, social, historical system that is resisted by women through many different and sometimes accompanied with some degree of difficulty.