A Gynocritical Reading of Nalini Jameela‘’s The Autobiography of a Sex Worker and Amen: The Autobiography of a Nun by Sister Jesme

Abstract

Women history has been overlooked while writing the canon. It is in recent times that the experience of a woman is given importance to chart the tradition of women’s writing. Elaine Showalter coined the term Gynocriticism in her essay “Toward a Feminist Poetics.” It refers to a criticism that constructs “a female framework for the analysis of women’s literature, to develop new models based on the study of female experience, rather than to adapt male models and theories”. Gynocriticism examines the female struggle for identity and the social construct of gender. It is the study of not only the female as a gender status but also the ‘internalized consciousness’ of the female.