INFEASIBLE DESIRES OF WOMEN IN GIRISH KARNAD’S SELECTED PLAYS

Abstract

Feminism is used to describe political, cultural or economic movement aimed at establishing equal rights and legal protection for women. French philosopher Charles Fourier is credited with having originated the word in 1837. Since then, this term has been extensively used to boost the socio cultural movement that aims at the freedom of women from male domination in the patriarchal society. It highlights various hidden and oppressive aspects of man-woman relationship. Indian cultural traditions are male dominated, hardly giving any scope to women to exercise their fulfillment of desires and development of identity which they claim as of their own. There are two areas of study as far as woman writing is concerned- one is how women writers describe the male-dominated society in their literary works, and what kind of revelation they make about their own role and the second is to study the way of their expression. In other words, one is to study their content and the other is to their style and form in their works. Writers like Mary Wollstoncraft in A Vindication of Rights of Women (1792), authors like J.S Mill in The Subjection of Women (1869) and Friedrich Engels in The Origin of the Family (1884) wrote of the need to rethink the of women and social oppression against them