Breaking the Bonds: Women in Anita Nair’s Novels

Abstract

The aim is to study the sociocultural sufferings and the dilemma of Anita Nair's protagonists who find themselves tattered between social conventions and traditions and their inordinate urge to transgress these boundaries and fulfill their desires. In The Better Man (2000) Nair talks about quest for identity and self realization and portrays women’s aspiration for freedom in marital life through the characters of Paru Kutty ,Anjana and Valsala. Akhila the main protagonist in Ladies Coupe (2002) gives up the conflicts within her by realizing her potentiality and proceeds towards a contended life.Similarly,in Mistress (2003), Nair presents a perplexed married woman named Radha who oscillates between her traditional values and the transferring trends of the modern society.Meera in Lessons in Forgetting (2010) also struggles with the social pressure around her,being abandoned by her husband and by the society at large.The research attempts to bring out how women are subjugated by traditions in a patriarchal society and how they liberate themselves by challenging and transgressing the boundaries .