Narayans Views on Womens education

R.K. Narayan presents and examines various themes in his novels like the place & woman in society, the disruptive influences of modernity, the status of a wife and a mother in society in flux, the crumbling of the joint family etc. the galaxy of women characters delineated in Narayan's novels reveals the marvellous creative sensibility of the author which operates with in a limited, specific segment of society i.e. the urban middle-class society of Malgudi. The variable, countless shades and colours of these women add richness and multitudinousness to the life of the inhabitants of small but ever-evolving town of Malgudi which comes in contact with changing social influences necessitated by the natural course of time and they don't remain women & limited area but belong to the whole global society. In Indian tradition the position of man has been considered superior to that of the woman. The woman was required to look after the household works and the children, the husband and the family members. She was confined within the house and not allowed to move outside. It was the man, the elder in the family who was the sole responsible authority in the house and looked after the property, finances and external matters of family. He reserved the rights to do anything as per his own desire and was not bound to accept the suggestions offered by the female members of the house. However, the elderly women were respected in the family and they had the right to see that the children in the family are properly looked after. Thus the status of men was higher than their counterparts – the female. The Hindu society was dominated by the male members. R.C. Majumdar says: The wife though subject to her husband, was the mistress of the household and had the authority over farm labourers and slaves. 1 In the later Vedic period too, it has been said that theoretically the wife was still accorded a very high position and she was only considered as a half and her husband completed her 2. It depicts that the society in the later Vedic period was dominated by the man and a woman had no identity without a male counterpart, and yet the society can not exist, can not function without women and Narayan depicts his female characters with a strong hand that Shanta Krishnaswamy underscores the universal importance of Narayan's female characters in these observations: Yet the woman in his fiction is a powerful vehicle for the exposition of the together with other minor characters. The woman here plays an important role, sometimes passively and at times, aggressively, in a believable network of family, religion and society leading to relatively normal codes of behavior and discourse and following recognized patterns of growth, courtship and transfer of power from one generation to another.

I was somehow obsessed with a philosophy of Woman as opposed to Man, her constant oppressor. This must have been an early testament of the "Women's Lib" movement. Man assigned her a secondary place and kept her there with such subtlety and cunning that she herself began to lose all notion of her independence, individuality, stature, and strength. A wife in an orthodox milieu of Indian society was an ideal victim of such circumstances. My novel [The Dark Room] dealt with her, with this philosophy broadly in the background.

is a true artist whose primary business as a writer of novel is to create an aesthetic longing into the heart of the readers rather than to teach or preach them. He is concerned neither with the exposure of the various drawbacks of society nor with highlighting the cause of the downtrodden and the havesnots, nor with the portrayal of spiritualism and inner conflicts; he, like a true artist, is content with only portraying the realistic picture of human behaviour, its various experiencessweet and sour, rough and sublime.

This paper makes an attempt to analyze the portrayal of woman characters in the writings of R. K. Narayan (1906 – 2001), Nayantara Shagal (1927) and Anita Desai (1937). Although Narayan was senior to Shagal and Desai in age, as a writer he was contemporary to Shagal and Desai and wrote many of his important pieces when Shagal and Desai were writing. These three litterateurs have written with special focus on women's causes but the portrayal of woman characters in their writings is conflicting and varies from person to person. While Shagal and Desai seem to have based their woman characters on their autobiographical experiences and imagined other women's condition like theirs, Narayan's portrayal of woman characters is found based on his objective observation of the matter-of-facts of the Indian women's social status. R. K. Narayan, Nayantara Shagal and Anita Desai have dealt, in their writings, with Indian women's problems and their efforts to be emancipated from patriarchal domination but the attitudes of their woman characters to their problems are conflicting. While Shagal's women are decisive, courageous and indifferent to the societal reactions and traditions, Desai's women are caught in a serious predicament: they are torn between the need for conformity to the age old tradition of India and the need for a separate existence for women. And Narayan's women move steadily from their age-old tradition defined subordinate position to a secular position where they are women but not heavily chained by patriarchal shackles. India's historical and sociological studies on women's condition of the writers' time show that Narayan's portrayal of women in his novels is, no doubt, fictionalized, but not imagined, rather based on his observation of the matter-of-facts of the prevalent condition of women in India's age-old tradition bound patriarchal society and Shagal and Desai, instead of reflecting the actual condition of women in their writings, have imagined the condition of women on the basis of their own personal social status. According to Asha Choubey, these woman writers moved toward an ideal situation and out of imagination created such women as were much unreal. The personal

Abstract This paper makes an attempt to look into the position of women in the pre and post independent India and shows how Narayan portrayed women characters in his novels written during this period. Born and brought up in a conservative, orthodox Hindu society Narayan saw the miserable plight of women locked up within the confines of houses. They were denied the rights of speech and choice and were treated as if they had been puppets, not human beings. Narayan chose his women characters from this male dominated orthodox society which had developed a completely male favoured ideological structure to keep women subordinate and subservient to men. But since Narayan wanted to bring about a change in the status of women, he did not portray all of his women characters as completely silent and blindly loyal to all old values of society indiscriminately. While the old women in his novels are loyal to the age old customs, the young ones question some practices. Against the male favoured ideological structure which bereft women of their freedom, individuality and strength, Narayan wanted to develop a different set of principles for women to emancipate them from the male servitude. This paper shows how his women deconstruct the culturally accepted beliefs about women’s position in India and reconstruct a new position to establish them as human beings in their own light.

R.K.Narayan is the most famous Indian novelist, his reputation as one of the founding figures of Indian writing in English. This paper attempts to explain the Educational view of R.K.Narayan as envisioned in his novels. He carried an untiring crusade against the memory based Indian System of Education throughout his writing career. Narayan was of the opinion that he resented anything that cramped the soul and believed in return to an educational system based not on rote learning but on story- telling, games for the young and appreciation of the Indian Culture. He did not fail to indicate his new notions of education. He aimed at an ideal education and it was possible only in a free atmosphere. Narayan was not only criticised the education system but also had given solution for the problem. He favoured the Gurugula System of learning, the age old system which gave opportunity to the students and teachers lived together, learning without books. It was sort of natural learning.

India is a land with deep-rooted value system. Exhibiting the trends associated with being a 'true Indian', R.K. Narayan, who is celebrated as a pure and simple writer, affirms the values of life and reposes faith in moral order in his novels. At the time when he started writing, Indian society underwent a sea change. Social reformers and intellectuals were busy in redefining the image of an Indian woman. Narayan also felt the pressure of the prevalent ideology and put forward the idea of what it is to be an ideal Indian woman and created a female character named Bharati in his novel Waiting for the Mahatma (1955). The novel is seen as a 'liberation fable' with Bharati as the central character who is viewed as a crocus of an ideal Indian woman. Her view of life is considered viable and authentic. Critics opine that Bharati, who is bold, self-dependent, and strong is an example of Narayan's true vision of women's empowerment. Although when her character is studied closely, it becomes apparent that Bharati internalizes myths and accepts roles that afford her no real choices and no real values. She perfectly resembles traditional women who possess neither agency nor any will of their own and spend their energy in the service of patriarchy. Even though Bharati radiates through the novel and finds a space, her attributes as a volitional force reserved for Sriram suggest that she is the subject of the novel who lacks artistic expression and self-assertion. Narayan, despite his awareness about the predicament of an Indian woman and his sincere effort to be judicious towards woman, fails to transcend the forces of history that allows him to look at women with stereotypical vision.

The attempt in this article would be to study the position of female characters in a couple of his well-known novels, viz. The Dark Room and Waiting for the Mahatma. This paper purports to look upon his women characters in the pre- and post- independence period of India and the socioeconomic background in which Narayan portrays his women personae. He shows their roles both in family and in social life. In his canon, the Indian women can be seen to go through a process of evolution.

Arpita Ghosh, 2013

Manju Kapur is one of the most renowned women writers of the contemporary era in India. She not only portrays the vulnerable condition of women in the Indian society but also delineates how they are being kept ignorant about education and emancipation. In her novels she gives vent to the gender discrimination still overtly prevalent in the field of education. A study of few feminist theorists has also been included to expose how patriarchy creates havoc in the lives of women by denying proper education. With the British invasion, Indian men became aware of women education but the enthusiasm died out half way. So even after 65 years of Indian Independence, the condition of women has barely changed. Manju Kapur‘s novels circumscribe the condition of women education since Independence till the present era.

A good education will drive someone has thought and insight. A woman should have a good education, as with educated he can set the management of his life and his family. Women also have equal rights with men, namely to be a leader. Behind it all, a woman should have a good education in social relations. Women have three roles in life: 1. Women as a wife 2. Woman as a mother of 3. Women as a woman's career. Not all women in performing three functions in one time. It takes a good education through three female perspective. Education is the most important part in education and is a necessity for every human being including women. And this research is more directed to the psychology of education. Interpersonal communication is the most important part in determining the outcome. Keywords: Educational, Perspective, Woman.