Reflecting on the Realities of Plights of Women in Contemporary Society in Select Novels of Ashapurna Devi

Ashapurna Devi is one of the pioneers of engineering realistic narratives based on contemporary society. Her depiction of the roles and responsibilities of women in traditional Bengali family bears testimony of truth. Although women have suffered a lot, finally they come out victorious owing to their manifestations of knowledge. In this light, the present paper focuses on the gender-based violence reflected in the well-known novels of Ashapurna. It includes her magnum opus, Subarnalata which tells a story of Satyabati who was given away in marriage at the age of eight to maintain the social norms, and was kept under strict surveillance of Brahmanical regulations. The novel narrates Satyabati's struggle to fight against family control, mental violence of the polygamy system, and social prejudices in patriarchal society. Her Bakul Katha addresses the oppression of women in Bengali society. A sequel to the spirited, oppressed Subarnalata’s story, Bakul Katha, her daughter’s story is also a tale about women and the diverse manifestations of their emotions as they express their free wills as women. Bakul finds herself in a society where values are diluted due to the overexposure to western ethos. Distant Window is about a society where they are expected to live up to stereotypes, it depicts the tale of female characters who struggle to discover their identity and meaning. The book examines their hopes and goals as well as the difficulties they have adjusting to these expectations in a world that is always changing. The novels thus present the tenets of women empowerment, social conventions, self-discovery, and the battle to identify one's individuality in the face of conventional expectations.

Keywords: gender-based violence, mental violence, diverse manifestations, self-discovery, individuality