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According to the book under review, "Women and self,
proposes a feminist perspective for interpreting the literary
texts of writers who profess no overt feminist aim. It examines
how the novelists tap their autobiographical ‘self’ through
their protagonists and fictionalise the process of the emerging
empowerment within women, through their ability for reviewing
self."
These chapters
have offered a close, textual study of selected novels by Rhys.
Pym and Brookner, preceded by an analysis of their other
fiction. The aim has been to examine the self-appraisal of these
novelists who tap their autobiographical ‘self’ through
their female protagonists and bring into focus, the social
construction of femininity in the patriarchal set-up.
Women-centered
novels, written by Rhys, Pym and Brookner are bound by similar
thematic patterns. The dilemma of the centrality yet inadequacy
of heterosexual relations for the female protagonists,
loneliness and brooding self-exploration, are some of the common
themes running across their fiction. There is no idealising or
sentimentalising of the female in their novels. However, in the
patriarchal social structure, the woman is accorded a secondary
status. She is the ‘other’ that confirms the subjectivity of
the male but is excluded from the subject position, the
importance of these women writers lies initially in delving
within their self, to formulate the ‘female self’ as a
subject in its own right.
When their
novels are studied in juxtaposition, as it is done in the
present book, the fiction of these writers reveals the variety
of artistic response in dealing with similar concerns, which
recur and coalesce as thematic patterns in their novels.
Romantic
yearning, unrequited love, loneliness and self-exploration are
dealt with comic resignation by Pym. Rhys deals with the issues
with tragic emotional intensity by Rhys and an unflinchingly
clear-eyed, tragicomic vision by Brookner.
The fiction of
these women writers implicity hints at the requirement for
fostering mutuality and giving primacy to the values of loving
and caring, which are generally associated with women and
regarded as secondary in patriarchal contexts. There is no
outright condemnation of social inequities in their fiction but
it’s "potentially radical aspect" is contained
within its dimension of self-exploration.
A prominent
strain in the novels of these women writers is the
autobiographical ‘self’. Their fiction is not
autobiographical in the sense of simply describing their entire
lives but incorporates the woman writer’s scrutiny of the ‘feminine
self’.
It illumines
the frustrations, conflicts and contradictions faced by the
women protagonists, because of the internationalisation of
certain social prescriptions for ‘feminine’ behaviour. The
book examines how the analysis of the self emerges from the
protagonists’ thought process as well as from the author’s
bid for aesthetic control, through her wry ironic voice with its
implicit critique of aspects of the self and of the society.
The writer proposes a feminist
perspective for interpreting the fiction of these writers, who
have not consciously formulated a feminist commitment, without
making exceptionally large claims. The analysis centres around
how writers mirror the process of emerging empowerment of women,
through their growing awareness and ability for appraising and
re-visioning the concept of personal identity. The book is a
contribution in the area of women’s writing and women studies.
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