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Indian women novelists hitherto have been projecting the Indian traditional image of
women. Later on, the thrust was on their sense of frustration and alienation, because
of conflicting forces acting on them in the society exposed to the West. The plight of the working women was still worse, aggravated by her problems of marital adjustment and quest for identity. But the later women novelists like Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande and Nayantara Sahgal delved deep into the roots of women’s problems, gave fuller treatment to it and concentrated on the plight and problems of urban educated women.
Nayantara Sahgal occupies a prominent place in the history of Indian-English novel as a novelist with more than three decades of literary career. Sahgal as a committed writer takes special care to keep track of the stream of national consciousness.
With eight novels to her credit, she personally believes in the power of pen. In all her novels, she emphasizes the value of freedom so essential to the inner and outer development of an individual entrapped in trying situations but yet trying to be honest to herself. And she will emerge victorious when she is morally upright and takes a revolutionary stand.
In her novels, she takes to task even ministers, businessmen, industrialists and academicians, engrossed in their activities.
Sahgal’s first five novels, A Time To Be Happy (1956), This Time of Morning (1965), Storm in Chandigarh (1969), The Day in Shadow (1971) and A Situation in New Delhi (1977), are situational, while the latter three, Rich Like Us (1985), Plans for Departure (1987) and Mistaken Identity (1988), are mainly character-oriented. These characters present the emancipated woman, one who musters adequate courage to walk out of her suffocating and inhuman circumstances. She is the liberated woman who is virtuous, morally upright, and self-respecting, though she appears to deviate from age-old tradition.
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