The body is the entity which has determined the status of women in society and which
must be reclaimed and rediscovered if that status is to be modified. In the era of sexual
liberation, feminists have brought the body to the forefront in their analyses of power
relations under patriarchy. The body has become a political issue as feminists struggle to
gain control over their fertility and sexuality. The feminists of the autonomous women’s
movement have identified the centrality of women’s bodies and recognized patriarchy
and capitalism and the institutions like State, family and marriage as the prime sites of
control. Conceptualization of sexuality as an essential aspect of one’s identity and selfhood,
shaped by social and cultural contexts, has begun to emerge in research studies (Bharat,
2003). It has also been argued that, “It was only with the growing feminist concern with
the rights of women to their lives and bodies that sexuality has gained a more enduring
prominence” (John and Nair, 1999).
Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics has given a call to women writers, “to invent both a
new poetics and a new politics, based on women’s reclaiming what had always been
theirs but had been usurped from them: control over their bodies and a voice with which
to speak about it” (p. 119). Women narratives in almost all Indian languages have traversed
a long distance, from the tradition-bound ethos of chastity and fidelity to a new sexual
ideology, recast gender roles and a defiance of the models of prescribed social behavior.
Contemporary women novelists often speak of premarital and extramarital relationships,
sexual experience, adultery, and even of promiscuity, without the conflicts of patriarchal
moral principles. The novel In the Country of Deceit by Shashi Deshpande is a bold and
small step in opening up a social and linguistic space for the discussion and exploration of
female bodies and sexualities at a time when serious interest in the complexity of female
sexuality is emerging. She gives verbal expression to women’s physical desires and treats
sex as a natural primal instinct. She considers female physical urges and libidinal needs as
potent as that of male. Deshpande’s rebellion is not only against conventional sexual
restrictions that are central to the patriarchal society but also against female archetypes
and traditional narratives of domestic virtue. The sympathetic portrayal of premarital sex
shows that women are becoming more conscious of their sexual needs and their fulfillment.
The advance lies not only in characters enjoying greater freedom but in fairly close depiction
of sex in the novel. The protagonist in the novel is presented as a woman of new generation
who desires purely personal gratification—sexual and psychological. Critics see this
departure variously as quest for autonomy, individuality, feminine freedom, or a woman’s
need for a new space, a new cosmos. |
