Feminism is a heterogeneous, multifaceted term. Intricately linked with social, cultural, political and even historical aspects, this challenging theory is both problematic and elusive. Together with post-colonialism and post-modernism, feminism opens up new frontiers of knowledge in the field of literary theory and criticism. The emergence of several diversified forms of feminism`Liberal' feminism, `Marxist' and `Socialist' feminisms, `Radical' feminism, `Liberal' feminism, `French' feminism, `Black' feminism and `Womanism', `Multiracial' feminism, `Individualist' feminism, `Post-structural' and `Post-modern' feminism, `Ecofeminism', etc.encompasses so many aspects, that even the use of the term in a plural sense fails to do justice. Its use as a plural is rather a conceptual approachstill ambivalent and rather slippery.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term `feminism' was first coined by the French dramatist Alexander Dumas, in 1872. However, it originated as a developed concept only after the publication of Simone de Beauvoir's magnum opus, The Second Sex, in 1949, and gained impetus in the 1960s. When Beauvoir wrote, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature " (Beauvoir, 1997, p. 295), she started a debate that would boost feminist thinking for the next 50 years or more. Even earlier, the problem of inequality between the sexes was highlighted by Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) and by Olive Schreiner in Women and Labour (1911). While Virginia Woolf examined the problems of women writers in her radical essay "A Room of One's Own" (1929), in Women and Fiction, published in the same year as "A Room of One's Own", she speculated on the `new colors and shadows' in women's writing, after English women became voters, wage earners and responsible citizens. Thus, there was a growing awareness of women's inequality and subjugation. But, it would be wrong to conclude that only women's writing voiced these protests. As early as 1869, Mill wrote about the problems of women's inequality in society, and pointed out: "What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thingthe result of forced repression in some directions ..." (Mill, 1970, p. 22). Since then, `feminism' has been interpreted in numerous shades of meaning, reminding us of the classical onion peel image. While the following section attempts to discuss its theoretical aspects, along with a brief analysis of the history of its development, the section after deals with contextualizing feminism in the Indian social background.

`Feminism' is not a homogeneous, singular concept, but is rather a multifaceted, multidimensional and diverse grouping of heterogeneous ideas that are often contradictory to each other, and hence, pose a problem in rendering a unitary definition of this challenging theory. But, however diverse the ideas may be, all are concerned with women's inferior position in society and the discrimination faced by them because of the social, economic, political or cultural order. In an attempt to categorize the evolution of feminism through different phases, critics have talked about the emergence of feminist movements at different periods, as a series of `waves'. Thus first-wave feminism is used to refer to the movement which emerged in the late 9^th century and the early 20^th century, more concerned with gaining equal rights for women, particularly the right of suffrage. Jane Addam, Sojourner Truth, Frances Wright, and Virginia Woolf were some of the well-known feminists who belonged to this first wave.

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