Sacrifice of Irawaddy in Kamala Markandaya’s ‘Nectar in a Sieve’

Abstract

The Feminism in India was flourished in the mid-nineteenth century. Unlike the Western feminist movement, Indias movement was initiated by men, and later joined by women. The efforts of these men included abolishing sati, abolishing child marriage, abolishing the disfiguring of widows, promoting womens education, obtaining legal rights for women to own property, and requiring the law to acknowledge womens status by granting them basic rights in matters such as adoption. Women writers have examined a variety of themes in their novels such as close friendship, strong emotional and spiritual bonds among sisters and intense nurturing and psychologically co-dependent relationships between mothers and daughters, womens oppression and assertion of self. Among those writers Kamala Markandaya enjoys a remarkable position. Her novels are fully reflective of the awakened feminine sensibility. She is a keen observer of life in villages and small towns. Rural customs are responsible for the miseries of the characters like Irawaddy in Nectar in a Sieve. Irawaddy is a victim of hunger, starvation and human degradation. She represents those fallen women who are not responsible for their tragedies but it is the society which gives miseries to them. She is a symbol of sacrifice and love.