Feminism in the Indian context is a by-product of the Western liberalism in general and feminist thought in particular. The indigenous contributing factors have been the legacy of equality of sexes inherited from the freedom struggle, constitutional rights of women, spread of education and the consequent new awareness among women. In literary terms it precipitates in a search for identity and a quest for the definition of the self. The feminist perspective on literature-creative or critical- whether in the third world country or elsewhere, has had to confront issues of similar persuasion: male chauvinism, sexist bias, psychological and male but also the female sections of society, the utter disregard for the female’s psychological, cultural, familial and spiritual quests.

The women writers plead for a balance, harmonious man-woman relationship in which two sexes are viewed as complementary and not as a battle of sexes or a winning or losing game. Women writers, willingly or unwillingly, are drawn into an exploration of the forces which shape the experience of woman. Unavoidably conscious of women’s marginalization in a society where males formulate the rules of living, they cannot deny or ignore the forces working towards women’s subjugation. Women writers, even those not armed with a polemical feminist ideology are generally informed by a feminist consciousness of the repressed status of women. Anglo-American liberal feminists focused on the denial of equality in political and legal rights. Marxist and socialist feminists in the West, as in the Third World, have explored the problem from the perspective of class oppression and male control over the systems of production. Underlying these two major angles of analysis, as well as the many more subsidiary strands of feminism which have emerged, is the commonality of and ubiquitous male control over every aspect of a woman’s existence- her productive and productive powers, her sexuality and morality, her mobility and her political, legal, social, economic rights.