• Satya Nath Pegu

With the rise of various socio-political turmoil, women predicament also evolves down the ages. Throughout the history, women are marginalized and oppressed by the patriarchal ideology. They are often regarded as an inferior being in which they are deprived of their rights. They have been socially, politically and economically neglected. The reasons behind these are the rigid conventions of tradition, custom, culture, religious beliefs and practices. However, in the twentieth century with the deep impact of education, technology and modernization, women are able to recognize the difference that has been the construction of male chauvinism. Women’s issues are represented through their writings and they at present oppose the male dominated literature which ignores women’s potentialities. Keeping in this mind, in the contemporary period, women writers critically respond to the binary opposition of ‘self’ and ‘other’, and represents women issues through distinct themes and techniques. Indira Goswami’s, The Moth-Eaten Howdah of a Tusker (2004) highlights the discrimination of widows and unmarried women in the ‘sattra’, a vaishnavite monastery in Assam. Women are victimized with the strict patriarchal, religion and social norms. Set in the post-independence period, it also presents the transition of socio-political set up during the period. Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits (1982) portrays the traumatized experiences of del Valle-Trueba women against the patriarchal tyranny of men. In the novel, Allende bring out the resistance of women in reconstructing their history and identity during the boom period of 1960s and 1970s. The focus of the paper is the comparative analysis of the two writers.

Discrimination, Marginalization, Patriarchal, Self and Other

"Women as ‘Other’ in Indira Goswami’s The Moth-Eaten Howdah of The Tusker and Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 2, page no.496-501, February-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1902F47.pdf

"Women as ‘Other’ in Indira Goswami’s The Moth-Eaten Howdah of The Tusker and Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 2, page no. pp496-501, February-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1902F47.pdf