Sarah Grand

   Sarah Grand is not that much familiar writer, we can someway call her an unknown author. Her education was very sporadic, yet she managed with perseverance to make a career for herself as an activist and writer. She used her experience of suffocation in marriage and the joy of consequent liberation in her fictional depictions of pre- suffrage women with few political rights and options, trapped in oppressive marriages.

    She was expelled from her school because of organizing groups that supported Josephine Butler's protest against the Contagious Disease Act, which persecuted prostitutes as infected women, as the sole cause of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, subjecting them to indignities such as inspection of their genitals and enclosure in locked hospital wards.

     Her later works would have a more sympathetic stance to males, such as "Babs the Impossible" in which the single woman would feel resurgence in their worth encouraged by an idealistic self made man.

Antoinette in 'Wide Sargasso Sea'

 The character of Antoinette in 'Wide Sargasso Sea' by Jean Rhys is a modified form of Bertha Mason in 'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte. Antoinette's story is certainly sad. But it is also complicated and puzzling.She said in the novel that the 'Nature is better than people' which indicates her brutal honesty with Rochester. She knows that her husband views her as inferior because she is a white Creole woman. Racism is ugly and she is going to call him out on it.

We definitely feel sorry about all the stuff that happened to her. She has got a vivid dream llife, so vivid in fact that it seeps into the reality she lives in. She is absolutely candid about the effect that everything that's happened in her life has had on her. She lost her entire family, watching her mother get molested by her caretaker, listening to Rochester have sex with Amelie in the next room and after all getting locked up in an attic in a foreign country.

Antoinette is constantly questioning who she is, but, by the end of the novel, she really seems to forget who she is. Antoinette is a woman representative of suppression by the patriarchal society.

Bertha Mason in 'Jane Eyre'

'Jane Eyre' (1847), the novel of Charlotte Bronte, is one of the most iconic love stories of all time. It is mainly about the love between Mr.Rochester and Jane Eyre. But, there is another character who has been considered as the ' mad woman in the attic'- Bertha Mason; the first wife of Mr.Rochester.

Bertha is the great tragedy of Rochester's life. She is the catalyst that proves Rochester's ultimate redemption and Jane's moral virtue. Bertha has considered as the image of terror, sickness and malice. The story is picturising Bertha Mason as an image of horror and as a tragic figure. She is considered as one of the most controversial characters of all time.

In Victorian era, mental illness was taken as a token of a familial taint, a sort of curse on the bloodline. Bertha Mason's madness is a sign of an inward corruption, a cancer that has eaten through her body, mind, spirit and bloodline.

The complete figure of Bertha as a tragedy has changed in Jean Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea". Bertha Mason in the twentieth century has earned her own redemption of sorts, particularly following in this novel. It is widely considered the first postcolonial novel. The novel presents a far more sympathetic and infinitely more human image of Rochester's wife, who was, according to the novel, born Antoinette Cosway on the island of Jamaica. Through this novel, the character of Bertha Mason as a tragedy got salvation.

Mrinal Pande's "Girls" _ Lali's view on her daughter

     I don't know why this girl is disobedient always. Now I am not in a condition to quarrel with her. My second daughter is always mischievous. She even don't consider that her mother is pregnant. It may be a boy this time, after my three daughters!
       Yesterday I noticed that when my mother finished her story telling, my daughter wanted to sleep with her. She like my mother's soft and warm body and her quilt smells of cardamom and cloves. And my mother always keep a torch under her pillow. So that, when the lights are off, toes will not knock against anything. Unfortunately, Mom refused to give space to lie with her and allowed Hari to be there. Anyway, I think my elder daughter have angry with her due to this incident.
        Today, Ashtami day, with a tray of crimson powder Mom calls every girls. There, halwa and puris, Mom prepared all those to worship Devi on Ashtami day. Room is filled with the smell of those offerings. Where is my naughty daughter when my Mom is putting the tikka on girl's foreheads. There she is! Away from all these. She says herself as a railway engine in between these aarti. My brother's son calling her 'engine'.
        Oh God! Why my daughter is like this. Disobedient. I will make an engine out of you this very minute. My neighbor is trying to quench my rage and holding my clenched fist. She signaled my daughter to be obedient. Neighbor told me not to hit a Kanyakumari in Ashtami day. It is a sin.
      My sister told my daughter to take the Prasad from my mother. My daughter's voice breaks into a sob and she said why we all pretend to worship the girls when we people don't love them. She is screaming while saying that she don't want to be a goddess and she want nothing.
       Everyone of us are standing with a wonder. She is so furious with herself that she want to swallow the burning camphor to choke her treacherous throat. I am sure, she is diverting from the traditional customs and concepts stamped on women. She is trying to escape from the net of patriarchy.

"A Room of One's Own" - Virginia Woolf

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write a fiction"-Virginia Woolf

      "A Room of One's Own" is a hint to the analysis of feminist literature. It clearly portrays the unequal treatment given to women seeking education and alternatives to marriage and motherhood. She chooses to look into the lives of English women during the Elizabethan period- an era of surpassing literary accomplishment, but only among men.

      Through this book, Virginia Woolf is trying to say how women were lived in that period. The very title itself indicates that a women must have a room of her own if she wants to write. I don't know, from where this difference has originated- that the male people are superior than the female.Women were considered as the inferior citizen. There were two entirely different privileges created for men and women.

         Even in the present society, we can see the examples which indicates that women are the creatures to suffer everything. Everyone looks harshly towards women when they committed an adultery, but men is safe there. We cannot see a place without patriarchy. Everywhere is male dominated. There is nothing that a woman cannot do and a man can. Women are more able than men. They can give birth to children. And the truth is that men in that period used women only for making food and giving birth to children.

      Women will not achieve progress if she don't get education. The threats and exploitations which women were faced is clearly mentioned in this book. Viginia even created an imaginary sister of Shakespeare - Judith. Woolf listed some strong characters of William Shakespeare like Antigone, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Cressida etc. Shakespeare could write such powerful characters even though he couldn't see them alive. Irony is that those female characters were acted by the male actors.

     Society didn't allow women to going out like men. She had some invisible chains which controls her limits. The main intention of writing this book is to seek why the women who were lived in that period with a lot of art in their heart could not write. Shakespeare is a great man. From his works we got a lot of powerful women characters. Why not from a woman! But, there were some women who could not bury their art in their mind. Some of them were came in the male names, like George Eliot.

      The very foolish thing is that there is no clear reason for the question why women are poorer than men. It is because of this and that. A brilliant woman got a place in the society even after the place of a worse man. She is inferior than a fool man.

     When Woolf mentioned about the imaginary sister of Shakespeare, we could see that the sister too had no right to read and write. Virginia created a sad ending on Judith's life and trying to say that if a woman went out, she may be raped by someone. Hence, she become alone in the society and committing suicide. 

     Through out the book, we can see that Woolf continues her investigation on women writers. She is sure that there will not be a book which is written by a woman. But, Virginia  still searching for that. She had an immense belief on the ability of women in arts and literature. That is why she rose her voice for women.
          "Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size".

        ".....who shall measure the heat and violence of a poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?"