Germination of New woman in the Fictions of Indira Goswami: A Study of the characters of Giribala and Saudamini

Angel in the house’, ‘second sex’ is the designation given to the woman by the phallocentric society which determines their gender roles. Women are the home makers and the men are the bread earners. They are expected to be submissive and docile. But in the late nineteenth century, transgressing the traditional norms and gender roles laid by the patriarchal society, the woman begins penetrates into a new world with new roles. Such a woman who challenges the traditional roles of ‘the angel in the house’ is termed as new woman, in literature. This paper is an attempt to focus on the germination of new-woman in the fictions of Indira Goswami, on the basis of the study of the two characters?Giribala and Saudamini of “the Moth-Eaten Howdah of a Tusker” and “the Blue-Necked God”, respectively. Non-conforming the conventional construct, Goswami’s pen has given birth to two radical characters, Giribala, and Saudamini who flouts the long-established norms laid down in the Assamese culture for the widows. Goswami has projected the plights of the marginalized widows ‘encased in the sattra’ and in the holy city, Vrindavan, and the catastrophe of their widowhood, in her celebrated novels “The Moth-Eaten Howdah of a Tusker” and “the Blue-Necked God”.