NO COUNTRY FOR WOMEN: AN APPRAISAL OF MUNSHI PREMCHAND’S SEVASADAN AND NIRMALA

Needless to say, society sets norms and rules which its members have to adhere to. It has also set up mechanisms to deal with the anomalies that may potentially disrupt the system. Despite all the scientific and technological advancements, we survive in such a society where the needle of the watch decides the character and morality of a female. The paper attempts to vouchsafe the phases as well as the faces of a wretched woman's entity through the novels Sevasadan and Nirmala by Munshi Premchand. The novels can be looked at not as an individual story but a piece of story expounding the extreme sorry state of multitudes of women. A comparative exegesis of two novels which represent the two facets of women opens an avenue to closely look at the tragic issues of dowry system, mismatched marriage, prostitution and its after-effects. The intended study affirms the fact that both the heroines of the concerned novels are driven to their ordained plight due to the compulsions of the society and not out of individual choice.