FIFTH WALL - No mad women in the attic : Uddipana Goswami

It has been a while since Virginia Woolf had to exhort women writers to "kill the aesthetic ideal through which they themselves have been 'killed' into art": in other words, to challenge the ‘good’ woman-‘bad’ woman, monster-angel dichotomy which characterises so much of the literature about and by women. Most women writers of the Northeast have been challenging patriarchal presumptions and literary stereotypes. They have been consciously or unconsciously trying to find a rightful place for themselves and their kind in the region’s narratives as ‘real’ subjects.

Often, breaking the stereotype has involved challenging the legend of women’s emancipation in the region – the myth perpetuated by those who point towards the many matrilineal traditions here, or the engagement of women in commercial activities, or their vocal participation in political protests. Sure, their lot has been much better than that of their sisters in ‘mainland’ India who were forced into purdah. But they do often question the loopholes in the traditional systems which uphold the superiority of their men in indirect ways, and often by proxy. There are many all-women marketplaces all over the Northeast, where one can see the woman as the family bread-earner, often the only one in the household. How many of them however, go back home after a grueling day at the market, selling their wares, to find their husbands drunk and children unfed? And if our women were indeed so politically empowered, why do we not find more of them representing us in legislative and parliamentary bodies?

8 March is International Women’s Day. This issue of NELit review is therefore dedicated to the women writers of the Northeast. We review a novel that exposes women’s empowerment in the Northeast as a myth while celebrating the courage of those who have challenged repressive traditions. Our Frontispiece takes a close look at the women who are writing the Northeast today and creating a niche for themselves in the publishing world. They are writing from their real, felt experiences while at the same time, drawing from their roots in the region. This is what gives their voices the power.

This is the power that should also enable them to resist being typecast as the ‘wild tribals’ or the ‘drug abusers and easy lays’. Aruni Kashyap – in Other Words – finds that this is how the women of the region are perceived on the ‘mainland’. Just as African women writers like Chimamanda Adichie are engaged in countering their ‘black’ image, our women writers should also be able to break free. There should be no madwomen in our attics, locked away and monsterised.