Friendships Beyond Class: Female Desire in The End of Innocence and Sister of My Heart

Abstract

In India, the focus on gender studies had perhaps begun with the emergence of the 'women's question' in the late nineteenth century colonial society, and although Partha Chatterjee claims that the nationalists had successfully resolved the women's question,
most feminists would not agree with the idea. If at all, it was probably the beginning of feminism in undivided India, and the issues on gender slowly began to surface, with scholars like Chandra Talpade Mohanty carving out a separate identity for the nonwestern woman devoid of the all-encompassing and homogenous discourse of Western feminism. The individual and diverse experiences of South Asian women were recorded in the literature written by women in India and in Pakistan, and although the two nations have gone their separate ways after the Partition, socially and economically, the cultural roots of these two countries are undoubtedly intertwined through a shared language, class system, and most importantly, their attitude towards women. In my
paper, I would examine how the women of these two countries experience and handle patriarchy, and whether they are able to put up a successful resistance against it.