Schizophrenic experience in the selected works of contemporary Indian women poets

Abstract

Post-independence literature written by Indian women expresses their desire for freedom and self-assertion. There is a remarkable shift in their poetry from eulogizing and spiritualizing love to a more mundane acceptance of sexuality and the physical needs of women. The poetry written by them has broken the boundaries of tradition while describing the conflict between the old and the new. The entrenched patriarchal structures, however, still continue to control and restrict the lives of women in one way or the other. Frustrations and tensions arise in the minds of women because of the discrepancy between the way they want to behave and the way they are made to behave. Contemporary poetry depicts this everlasting conflict between the stereotyped roles and the promise of authentic selfhood which women s new existence can provide to them. Side by side there is the role of media which projects ideal women as virtuous, chaste, submissive, homely and devoted to their husband and family and, hence, becomes responsible for the never-ending debate in the minds of women between their viriloid and feminine tendencies. Schizophrenia, a serious brain disease, a state of mental impairment results in frustration and depression. A person loses all and pleasure in life. He may feel frightened, anxious, confused or withdrawn. His bizarre behaviour takes him away from active social life. His delusions and hallucinations sometimes lead him to committing suicide. And the same is the case with most of the contemporary Indian women poets. The aim of the present study is to explore this tendency as reflected in the selected works of some contemporary Indo-Anglian women poets, such as Mamta Kalia, Gauri Deshpande, Suniti Namjoshi, Lalitha Venkateswaran, Eunice de Souza, Sunita Jain and Debjani Chatterjee.