Form and Narrative Strategy

Abstract

Feminist literary theory has been controversial, not least because there have been a number of scholars (most notably Rita Felski) who have argued that there is no apparent link between feminist politics and the formal aspects of women’s writing, and that it is content alone which determines the ‘feminist’ quality of any particular text. Whether or not this contention is true, meaning is of course created through form, so any examination of the expression of feminist concerns in literary texts has to include an analysis of narrative technique. This chapter provides such an analysis, and the introductory section briefly surveys the relevant debates in feminist literary theory, with special attention to the question of their applicability to the novels of Indian women writing in English.