The Voice of Marginalized Women in Indu Sundaresan’s The Twentieth Wife

Abstract

New Historicism includes literature, ethnography, anthropology, art, history, and other disciplines. New Historical novelists discern the historical texts through cultural, economic, artistic, religious, political, and social forces. The article concern about Indu Sundaresan’s novels through a feminist optic. In the light of feminist historiography, an in-depth study has been made to explore how Sundaresan has tried to bridge the gap of women’s roles in her novels of historical fiction. The novels chosen for analysis are, namely, The Twentieth Wife (2012), The Feast of Roses (2012), Shadow Princess (2010), The Splendor of Silence (2007), and The Mountain of Light (2013). By following the strategy of an interdisciplinary approach that expands the scope of feminist inquiry in historical contexts. This study tries to establish a link between the feminist politics of representation and the genre of historical fiction by highlighting Sundaresan’s remake version of the tradition that challenges the conventional modes of Indian historiography. Indu Sundaresan’s historical discourses provide the history of the Mughal Empire as a lived experience to the readers. The article explores the author’s ambition to give Illumination of the feminist battle with the help of New historical perspectives in the novel The Twentieth Wife.