oes for Delhi for the purpose of business. As she comes from Ayodhaya, she discovers an unexpected thing from her husband’s suitcase that is a condom. Astha suspects that her husband is in now another relationship. Their marital relationship now turns to a small boat sinking on the faithless ocean bit by bit.
During her social activities Astha meets with Pipeelika for the first time. Astha seeks for a real company who will touch her soul not her body. Astha falls in love with Pipeelika and develops a lesbian relationship. Pipeelika from her part, is a young widow and an outsider from society. Her mother wants to marry her again but she refuses for her bitter experiences for marrying a Muslim who had a relation with Reshana Singh, a classical singer in Street Theatre Group. Both Astha and Pipee have hatred for males and thus they are engaged in a same sex relationship.
One day Astha discovers Hemant’s extra-marital relation but he ignores. She discovers that her relationship with Hemant is just a sexual slavery. At last, Astha finds comfort in Pipeelika’s arms. She wants to teach her husband and makes a sweet protest by building a lesbian relationship. In the meantime, Pipee goes to US for a Ph. D. degree. Pipee urges Astha to mail her. Her departure from Astha’s life was too painful. Finally, Astha comes back to her marital relationship with a heavy heart.
In Indian patriarchy, marriages are imposed on girls. The girls are not allowed to make love or marry a man of their choice. Family is more important to women than to men. The institution of marriage offers to both the agent protection and social acceptability and so majority of women respect this institution. Marriage is her ultimate destiny which implies subordination to man. Females are the objects of family reputation and marriage is a more concerned issue than female education. To quote Kapur: “Astha was brought up properly, as befits a woman, with large supplements of fear.” (Kapur: 01) Marriage is the medium of female exploitation in Indian patriarchy. Traditionally, it is taken for granted that a girl’s duty is to get married, look after her husband, produce children for the sake of her family and take care of them; while all the creative works should be done by man. It is totally inhuman from the part of society to deprive a girl of her inborn right to survive and fulfill her needs. As Simon de Beauvoir says: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine. Only the intervention of someone else can establish an individual as an ‘other.’” ( Beauvoir, 1949)
The exploitation of women in the name of religion and social prestige is going to be reported by the present paper. Like, Anita Desai’s Fire on the Mountain (2001), Manju Kapur’s A Married Woman (2002) makes a sweet protest against the social norms and customs through the sufferings and suffocations of the Indian Post-colonial women. Manju Kapur is in the notion that by depriving womanhood, the whole humanity is depriving itself as it is constituted of both male and female who are the two wheels of the same chariot and for the defect of the one other lags behind. The Indian patriarchal society is the storeroom of numerous obstacles that are designed for women. In A Married Woman (2002), social injustice against each and every woman is a common scene which is “naturalized” with the idea of “fatalism”, meaning that females are fated to do so or to suffer or bear. The social barricades in A Married Woman (2002) will be explored here.
In Third world family, household duties and responsibilities are handled on the shoulder of a woman. She has no escape from household chores even if she is an educated-employed wife. From marital bed to kitchen room she has to tackle all things: obeying husband, cleaning, cooking, washing, ironing, educating children, caring in-laws. Household work