raditionally, 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 works are only done by housewives and in these works, their husbands have no participation. In this story, Astha’s condition falls in such category. She is both “father and mother” for her children. Fulfilling everybody’s needs, nothing is left for her. It is the common picture of a Third World wife. In contrast, in First World countries, household work is a choice determining who cooks or who cleans by the married couples. When a wife in First World countries, clocks long hours in the workplace, her husband pitches in more around the house. But in Indian society, women are not privileged like that of Western women.
In Indian patriarchy, the notion of protection entices women to be sexually passive and humble. Third World women are brought up with the importance of being protected by males. A woman should be protected in her childhood by her father, in her youth by her husband and in her aged days her son should protect her and in this way the woman does not deserve to be free. Such dominant patriarchal rules marginalize women to carry on their individual rights and freedom. As Karthika comments: “Women are treated as the “other” who has got comparatively less power in the society. The muscle power and the equations of strength are used cunningly to make the women believe that they are subordinate human beings.” ( Karthika, 2015) In this story, almost all the female characters are financially dependent on their fathers, husbands, brothers and sons. Sita, Mrs. Trivedi were dependent on their husbands; Astha’s mother-in-law is dependent on her son; Sangeeta for her marital problems decides to live with Astha and therefore, she is dependent on her brother, Hemant. Astha before her marriage was protected by her father. After marriage, she is seen as an employed woman but she is controlled in every case by Hemant. She earns but her money spending is always decided by Hemant.
Motherhood is an obstacle for Third World women. The Third World women often show sense of power and resistance that differs from the First World wom