Transforming Images of Woman in Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters

Abstract

The present paper focuses the suffering of females because of the inner conflict between their internal ambitions and the actuality. Difficult Daughters is a first novel by Manju Kapur who prefers actuality to magic realism. The novel presents an entirely imagined, fragrant, compound world. The story starts with Ida’s narration about her mother Virmati who has no longer with her. Virmati is the protagonist of the novel. She rebelled and defied the age old norms of patriarchal construct that is why she is termed as difficult in Difficult Daughters. Manju Kapur portrays an ambitious woman in the protagonist, Virmati. Virmati lives her life with tediousness and aloneness which makes her sense sad about herself. Her life is a steady struggle from one frontage to another. The second protagonist Virmati’s daughter Ida is strong and completely aware concerning the socio-political game. As she is denied maternity by her husband, she smashes up her marriage. Her woman in the novel seems to be a representation of a transforming woman, who has been constantly attempting to throw off the burden of embarrassments she has carried for ages. Manju Kapur has deep concerns about the constraints being faced by the woman in a man-dominated society.