FEMALE CONSCIOUSNESS IN GITHA HARIHARAN’S THE THOUSAND FACES OF NIGHT

Abstract

Female consciousness is a movement to liberate woman herself from her patriarchal attitudes and stereotyped behavioral pattern and suffocating the patterns might be woman conforms to these due to fear and the feeling of enslavement. All the women of her first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night are conscious in various levels and occasions. Though they are conscious, they are unable to overcome the stamp which is practiced by the society traditionally. All her women feel comfort by remembering their past memories of the stories told by the elders especially their grandmothers. They feel solace through their ghosts of the past. The Thousand Faces of Night represents the lash about of three women of consecutives generations for their survival in their relationship with man and society. The lives of three women Mayamma, Sita, and Devi who symbolize three different generations age-old, middle, and modern. The novel pictures more than a thousand faces of women who are silent harassed for their endurance in the dark with despair and distress in the patriarchal civilization.