Patriarchal Pressure and Purdah in Rama Mehta's Inside the Haveli

Abstract

Women have been kept at the lowest level of the society since the very beginning of the human society. Men have dominated all kinds of tasks, professions and decisions. Every man wants to show his superiority and every woman has to follow his man. In the rural areas of India, the condition of women is still very bad. They are not given equal opportunities and they are still considered inferior and weal. The main problem arises when a metropolitan girl has to adjust in such environment. Rama Mehta’s novel Inside the Haveli is one of such novels whose central female character Geeta has to live in a conservative environment of Udaipur. She gets married in Udaipur but finds the things very shocking there because she is immediately ordered to observe purdah in order to follow the rules designed by men. She could not live her life freely there and finds the life very stifling and suffocating. She sacrifices her own happiness but when she finds that her daughter is not given the privileges and her marriage is being negotiated in the tender age, she rebels against this system and her efforts bring fruit. Thus, the paper is an attempt to amylase the biased system of the Indian society where men run the family and women are considered just to obey and please them.