Open AccessImagining the New Indian Girl: Representations of Indian Girlhood in Keeping Corner and Suchitra and the Ragpicker
Author(s) -
Michelle Superle
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
papers (victoria park)/papers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1837-4530
pISSN - 1034-9243
DOI - 10.21153/pecl2010vol20no1art1152
Subject(s) - girl , colonialism , nothing , witch , value (mathematics) , power (physics) , gender studies , literature , history , art , sociology , psychology , philosophy , developmental psychology , ecology , physics , archaeology , epistemology , quantum mechanics , machine learning , biology , computer science
The capacity of young girls to represent a healthy new beginning is nothing new to children's literature. One need look no further, for example, than two classics: Frances Hodgson Burnett harnessed this figure's power with Mary in 'The Secret Garden' (1911), as did C. S. Lewis with Lucy in 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (1950). Yet the way young girl characters are positioned in contemporary, English-language Indian children's novels by women writers does seem new; these 'new Indian girls' function to represent a modern, postcolonial India in which gender equality is beginning to find a happy home. Setting up a binary which positions societal values from pre-colonial and colonial India as backwards and problematic, these children's novels demonstrate the value of girls in postcolonial India - at least some girls, according to some writers.