QUESTIONING COLONIAL STEREOTYPES OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPACES: WOMEN WRITING IN INDIA

The conflict around the debate of the public vs the private space is significant in reading the 19th century women’s literature which has been rediscovered by feminist critics in order to revise the canon. An analysis of the first autobiography of an Indian woman followed by a critical evaluation of a few twentieth and twenty first century women writers who have portrayed this debate in their works is the objective of this paper.