Reevaluating Gender Roles in Jahnavi Barua’s Rebirth: A Novel

Abstract

            Many critics posit that gender is a preconceived concept and the patriarchal hegemonic gender identification is reified through a series of patriarchal institutions passing it down from generation to generation institutionalising its beliefs and values. Judith Butler says that gender pre-exists the body and through a series of performances it produces the classification of biological sex. Simone de Beauvoir states that women are relegated to a secondary role through manifold agents and women become the other because of the nurture. Through glorification and naturalisation of cultural hegemony, they are insisted to receive the gender stereotypes as their unavoidable identity and accept their subordination willingly or unwillingly. Women writers negate such misrepresentation of women in their writings unearthing the hidden strategies of gender identification. Jahnavi Barua recounts the patriarchal traditions that marginalise women in a patriarchal society in her novel Rebirth: A Novel. Barua underscores reification of women’s subjugation in the patriarchal society through the enactment of gender roles in this novel. The paper analyses the process of gender identification in a patriarchal society reevaluating its validity and veracity in Jahnavi Barua’s Rebirth: A Novel.