Abstract

Although roughly two centuries have passed since the Victorian era, it is clear that women writers still struggle for recognition and acknowledgement, especially in literary genres where men appear more dominant than women. They face the challenge of being unaccepted in the literary world, often having to prove the worthiness and importance of their works.They are being categorized in ways different to men and still have been subjected to unethical remarks. Although women now have more freedom to write, many of their struggles are similar to those of the nineteenth century women writers. Their struggle to establish self-identity and assert their individual rights have led to wage a desperate and inevitable war against the patriarchal societal norms of the particular period. In India, women writers have been contributing their share to the realm of Indian Writing in English.They use literature as a tool for socio-cultural documentation. Some of them often use pseudonyms to hide their identity and get recognition of their works unbiased. C.S. Lakshmi is one such well-known Indian feminist writer, who writes her stories using a pen-name, Ambai.The present paper attempts to highlight how Ambai’s texts vividly illustrate the way patriarchal centre silence and marginalize the emerging female voices and how women in the postcolonial context seek the appropriation of the centre’s language and its subversion.

Key words: Women writers, patriarchal norms, literature, identity, emerging voices.