Bifurcation of Consciousness in Kavita Kane’s novel Ahalya 's Awakening

Abstract

This paper throws light on woman consciousness bifurcated by male chauvinism, religious injunctions and social conventions. The world of woman splits into two when she becomes a mother. The whole dominant male society perceives woman as an object of physical pleasure and expects her to confine to the role of a mother. She struggles to create an identity of her own and she will be obliged to sacrifice her dream and adapt herself to the dominant view. Dorothy E.Smith, a British born Canadian Feminist, has coined a term called “Bifurcation of Consciousness” from her own life experiences which is related to the Standpoint Theory. In this, she refers to the separation of women’s two modes of being. She describes about the split between the world that a woman actually experiences and the dominant view which she is supposed to adapt. A woman must strive hard to push past their expected role as housewives and mothers, moving from the local realm of the home to the extra local realm of society, which induces them to the split their consciousness into two in order to establish themselves as an competent individuals with an identity of their own. Kavita Kane, in her provoking novel Ahalya’s Awakening, portrays how she aspires to become a rishika and later confines to be a mother to her children because of negligence and domination of her husband Rishi Gautam.