The women in the novels of Manju Kapur seem to be the personification of new women who have been carrying the burden of inhibition since ages and want to be free now. The writer clearly shows the dilemma of women who carry the burden of being female as well as the added responsibility of being mothers to members of their own sex. In the traditional social milieu of the novel where mothers and daughters exist, marriage is regarded as the ultimate goal and destiny from which these women cannot escape. Manju Kapur succeeds in presenting the real picture of women in a male-dominated society. Her female protagonists are mostly educated aspiring individuals caged within the confines of a conservative society. Their education leads them to independent thinking, for which their family and society become intolerant towards them. They struggle between tradition and modernity. It is their individual struggle with family and society through which they plunge into a dedicated effort to carve an identity for themselves as qualified women with faultless backgrounds. The novelist has portrayed her protagonists as women caught in the conflict between the passions of the flesh and the yearning to be a part of the political and intellectual movements of the day. Manju Kapur says that writing in India tends to involve the family and community to a far greater extent than in the West. Here, women are often defined in terms of their roles. The tension between these notions of identity and the desire for personal fulfillment forms much of subcontinental literature. This paper takes up for study the novels of Manju KapurDifficult Daughters, A Married Woman and Home.

This line suggests that women's inferior position in society is not a biological fact but a created one. Civilization defines what is feminine, determines how women should behave, and perpetuates the oppression of women. The social position and roles that civilizations have assigned to women have kept them in an inferior position to that of men. It is the patriarchal civilization that relegates women to the margins. All feminist writings concern themselves with women's inferior position in society and with the discrimination encountered by women because of their sex.

This paper focuses on the concept of new women in the Indian society, as presented in the writings of Manju Kapur. It varies from the one in the West and, therefore, Manju Kapur has tried to portray her own emerging new women grounded in reality. Kapur has her own concerns and priorities, as well as her own ways of dealing with the predicament of her women protagonists. In order to understand the changing image of new women in her works, it will be interesting to note the man-woman relationship in the novels of Manju Kapur—Difficult Daughters (1998), A Married Woman (2002), and Home (2006).

Manju Kapur was born in Amritsar, Punjab. After completing her BA from Delhi University and MA in English from Dalhousie University in Canada, she went to do her M.Phil from Delhi University. She currently teaches English at Miranda House, a liberal Arts and Science College for Women at Delhi University. She is married to Gun Nidhi Dalmia, lives in New Delhi, and has four children. Her debut novel, Difficult Daughters, was published in India by Penguin Books India Private Limited, in 1998. In the year 1999, Difficult Daughters won the Commonwealth Prize in `the best first published book' category for the Eurasia region.Indian women's writing has been a delineation of inner life and interpersonal relationships, where marital bliss and women's role at home are central foci. Manju Kapur presents the image of suffering but her stoic women eventually break the traditional boundaries. Tradition, transition and modernity are the stages through which the women of Manju Kapur's novels pass. The women in her novels seem to be the personification of new women who have been trying to throw off the burden of inhibitions that they have been carrying for ages (Kakkar, 1978, p. 46). This remarkable changing image of women displaying the feminist viewpoint runs as an undercurrent in all the novels of Manju Kapur. A detailed study of her novels reveals that Manju Kapur's women are of the ultramodern era who want their individual worth realized.

English Studies Journal, Manju Kapur, Intellectual Movements, Political Movements, Patriarchal Civilization, Women Protagonists, Penguin Books, Traditional Boundaries, Political Ideologies, Indian Civil Service, Petrarchan Sonnets, Autobiographical Data, Interpersonal Relationships.