Reimagining the New Woman: Marriage, Agency, and Selfhood in Jaishree Misra’s Ancient Promises

Abstract

This research paper examines the restructuring of the New Woman in Jaishree Misra’s novel Ancient Promises using the intertwining structures of marriage, agency and female selfhood. Set in the socio-cultural context of upper-caste Syrian Christian patriarchy in Kerala, the novel follows Janaki, whose romantic idealism at the start of their life crashes against the curtailing realities of arranged marriage. According to the study, Misra does not only depict a liberated modern woman but he introduces a subject that is negotiating identity in firmly organization structures of familial dominance gendered expectations and marital dominance.

Marriage in the novel serves as some sort of regulatory mechanism radicalizing the feminine desire, mobility, and autonomy, in the sense that it puts the protagonist in a domestic immanence. Nonetheless, the gradual attainment of education, economic and emotional self-expression indicates a moving state toward passive endurance to conscious self-assertion as Janaki discovers. Her change alters the traditional concept of the New Woman being merely Westernized or subversive; instead, it shows a situation-experienced modernity, which is negotiated, as opposed to disrupted.

By anticipating the psychological stress that Janaki will face, maternal predicaments, and ultimate promulgation of personal choice, the paper points out the ways in which selfhood can be formed out of resistance, resilience and tactical adjustment. The New Woman is rejuvenated as the protagonist in the Ancient Promises that is not a total break with tradition but a dynamic character that creates identity inside and outside the patriarchal structure. The novel in this way makes a strong contribution towards the present day discussion of Indian feminism by the articulation of a subtle model of female becoming in the changing society.