Women’s Struggles under Patriarchy in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve

Abstract

Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve presents the life of a rural Indian family at a time when traditional agrarian society is being disturbed by poverty, industrial expansion, and changing social relations. Although the novel is concerned with the survival of the family as a whole, women’s experiences provide much of its emotional and social depth. Rukmani, Ira, and Kunthi occupy different positions within the same patriarchal environment, and their lives reveal how gender inequality is reinforced by poverty, marriage customs, reproductive expectations, economic dependence, and social judgement. Rukmani’s life demonstrates the burden placed on women to preserve the household even when material resources are scarce. Ira’s rejection by her husband and her later struggle to support her family reveal the vulnerability of a woman whose social value is linked to marriage and motherhood. Kunthi, in contrast, illustrates a more confrontational and morally complicated form of female agency. This paper argues that Markandaya’s novel does not merely depict women as victims of patriarchy. Instead, it explores the limited choices through which women negotiate oppressive conditions and demonstrates that endurance, care, literacy, and survival can themselves become forms of agency. The novel consequently offers a nuanced critique of patriarchal power by connecting women’s oppression with class, poverty, sexuality, and economic change.