Women's Interpersonal Dynamics within the Family of In-Laws: A Reading of Select Characters in Sudha Murty's Novels

Abstract

Sudha Murty is a prolific writer whose stories reflect the social realities of middle-class Indian life with unusual clarity. Again and again, her work brings to light the everyday tensions inside families, especially those that strain a marriage and sometimes break it. Murty pays close attention to the bonds, and the missing bonds, between women in the same household. She shows how sincere, dutiful women are hurt day after day by their own families, and how other women are often the cause of that hurt. Husbands who are wrapped up in their own ambitions add to the problem, and their neglect is another major source of unhappiness for women in middle-class homes. This paper examines how women’s relationships with their in-laws are portrayed in three of Murty’s novels, Mahashweta, House of Cards, and Gently Falls the Bakula. It considers how female characters, knowingly or not, uphold patriarchal expectations and so deepen the emotional, social, and personal struggles of other women. It also traces how Murty’s heroines face these struggles, step outside traditional limits, and work towards self-realization and equality. The central problem the study identifies is a family’s unwillingness to accept a new member fully as one of its own. The study follows a qualitative literary method built on close textual reading, with scholarly articles and critical studies serving as secondary sources. It draws attention to the way women’s wishes, and even their basic desire for respect, are repeatedly brushed aside in the name of status and convention. These women are left on their own, pressured to give up their identities to please others, and discriminated against all the same.