Socially Gaslighted Women in Bama’s Sangati

Gaslighting is a systematic psychological manipulation of behavior. Manipulative influence is exerted on a targeted individual or group to have desired behavior. This research paper applies the term gaslighting in the social context. The marginalized, especially women are socially gaslighted by the power structured social system. This paper studies Bama’s Sangatiwhich deals with many gaslighted women by narrating interconnected anecdotes. The conceptualized feminine ideology becomes a weapon for the degradation and elimination of women from the center. The impact of gaslighting on the older generation is so powerful that one cannot trace any sign of shattering it. The younger generation, in spite of the awareness of their abuses andpsychological and social influences, cannot overcome gaslighting as they are oppressed by many tactics like placing them in a shameful situation, depriving their rights, denying them their respect. They cannot escape from being victims of gaslighting as they are tied up by family responsibility and their innate tendency for motherhood.

Revising Old Scripts: The Fusion of Independence and Intimacy in Aurora Leigh

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh is an unusual Victorian heroine because she ultimately combines career and marriage. Although Aurora's story has been recognized as an important revision of a traditional woman's story by such famous readers as Virginia Woolf (182–92) and Ellen Moers (60–62), some feminist critics have been disturbed by the ending, even as they describe its compelling feminist vision. Rachel Blau DuPlessis, while acknowledging that the story is a “rescripting,” argues that “being an artist is, at the end, reinterpreted as self-sacrifice for the woman, and thus is aligned with feminine ideology” (87). Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue that Aurora has to learn “not to be herself,” that is, she must learn sympathy and service (576–77). Deirdre David goes even further in asserting Barrett Browning's conservatism when she argues that Aurora's art does not subvert Romney's authority; instead, feminine art serves “male socialist politics” and “a woman's voice [speaks] patriarchal discourse – boldly, passionately, and without rancor” (134).