Critical Evaluation of Male-Chauvinism will Predominantly Focus on Sylvia Plath's and Kamala Das's Poetry

Abstract

Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share common goal i.e. to define, establish, and achieve political, equal rights within marriage and to protect women from violence and sexual harassment. Male-Chauvinism is the belief that men are inherently superior over women. It is the attitude of men superiority towards women. Men are frequently considered as dominant and women are inferior not from recently but from ancient time. The feminist ideologies and the concept of Male-chauvinism also influenced the English literature. The majority of the Novels and Poetry depict the psychological sufferings of the frustrated housewives and oppressed lives of women. The poem Mushrooms represent an oppressed population most likely women who are mounting a quiet revolution, Plath speaks in the voice of one of the mushrooms that they seemingly appear overnight, growing or expanding quietly The poems have been analysed through close reading of text on the basis of male-chauvinism through the eye of feminism with selected framework Simon De Beauvoir's work The Second Sex (1952). Sylvia Plath and Kamala Das in their poems show different responses toward male- dominance. Women want to throw away oppression and get rid of male-chauvinism. Sometimes they change their identities and sometimes through their struggle show a protest against male dominancy. Mushroom and An Introduction show the same ideology. Despite the surrounding authority of men. They keep on struggling for their rights with a reflection of protest against the established system of exploitation in male dominant society, transforming into a rebellion at last.