'If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
Wayne Dyer'
Jomen have always been in the stories of our past, whichever W country we talk of, or write about. But how their stories were told, to what extent they were told, who was narrating the story and with what purpose, changed with time, producing different paradigms of understanding women's role and position in society. It is thus the purpose, context, content and authorship of the narration that should concern us. The crucial issue is to unravel how writings on women have influenced our thought process and impacted on our consciousness. Women, in ancient Greek texts or in Manu smriti, women in Vedic literature, women in nineteenth century Indian social reform literature, or women in Indian nationalist discourses, were prescribed certain specific social, political and economic roles, emphasizing certain ideas, norms and practices as 'normal' and 'ideal' for women. Women, too, generally constructed their self-image accordingly, internalizing particular codes of behaviour as their 'accepted role in society.
However, the way women were made to know their past changed overtime. Certain interventions in thought processes and important defining moments in history changed the consciousness of women about their own selves, their identities and the roles they were required to play in the society, economy and polity. The new knowledge system - created by critical re-reading of texts and re-visiting lived experiences of women themselves-resulted in placing under scrutiny those ideas which were once considered sacrosanct, unalterable and unquestionable, reminding us of what Bertrand Russell had once said:
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
In the West a critical turning point in women's engagement with their past came when Virginia Woolf in her A Room of One's Own (1929) gave a clarion call to those women who had had the privilege of receiving higher education in the colleges of Newham and Girton of Cambridge University. She asked them to take up the task of writing their own histories, to document the lives of their fore-mothers and recreate the lives of the average Edwardian women. She wrote
What one wants, I thought is a mass of information; at what age did she marry, how many children had she as a rule; what was her room like, had she a room to herself, did she do the cooking, would she be likely to have a servant? All these facts lie somewhere, presumably, in parish registers and account books; the life of the average Elizabethan woman must be scattered about somewhere, could one collect it and make a book of it. It would be ambitious beyond daring, I thought, looking about the shelves for books that were not there, to suggest to the students of those famous colleges that they should rewrite history. Though, I own, that it often seems a little queer as it is, unreal and lop-sided, but why should they not add a supplement to history? Calling it, of course, by some inconspicuous name so that women might figure there without impropriety.
However, it took decades for this section of women to answer that call. During the 1960s in the United States of America there was a growing realisation that the first wave of the women's movement in the western world could not bring about the desired results in changing women's status. In this context the landmark work that proved to be crucial in changing the consciousness of women was The Feminine Mystique (1963) by Betty Friedan. In the 1965 edition of the book it was remarked:
In this startling survey Betty Friedman lays bare,... the deep malaise which gnaws at the happiness of so many American housewives. America in recent years has tried to go back on the emancipation of women. Today a family and a home constitute the twin heights of feminine ambition. But one looming problem remains unsolved, 'the problem that has no name' 'American housewives caged in comfortable homes, loyally conforming to the pretty, fluffy image of the magazines, but condemned for life to a spiritual death.' Who am I', they ask themselves."
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