Surpanakha was the fourth child of Asur king Vishravas and queen Kaikesi of Lanka. She was the youngest of four siblings and Ravan, Kumbhkaran and Vibhishan were her elder brothers. Being a girl child, she was the unwanted one in the family, and because of her dark colour and repulsive looks, she was given a hideous name. Surpanakha means one having nails spread like sieves or one that is as hard as nails. Volga and Chitra Banerjee find beauty in her ugliness.
Published in Chapter:
Demystifying Mythology: Deconstructing the Indian Myth Through Modern Mythic Fiction
Charu Ahluwalia (Chitrakoot School of Liberal Arts, Shoolini University, Solan, India) and
Purnima Bali (Chitrakoot School of Liberal Arts, Shoolini University, Solan, India)
Copyright: © 2023
|Pages: 17
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-8093-9.ch007
Abstract
For centuries, classical myths have been celebrated as models of excellence. Initially, the study of myths was undertaken to understand culture by only being mindful of the fixed literal meaning of the text. In this context, the ancient myth of the Ramayan in India stood as a monolithic structure unquestioned since time immemorial. However, in modern times, when the deconstruction philosophy of Derrida rejects the idea of a fixed meaning as conveyed by a text, the latent meaning of the text arises to the surface. With the emergence of feminism, the unheard voices of canonical texts are brought to the limelight through the contemporary mode of mythic fiction. The mythic fictions undertaken for study—The Forest of Enchantments, Sita-Warrior of Mithila, and The Liberation of Sita—highlight myriad ways of deconstructing the character of Sita and other subaltern female characters who were initially construed under the androcentric dictates of the classical literary canon. Hence, feminist deconstruction of mythology by mythic fiction deconstructs age-old cultural axioms.