Traces of Gender Discrimination in Thrity Umrigar's Bombay Time

Literature is a powerful medium for raising awareness about the issues and evils in society. Gender discrimination is one of the major issues. “Gender is the repeated stylisation of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory framework that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (Butler, 2011, 43-44). The inequality between the sexes results in social gender discrimination, which hinders the economic growth and societal advancement of women. Gender discrimination refers to the social system's failure to provide equal opportunities for upward mobility for men and women (Sumi, 2012, p. 7). Women remain subjugated and marginalised due to gender inequality by the patriarchal construction of superiority and inferiority. Women are often considered to be meek, submissive and objects having no right over their own bodies and lives. They are regarded as a second sex and have to serve under the imposition of men. Men frequently use various factors like force, violence, insult and mental pressure to maintain their superiority. Women writers have boldly depicted the issues and predicaments of women in a male-dominated society in their works. One such woman writer is Thrity Umrigar. Her novels dealt with several themes, including friendship, race relations, class division, cultural differences, etc. This paper will be an attempt to trace gender discrimination and oppression of women in a patriarchal society in Thrity Umrigar’s novel Bombay Time.