Published Paper Details:

The history of Indian English literature has one most noteworthy event in the nineteen thirties was appearance in the scene of its major trio; MulkrajAnand, R.K.Narayan and Raja Rao, whose novels were published in 1935, 1935 and 1938 respectively; it is a mark of their stature that they reveled each in his own characteristic way, the various possibilities of Indian English fictions. Mulk Raj Anand has different shades - as great scholar, a teacher of king dynasty, a novelist, a social reformer, a civil servant, a thought provoker, a journalist, a politician, a humanist, a strong writer, a literary story teller - make him produce many useful and outstanding works that expose sufferings of suppressed and oppressed, depressed and downtrodden. Consequently, he proves himself as a versatile genius, an optimist, a humanist, a profound thinker, a moving speaker, an able organizer, a capital storyteller, and a literary architect through his thought provoking and worth reading novels. In short, his novels are nothing but a medley of different shades. The novel "Gouri"takes us to a village, like Nandpur, with its stern classical order obstructing the current changes. The conflict between adherence to superstition and violating it for new values of life forms the fabric of this novel. While going through the novel, it deals with the readers in three angles. The first two chapters show Gouri as gentle as a Cow, suffering mutely under the clutches of her mother-in-law and her husband. The next four chapters focuses how Gouri was necked out of her house, undergoes her metamorphosis as a result of her life at Hoshiarpur. Gourisymbolises the strength and purity of Sita and she is one of the most memorable female characters in the whole range of Indian fiction. The novel, as the author rightly tells us, is his "offering to the beauty, dignity and devotion of Indian women". It is also remarkably different from other Anand's novels in its tightness of structure. The cow like gentle Gouri presented in the first chapter, undergoes epic transformation mainly through suffering and at the end of the novel, she succeeds in vindicating her right to an independent life free from the violation and abrasions of male supremacy.