Self-Narrative as Protest Literature: Urmila Pawar’s The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs

Abstract

Aim: This study also highlights how the author overcame these barriers in order to find self-fulfillment. The Weave of My Life is a piece of protest literature, as the narrative relates the struggles Pawar makes in the predominantly Brahminical educational structure. Pawar protests the inferiorizing experiences associated with her caste and gender, and her self-narrative also critically engages with Dalit patriarchy, a debilitating barrier to the social progress of many Dalit women (Saha, 2017; Mahurkar, 2018; Sreelatha, 2015). The narrative records a woman’s discovery of selfhood and identity while she fights social injustice, struggles with poverty, and finally empowers herself.

Methodology and Approach: The work has consulted primary and secondary sources on the subject to examine the novel. The paper has adopted an interdisciplinary approach to conduct this study especially focusing on subaltern studies.

Outcome: Urmila Pawar’s narrative is a disruptive work and is a representative sample of resistance literature since it unintentionally disrupts the established literary conventions in style, diction, aesthetic sensibility, and contextual parameters, as well as obliquely addresses the historical wrongs in the lives of subaltern women in India and offers a platform for resistance to the factors contributing to their perpetual subaltern status.

Conclusion and Suggestions: To sum up, women’s self-narratives are a rarely explored genre of literature, and within that genre, Dalit women’s narratives are yet to attract critical attention. For Dalit women, as explicated by Pawar, the dimensions of caste, class, and gender deepen their inequality and drag them down into perpetual subalternity. Caste and class are inextricably tied up to the socio-economic status and deny them any opportunities for upward social mobility.