Nora, Damini and Stella: A Comparative Study of Female Predicaments

Much has been talked in literature about femininity and feminism. In a patriarchal society, females are expected to be enriched with feminine qualities; this is a universal urge of majority of people all over the world. As literature reflects life, in many literary pieces we notice that most of the time, it is the womankind who are generally the victims of social injustice, man made rules, fundamentalism and malpractices, Henrik Ibsen’s Nora in A Doll’s House (1879), Damini in Rabindranath Tagore’s Quartet (1916) and Stella in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) are the three female characters from three different literary pieces whom we would like to discuss here with a view to demonstrating their actions under certain circumstances that ultimately prove that women’s suffering is universal, no matter time, race and geographical boundaries. When we introduce Nora, Damini and Stella, we find that Nora’s story is told against European background in the 1870s, Damini is from Indian setting before the First World War and Stella is from post World War II American society. These three women are different individuals but their position in their own society does not vary too much. My paper aims at illustrating how these three married ladies have to undergo domestic troubles when they are dependent on their male-counterparts in patriarchal society; also it highlights their level of self-realization arisen from their contextual surroundings.