Ahalya, the wife of Sage Gautam, was enticed by Lord Indra, disguised as her husband and on being caught in the act of intimacy Ahalya was cursed by her elderly husband to turn into a rock. Bearing the sun, rain and wind, her only salvation lies when Rama would touch her with his feet. Canonical texts stress the punishment inflicted on her for her infidelity but Volga tries to reason out her stone-like silence.
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.