The Diviners by Margaret Laurence

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Recommended: Gender Roles in Literature

Literature is a cultural construct and provides us with valuable insights into the development of Societies. It helps psychological understanding and reformations of espistemological constructs. Literature in itself is a rich source material for interpreting the past. Women’s writings focus attention on the manifestation of female sensibility, feminine reality and on its significance as a means of bringing about an awareness of this reality. Feminism being an important movement in the modern world, a woman’s place, position and especially the quest for her identity and importance, are not duly recognized. Gynocentricism provides the platform to delve deep into the obstacles faced by women.
Gynocentrism is derived from the Greek word gyno, meaning "woman," and kentron, meaning "center", is a radical feminist discourse that champions woman-centered beliefs, identities, and social organization. It also challenges the androcentric promotion of masculine standards as normative, and the presentation of those standards as neutral. Gynocentric feminism is concerned to revalue sexual difference and femininity positively. The literature about women portrays the realities of their mental and physical sufferings and desperate struggle for a meaning in life and living. A woman’s experience includes a different perception. Women do not say things in the same way as men and have different ideas and feelings about what is important and what is not.
Explaining the importance of examining women’s experience Greda Lerner says:

Women have been left out of history not because of the evil conspiracies of men in general or male historians in particular, but because we have considered history only in male-centered terms. We have missed women and their...

... middle of paper ...

...eak over patriarchal norms and to equate woman with men. The oft-quoted Shakespearean adage-“Fraility, thy name is woman” is proved false in the case of Morag Gunn. She emerges as a successful, independent, maleless person unruffled by the threats of patriarchy.

Works Cited

 Laurence, Margaret. The Diviners, Toronto. Mc Clelland& Stewart,1992
 Gnanmony S. Robert: Literary polyrhythm: New voices in New writings in English. Sarup.2005.
 Showalter, Elaine.”Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness” Modern Criticism and Theory.David Lodge with Nigel Wood. New Delhi: Pearson Education,2003.
 Greda Lerner, “The Challenge of Women’s History, the Majority Finds Is Past:
Placing Women in History. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979)

 Elizabeth Hackett and Sally Haslanger, eds, Theorising Feminsims,Oxford Univ Press,2006
 Gynocentricism : free wikepedia

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