Resistance Against Deprivation of Females in Niharika’s Chreeharan

This research paper aims to explore resistance of chief female characters, Satyawatee, Gandharee, and Draupadi, in Nilam Karki Niharika’s novel, Cheerharan, against the deprivation of economic, social, and cultural rights of women in the male-dominated Nepalese society. Satyawatee and Gandharee are victimized by patriarchy and portrayed as submissive. But Draupadi resists against the victimization of women in the novel. In an identical way, some women have internalized sexism in Nepalese society while others have objected to this. Draupadi, the chief character of Cheerharan, acts as an adamant feminist to revolt against the treatment of Nepali women as the inferior sex. The theoretical tools taken to explore the assumed truth are the feminists’ ideologies developed by such radical feminists as Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf. The study demonstrates that Cheerharan is the depiction of the pathetic condition of the Nepalese women which has not changed significantly from the ancient time to the present time. The chief finding of the paper is that Satyawatee and Gandharee, like most of Nepali women, know the ill practices of men but can’t resist against them because they take the socialization process for granted; while Drupadi, like a bold modern Nepali woman, reacts against the ill-practices of males towards females. It is assumed that the researchers intending to explore Nepali literature from the feminist perspective can take the paper as a reference.