Portrayal of Women in B. P. Koirala’s “Soldier” and “To the Lowland”

Abstract

1. P. Koirala (1914-1982) presents Nepal’s quest for social and political awakening through women in his short fiction. His fiction portrays women as puppets in men's hands and agents questioning social authority to tame their bodies. This paper examines two of his short stories: “The Soldier” (1938) and “To the Lowland” (1938). Historically, Nepal was socially and politically awakening into its modernity in the 1930s. These stories help us understand the social forces and the perceptions of people from the 1930s. “The Soldier” depicts women as objects of men's desire. In the next story, he explores an entirely different contour of women's self in “To the Lowland,” where the widow decides to resettle in the Terai by marrying a man and starting a family. The writer challenges traditional beliefs about widowhood by critiquing the limits of patriarchy through the portrayal of a woman's self in his fiction. This study reads the selected two short stories through the feminist lens of Simone de Beauvoir and Kate Miller to examine the formation of social forces and the challenges posed to the rigid structure of patriarchy during the awakening of modern Nepal in the 1930s.