Gendered Narratives: Representations of Women...

Gendered Narratives: Representations of Women in Twentieth-Century British Fiction

Author Name : Dr. Vijender Singh Tanwar

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how women are represented across a range of twentieth-century British novels, tracing shifts from Edwardian and modernist depictions of domesticity and subjectivity to post-war and late-century explorations of sexuality, agency, race, and class. Focusing on selected primary texts (Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, Doris Lessing, Angela Carter, and Jean Rhys) and drawing on feminist theory (Simone de Beauvoir, Elaine Showalter, Judith Butler, Laura Mulvey) and intersectionality, the study uses close reading and narratological analysis to show how narrative form and ideological context co-produce gendered meaning. The paper argues that twentieth-century British fiction both reflects and critiques changing gender norms: modernist narrative techniques often expose internal gendered constraints, while later writers reuse myth, fairy tale, and realist modes to destabilize patriarchal gaze and re-inscribe female subjectivity.

Keywords: gender, narrative, women, British fiction, modernism, feminism, narrator, representation.