DISEMPOWERMENT OF THE NEPALESE FEMALES IN KHANAL’S GOLDEN DREAMS AND THE NARROW LANE

Abstract

This research paper seeks to explore the disempowerment and victimization of the Nepalese females owing to the patriarchal system in the major stories of Hari Har Khanal’s anthology of stories, Golden Dreams and the Narrow Lane. It chiefly studies four stories in the anthology, namely, “A Story of Love and Bitter Truth”, “Moon Behind the Black Cloud”, “Bygone Days and Expectations”, and “Fetter” to identify the factors that are responsible for the unemployment and exploitation of the innocent village girls and women in the anthology. The paper takes the theoretical framework of radical feminism to analyze how Nepali girls and women have become the victim in the patriarchal Nepalese society. The key finding of the paper is that the female characters of Kahnal’s stories endure perpetual physical, psychological subjugation and male domination because of the patriarchal norms still prevalent in Nepali society.  It is expected that researchers aspiring to study Khanal’s stories from other perspectives can take the paper as a reference.