ABSTRACT
Feminist criticism or scholarship has re-written literary histories to bring women into prominence. The life narratives of working-class women defied the canonical definition of autobiography as they were often the testimonies of the experience of a community, race, caste or a group. Women’s writing that has become part of the canon—the writing of middle-class or privileged women, is strikingly different in its ‘inward search for emotional fulfilment’. Most critical writing and research is about the poetry and prose written by middle-class women, their search for identity and sexual liberation. The growth of tourism in the era of globalization had increased trafficking in children and women further: brothels have turned into sex malls and the mafia that runs the sex industry is too big for anyone to take on. To privileged women, that is the world they are familiar with and since most women writers belong to the privileged sections, there is immense repetition in their narratives of personal angst.
