Between the Lines: Women Writing Desire by Namrata

Published every Friday, Between the Lines is a weekly column by Namrata, where she delves into the cultural, emotional, and thematic intricacies of both classic and contemporary books. In today’s column, she explores the shifting language of love, longing, and agency.

There is a particular hush that follows when a woman writer dares to put desire on the page. In South Asia, where silence is virtue and shame often walks beside longing, women’s expression of erotic hunger, of wanting anything beyond what is allowed has long been policed by gaze and genre alike.

For decades, female writers who explored love and longing were gently nudged toward a single tone: decorum. Romance was acceptable as long as it was chaste, veiled, and preferably punished in the end. But raw desire? Female pleasure? Yearning unfulfilled or uncontrolled? That was dangerous territory. And yet, some walked in anyway.