Between the Lines: Men Writing Women, Women Writing Women- The Gaze That Shapes the Page by Namrata

Published every Friday, Between the Lines is a weekly column by Namrata. This week, she compares men writing women and women writing women.

One of the most fascinating tensions in literature lies in the act of imagining the other. For centuries, the vast majority of women in fiction were written by men. From Sita and Draupadi in ancient epics, to the ethereal heroines of Urdu shayari, to the dutiful wives and tragic lovers in mid-century novels, women were shaped less by their own voices and more by the desires, ideals, and fears of the men who created them. They were beauty before agency, virtue before desire, devotion before rebellion.

This is not to say male-authored women cannot be nuanced. R.K. Narayan’s Rosie in The Guide is a layered portrait of a woman carving her own space, and Saadat Hasan Manto could capture women’s contradictions with startling clarity. But the gaze was often tilted, lingering on a swish of hair rather than a flicker of thought, measuring worth in sacrifice rather than selfhood.