Unmasking the Alternative Micro Feminist Narratives in Anna Karenina: A Postmodernist-Deconstructive Perspective

The present study means to investigate Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy in the light of eclectic theoretical framework consisting of Feminism, Postmodernism, and Deconstruction. The overt dominant patriarchal metanarrative is to be shown as problematized by the existence of the alternative micro feminist narrative stands. These alternative strands challenge and subvert the absolutist patriarchal narrative. The transcendental position of patriarchy as an absolute stands deconstructed by the play of alternative micro-narrative strands of feminist resistance. The study also means to show that subjectivities of major characters are self-differentiated, fractured and fragmented. This also implies that patriarchal metanarrative and alternative feminist narrative strands continually displace each other, instead of going for mutual synthesis. Seen through the lens of chosen theoretical framework, Anna Karenina becomes a site of pluralism and multiplicity, a story of resistance to the transcendental patriarchal presence