Gender Consciousness in Anita Nair's Ladies Coupe

The paper is a study on gender-specific issues about the patriarchal society. Anita Nair is a well-known Indian Feminist writer in English. She became popular through her novels A Better Man, Mistress and Lessons in Forgetting. “Ladie’s Coupe’” (2001) is a story of Akhila who is travelling alone to Kanyakumari for the first time and communicates with other five ladies in a ladies' compartment. These five ladies Sheela Vasudevan, Prabha Devi, Janaki Prabhakar, Margaret Paulraj and Marikolanth reveal their stories to Akhila which teaches her to determine a life of her own. Being a spinster she was always haunted by a question ‘can a woman live herself’? and finally, she finds answer to this. Hence, this paper pursues to ponder over the glimpses of gender consciousness found in the novel “Ladies Coupe’