Feminism in Kamala Das's Poetry

Author(s)	PRIYANKA KUMARI
Country	India
Abstract	Kamala Surayya (1934-2009), or Kamala Das, is sometimes called the 'Mother of Modern Indian English Poetry,' is important in Indian literature for her relentless probing of gender, sexuality, identity, and marriage. In this paper, we examine how her poetry embodies the feminist ethos - both in its confessional style and its potential to subvert powers that be and patriarchal constructs. This study employs an examination of Das's main works, including Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants (1967), and The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (1973), to show how Das reinscribes female agency and challenges cultural presuppositions about female identity. Raw with honesty, her poetry blurs lines between the personal and universal and corrals readers into facing an uncomfortable truth about power, repression, and freedom. The reclamation of female sexuality, resistance to patriarchal dominance, and the determined brandishing of identity in the postcolonial Indian scenario are the key themes of this study. Das is still a foundational feminist text, prompting today's conversations around gender and self-expression in South Asia.
Keywords	: Feminism, Confessional poetry, Female identity, Patriarchy, postcolonial literature, gender studies.
Field	Arts
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 6, November-December 2025
Published On	2025-12-31
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.65107

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