The Representation of Women’s Education and Social Status in Cambodian and Indian Novels: A Comparative Literary Analysis

Natin Pich

The Representation of Women’s Education and Social Status in Cambodian and Indian Novels: A Comparative Literary Analysis

Author(s)	Ms. Natin Pich
Country	India
Abstract	This article develops a comparative framework for examining the representation of women’s education and social status in Cambodian and Indian fiction, taking Rim Kin’s Sophat and Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors as its proposed primary texts. It distinguishes education as formal institutional attainment from education as the acquisition of social knowledge, self-understanding and practical judgment. The Indian novel provides a particularly clear case of a professionally educated woman whose social standing remains contested within marriage and family. The Cambodian text is approached through questions about the social value assigned to women’s conduct, kinship position and opportunities for independent decision-making. Rather than treating these historically distinct settings as equivalent, the article identifies comparative questions concerning the relationship between learning, respectability, marriage, economic power and female agency. Feminist literary criticism and contextual comparison supply the interpretive framework. Because verified editions and full primary-text passages have not been provided, the study presents a carefully delimited interpretive draft; its claims about specific scenes in Sophat and its comparative conclusions require confirmation through close reading before submission. The central proposition is that educational attainment and social status are related but not interchangeable: access to knowledge can expand a woman’s choices while social institutions may continue to regulate the recognition of those choices.
Keywords	Women’s Education, Social Status, Cambodian Literature, Indian Literature, Comparative Literary Studies, Gender, Female Agency
Field	Arts
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 5, September-October 2026
Published On	2026-10-26

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The Representation of Women’s Education and Social Status in Cambodian and Indian Novels: A Comparative Literary Analysis

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