Indian women’s agency through Indian women’s literature

Patriarchy has been a dominant institution influencing the structure of society through recorded human history. In this chapter, I bring out the various ways in which Indian women have engaged with this institution from the fifth century bce till colonial times. I use Amartya Sen’s construct to identify the well- (or ill-) being of women as it is represented in their own writings, and go further to identify their exercises of agency in effecting welfare.