One of the famous Indian writers, Namita Gokhale has emerged as leading woman novelist whose fiction is a harmonious contribution of joy and sorrow, pain and relief, attraction and repulsion, meeting and departure. She has written what she observed around her. From Kumaon to Mumbai, she observed the lives of women and narrated them in her novels. Her women characters are quite familiar to the readers and one can easily meet them next to their house. Namita Gokhale has shown her dissatisfaction regarding the position of women in Indian society and raised her voice against injustice done to them through her women character. Her novel A Himalayan Love Story is the pursuit of emancipation. The novel deals with confinement of sexual boundaries of suffocated and suppressed environment. Parvati emerges as a new woman beyond the stereotypical image of a woman who searches for true love and sexual gratification. Suppression of sexual desire leads Parvati to mental illness. Parvati’s marriage with a homosexual husband Lalit and her unfulfilled physical needs, compel her to break stereotypical sexual boundaries. And throughout her life she searches for true love, and her own self with identity. The paper critically examines the confinement and suppression of sexual desires, and subjugation of Parvati leading to mental illness.
Research Scholar, Department of English, Magadh University, Bodh-Gaya
