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Abstract
This paper entitled “Women Battling for Space in Githa Hariharan’s The Thousand Faces of Night” is an attempt to analyse Hariharan’s (her) first novel The Thousand Faces of Night, which highlights the survival of women belonging to three different generations. This is a novel of three women Sita, Devi and Mayamma. They represent three different generations and more than thousand faces of women in India who still have no better existence than night. Delimiting restrictions through self analysis and self discovery, all the three main female characters try to create both physical as well as psychological space for themselves to grow on their own. The inner conscience of the Indian Psyche and the social relations are based on the traditional image of ideal womanhood even in the changed (social/historical) context. They rebel against the dictates of their domestic duties and social sanctions, (and) challenge male devised orthodoxies about women’s nature, capacities and roles and existential insecurity. Hariharan attempts to project the large society as a whole through her characters of three different generations. Her novel mainly delineates the awakening of women’s consciousness which impels her to strive for self-actualization.