Challenging Victimization: Redefining Women’s Roles in Literature and Media

For decades, literature and cinema portrayed women through a narrow lens-either as suffering wives, helpless daughters, or tragic heroines waiting to be rescued. These portrayals weren’t just fictional tropes. They seeped into public consciousness, reinforcing the idea that victimhood was central to a woman’s identity. But a growing wave of women writers and filmmakers has been dismantling this narrative, replacing it with stories of agency, resistance, and self-determination. This shift is not merely aesthetic. It is deeply political, reshaping how society understands gender and power.

The victimization trope: how it took root 🔗

Traditional storytelling across cultures, and especially in South Asia, often positioned women as passive figures defined by their relationships to men. Early Indian English literature frequently portrayed women within frameworks of idealized domesticity and sacrificial roles, confined to archetypes of the dutiful wife, the devoted mother, or the woman wronged by fate. Epic heroines like Sita and Draupadi, while powerful in their own right, were often reduced in popular retellings to symbols of suffering and self-sacrifice rather than agency.

In cinema, this pattern was even more pronounced. Mainstream films routinely depicted women as objects of male desire or as victims whose primary purpose was to serve the emotional arc of a male protagonist. Early Bollywood films depicted women as virtuous and self-sacrificing figures, conforming to traditional gender roles, primarily shown as devoted wives, mothers, and daughters who upheld family honour and values. Even when a film featured a strong female character, she was often punished by the narrative for her defiance, sending a clear message: stepping outside prescribed roles has consequences.

This consistent framing had real consequences beyond the screen. When audiences saw women exclusively as victims or passive beings, it normalised the idea that women lacked the capacity for self-determination. The victimization trope, repeated endlessly, became a self-fulfilling cultural narrative.

Women writers reclaiming the narrative 🔗

The challenge to this victimization framework did not happen overnight. It has been a gradual process, driven by women writers who used literature as a tool of resistance. Indian women writers have used their work to express the discrimination and dissatisfaction they experienced in a male-dominated society, with many of these writings functioning as acts of rebellion against the constraints society imposed on women.

Ismat Chughtai and the politics of desire 🔗

One of the earliest and most radical challenges came from Ismat Chughtai, whose 1942 story Lihaaf (The Quilt) explored the taboo subject of female desire and same-sex relationships within a conservative Muslim household. At a time when women’s sexuality was not even acknowledged in public discourse, Chughtai dared to write about it with unflinching honesty. She faced an obscenity trial for Lihaaf but refused to apologise, making her defiance itself a feminist act. Her writing did not present women as victims of desire-instead, it portrayed them as beings who possessed desire, thereby asserting their full humanity.

Mahasweta Devi and the power of the marginalised 🔗

Mahasweta Devi took the challenge further by centring her work on tribal and Dalit women who existed at the intersection of gender, caste, and class oppression. Devi’s narratives delved into the lives of tribal and marginalised women, exposing the injustices they faced while simultaneously celebrating their strength in the face of adversity. Her famous short story Draupadi features a protagonist who, after being tortured and assaulted, refuses to cover her body, turning her victimisation into an act of defiance. The woman in Devi’s work is not defined by what is done to her-she is defined by her refusal to be broken by it.

Kamala Das and the assertion of selfhood 🔗

Kamala Das, writing both in English and Malayalam, challenged the taboos surrounding female sexuality and personal freedom. Das’s open and frequently provocative works questioned the norms around female sexuality, marking a turning point in the feminist literary movement. Her autobiography My Story was unapologetic in its exploration of love, desire, and dissatisfaction with the institution of marriage. By refusing to be ashamed, Das challenged readers to question why a woman’s honesty about her own life should be considered scandalous.

Contemporary voices: broadening the canvas 🔗

The tradition continues with contemporary writers. Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness expanded feminist literary discourse by incorporating trans, Dalit, and Muslim voices, demonstrating that the challenge to victimisation must be intersectional. Writers like Bama in Tamil and Volga in Telugu have examined caste, identity, and marginalisation through a feminist lens, ensuring that the narratives of the most marginalised women are not flattened into simple stories of suffering. These writers present women not as one-dimensional victims but as complex individuals navigating multiple systems of power.

Women filmmakers rewriting the visual narrative 🔗

If literature planted the seeds of this narrative shift, cinema amplified it for mass audiences. The visual medium carries enormous influence in shaping public attitudes, making it a critical site for challenging gender stereotypes.

Deepa Mehta’s Fire: a watershed moment 🔗

Few films illustrate the power and controversy of challenging victimisation as vividly as Deepa Mehta’s 1996 film Fire. The film, an Indo-Canadian romantic drama starring Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das, was one of the first mainstream films to explicitly depict a lesbian relationship. But Fire is about much more than sexual orientation. It tells the story of Radha and Sita, two women trapped in loveless marriages within a joint family in Delhi. When they form an intimate relationship, it is not simply a romantic subplot-it is an assertion of selfhood against a system that has denied them any agency.

Mehta herself clarified that the film was not primarily about queer identity but about the choices women make in their lives. The characters of Radha and Sita do not merely endure their circumstances. They actively make choices-difficult, socially unacceptable choices-that assert their right to happiness and self-definition. Through cinematic techniques, Mehta moved Radha and Sita from passive subjects to main characters with agency and independence from male perception.

The reaction to Fire proved just how threatening this kind of narrative can be to established power structures. After its 1998 release in India, activists staged several protests, triggering a flurry of public dialogue around issues such as homosexuality and freedom of speech. Theatre screens were vandalised, politicians weighed in, and the film was referred back to the Central Board of Film Certification for re-examination. But the very intensity of the backlash demonstrated the film’s power. By refusing to present its female characters as victims, Fire had sparked a national conversation about women’s autonomy-exactly the kind of dialogue that victimisation narratives suppress.

Mehta’s Elements Trilogy and beyond 🔗

Fire was the first installment of Mehta’s Elements Trilogy. The trilogy-comprising Fire, Earth, and Water-explored themes of gender inequality, religious oppression, and sexual autonomy, reframing traditional narratives to highlight women’s struggles against patriarchal and religious constraints. Water (2005), which depicted the oppression of widows in 1930s India, faced even more extreme resistance. When Mehta attempted to shoot the film, she received death threats and had her set burned by mobs, yet she persisted, completing the film under an assumed name in Sri Lanka. Her determination to complete the project despite violent opposition is itself a powerful example of the agency and resilience her films portray.

The rise of women-centric cinema 🔗

Mehta’s work opened doors for a new generation of filmmakers. The rise of female-driven films such as Raazi (2018), Dangal (2016), and Piku (2015) suggests that audiences are eager to see more realistic and diverse portrayals of women in media. These are not niche productions-they are box-office successes, proving that stories of women’s agency have commercial appeal.

Contemporary filmmakers like Meghna Gulzar, Zoya Akhtar, and Alankrita Shrivastava have explored themes of gender equality, female agency, and societal prejudices, serving as catalysts for change. Shrivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017) addressed female desire and the struggles of women in a conservative setting, while films like Thappad (2020) questioned the normalisation of everyday violence within marriage. These films do not deny the existence of oppression-they simply refuse to let it define the women who experience it.

Why challenging victimisation matters 🔗

The shift from victim narratives to agency narratives is not about denying that women face oppression. It is about refusing to let oppression be the whole story. When literature and media only show women as victims, they inadvertently strip women of their complexity. A woman who is only a victim has no desires, no ambitions, no contradictions-she exists only in relation to the violence done to her.

By contrast, narratives of agency acknowledge the reality of oppression while centring the woman’s response to it. The question shifts from “What was done to her?” to “What did she do about it?” This reframing has profound implications for how society understands gender. Research from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media notes that media plays a significant role in shifting perceptions towards gender roles, with more progressive attitudes observed particularly among younger audiences. When young people see women on screen making choices, asserting boundaries, and shaping their own futures, it expands their understanding of what is possible.

Feminist writing in Indian languages has had a significant sociocultural impact, challenging long-standing gender stereotypes and encouraging future generations to re-evaluate and rethink their social positions. Literature and cinema do not just reflect culture-they shape it. Every story that presents a woman as a full human being, capable of making choices even under constraint, chips away at the cultural architecture that keeps women confined.

The intersectional dimension 🔗

It is worth noting that the challenge to victimisation is most powerful when it is intersectional. A Dalit woman’s experience of oppression differs vastly from that of an upper-caste woman, just as a rural woman’s reality differs from an urban professional’s. The most effective works in this space-whether by Mahasweta Devi, Bama, or Arundhati Roy-recognise these differences rather than treating women as a monolithic group.

As feminism in India expanded beyond a singular gendered analysis to incorporate caste, class, religion, and sexuality, writers like Mahasweta Devi and Bama foregrounded Dalit women’s struggles against both patriarchal and caste oppression, challenging the dominant upper-caste feminist discourse. This intersectional approach ensures that the move away from victimisation narratives does not inadvertently erase the specific forms of violence faced by the most marginalised women. Agency looks different depending on one’s social location, and the best literature and cinema honours that complexity.

Obstacles that remain 🔗

Despite significant progress, challenges persist. Mainstream commercial cinema still frequently falls back on gender stereotypes, particularly in song sequences and item numbers that objectify women. Only about 25% of speaking roles in Bollywood belong to women, highlighting a persistent disparity in representation both on screen and behind the camera. Women filmmakers and writers still face disproportionate barriers in getting their work produced, funded, and distributed.

There is also the risk of co-optation. The language of empowerment can be superficially adopted by commercial entities-brands, studios, political campaigns-without any genuine commitment to structural change. A film that shows a woman being “strong” while still operating entirely within patriarchal frameworks does not truly challenge the victimisation narrative. The most impactful works are those that question the structures themselves, not just individual women’s responses to them.

What do you think? 🔗

What do you think? Can you recall a book, film, or piece of writing that changed how you think about women’s roles and agency? How do you think the balance should be struck between acknowledging the real oppression women face and moving beyond narratives that define women primarily as victims?

References

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7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_(1996_film)
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