De-masking Institutionalised Mental Disorders in Male/Female Relationship: An Analysis of Some Female Novelists’ Works

Abstract

This article considers that male-female relationship is often the cause of most mental ailments that might be diagnosed in women. Issues of traditions  and patriarchal attitudes occasioned by biological differences between men and women have been considered reasons for circumscribing women, so  also patrocentric cultures all over the world have tended to consider the man as superior to the woman. Though over the years fights for human and  women’s rights have improved the status of women, the real grind still remains the intractable patriarchal paradigm that finds expression in religious and  traditional beliefs and practices and also in the socio-political fabric of our modern societies. The women novelists cited in this article have drawn on  their imagination and of course real life situations to create female characters who provide down-to-earth cases for study.