Why Can’t The Protagonists Of Today’s “Women Centric Books” Save Themselves Without A Man’s Help?

So many women centric books still have the woman leaning on a man for her happiness. We need more books where the woman saves the day for herself!

It is good that many books are written about women, by women and supposedly for women. There has been a considerable surge in fiction with a female protagonist depicting a female point of view. We have female authors writing books about women, strong women who are fighting to break stereotypes or facing internal struggles.

This is good news but if one reads these books one would notice that most of them have a similar story line except for a few twists and turns. The favourite topic seems to be unhappy or restless women struggling to find their identity.

Women who are supposedly complete are now facing an identity crisis, have questions that are troubling them about their life and are exploring new options in life. Every time one reads these stories there is something missing, some feeling of an incomplete story.

Surprisingly these stories that talk about women bored of daily lives, marriage & men in their lives eventually find solace only through another man. The solution to all their problems lies with men, they rediscover themselves through another man and start living again only because of a new man in life. So at the end again if is ‘the man’ who is the saviour.

How different are these stories from the romantic /fairy tales which propagate the idea of a damsel in distress who at the end is rescued by the Prince Charming. A girl who waits all her life for that man who can complete her with marriage and then after few years realises she is still incomplete and has to be rescued by another man.

So a girl’s story begins with a man and the woman’s story ends with a man. Is that all? Can’t a woman have her answers without involving a man? Can’t she rediscover herself without the help of a man or more precisely without the magic of a man? Can’t she be on a journey on her own? Does she in various stages of life need a man to help her rediscover herself or bring back the magic in her life?

These stories which claim to break the stereotypes end up creating more stereotypes and are just feeding into the narrative.

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When will we have stories where a woman rediscovers herself on her own? After all the years of experience why does she need to fall back into the same trap? Seriously, like, WHY?

Yes, it is certainly good that more women centric books are written but not so good if they again end up feeding the old stereotype – the gift wrapping doesn’t help if the stuff inside is same and repetitive. Writers, both male and female need to realise this and start writing real stories if they want to have a bigger impact. Not tough but yes always easy to follow the trend – one hit book and then there is a series of books with similar stories until people get bored. Making new trends with new ideas should be the norm.

But yes let’s not be all negative! I hope to read many more stories with the lady as the main character with a little more substance, with not much of importance to ‘the man’, and where she rediscovers herself without his help.

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