http://www.shanlaxjournals.com 68 SHANLAX International Journal of English Examining Caste Consciousness in Kavita Kane’s Karna’s Wife and Fisher Queen’s Dynasty Jasvant V. Rathod Head, Department of English Government Arts and Commerce College Netrang, Bharuch, Gujarat, India Abstract Use of mythological tales for creating revisionist literature is contemporary approach of the mod- ern Indian writers. Some famous works of literature, based on mythology are written by writ- ers like Devdutt Pattanaik, Amish Tripathi, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Volga, Kevin Missal, SarathKomarraju and Krishna Udayashankar. These writers try to reinterpret mythological characters like Shiva, Rama, Draupadi, Amba, Krishna etc. Kavita Kane is one of the popular woman writers of India who renders Indian mythological texts and writes novels. Her fcitons are known for portrayals of the mythical characters who are less discussed. She picks up marginal- ized women characters from the mythical literature of India and retells their stories. She raises isssues of identity, individuality, gender, caste, femininity and patriarchy in her fctional works. In her novels, Karna’s Wife and Fisher Queen’s Dynasty, Kane has woven issues of gender and caste. Both of them are based on the Mahabharata. She retells the stories of Uruvi, Karna’s wife and Satyavati, Shantanu’s wife from their perspectives and explore their struggles against discriminations based on gender and caste. The novelist depicts these women characters with their courage, confdence, individuality and power to resist the class or caste-based violence. As modern literary works, their intersectionality is evident and they can be examined keeping in mind multidisciplinary approach. The present article examines caste consciousness as expressed by Kane in her Karna’s Wife and Fisher Queen’s Dynasty. Keywords: Caste, Class, Discrimination, Gender, Patriarchy, Individuality, Femininity, Mythology, Dynasty The Ramayana and Mahabharata are the most read and interpreted epics of India. As they have unique individual mythical tales, they are also the most adapted, rendered and retold inn many creative artistic creations. One of the most signifcant features of them is their fexibility of concepts and ideas which have not lost their relevance and therefore used widely with new contexts. Moreover, their inter textuality provides freedom to the scholars of the world to rethink, rewrite and re-analyse some signifcant concepts. Their wide infuence to many artistic creations evinces timelessness. Consequently, they have infuenced every feld of human knowledge. They are constantly reexamined keeping in mind modern issues and theories, both Indian and Western. Among the many renditions of these epics, it is notable that many tales of major characters are retold arousing new interest in them. Signifcantly. modern Indian women writers revise mythical tales to address modern issues including equality, gender and identity. They spill more ink by depicting man- woman relationship and demonstrating how the woman has been objectifed from the ancient times. Some of them depict mythical women characters who were depicted in conventional manner keeping in mind patriarchal notions. They re-tell the stories of the women characters who were earlier portrayed submissive and docile. Writers like Kavita Kane portray the less-discussed and OPEN ACCESS Manuscript ID: ENG-2022-11015314 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Month: December Year: 2022 P-ISSN: 2320-2645 E-ISSN: 2582-3531 Received: 18.09.2022 Accepted: 20.11.2022 Published: 01.12.2022 Citation: Rathod, Jasvant V. “Examining Caste Consciousness in Kavita Kane’s Karna’s Wife and Fisher Queen’s Dynasty.” Shanlax International Journal of English, vol. 11, no. 1, 2022, pp. 68–73. DOI: https://doi.org/10.34293/ english.v11i1.5314 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License