Liberating the Voices of Medusa and Shoorpanaka through Feminist Revisionist Mythology

The notion of women empowerment has never lost its relevance even after three waves of feminism. Yet it could be
said that we have reached significant milestones in liberating women from their external and internal confinement .
We had begun to question the image of women that the phallocentric structure of society had created and had
resorted to bring out the individuality of women. Revisionist Mythology is one such significant feat in women
empowerment , where it went to the roots of this image, constructed by the dominant male narrative. It tried to
listen to muffled murmurs of the women from the great myths and tried to amplify them. Thereby exposing the tales
of subjugation and the brutal overshadowing by the patriarchal social structure . This study will analyse two
characters namely Medusa and Shoorpanaka ,in order to understand this silencing of female voice and analyse how
the revisionist mythologists tried to emancipate the female voice. The study envisages the liberation of the voices of
Medusa and Shoorpanaka that is manifested in select works of feminist revisionist mythology.Works of Rachel blau
Duplessis and Poile Sengupta are analysed on common ground of Revisionist Mythology. Thus the study aims to
transcend beyond the boundaries to connect the myth-scapes of Greek mythology and Hindu mythology through the
commonality of the oppression on women.