Download or read book Ideals, Images, and Real Lives written by Alice Thorner and published by Orient Blackswan. This book was released on 2000 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women studies as a distinct field emerged in India in the mid-seventies. But preoccupation with the position of women dates back to more than a century and a half. By the use of methods of history, literary criticism and analysis of discourse, this volume seeks not only to illustrate the broadening of the sphere of women studies in India in recent years, but also to point to the need for relating ideas about women and gender relations to the social and economic forces that shape history.