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Ethical Choice over Destiny: Moral Agency and Female Selfhood in the Fiction of Kavita Kane

Author(s) Md. Ghulam Sarwar, Dr. Binay Shanker Roy
Country India
Abstract This paper examines the mythological fiction of Kavita Kane through the lens of ethical choice and moral agency, arguing that her work represents a significant shift in the portrayal of women in contemporary Indian myth-based narratives. Traditional epic literature often frames women as figures governed by destiny, divine decree, or patriarchal moral codes, reducing them to symbols of virtue, temptation, or sacrifice. Kane’s fiction intervenes in this narrative tradition by reimagining mythological women as reflective moral agents who actively negotiate duty, desire, and selfhood rather than passively submitting to fate.
Drawing on feminist myth criticism and narrative ethics, the paper analyzes selected novels such as Ahalya’s Awakening and Menaka’s Choice to demonstrate how Kane foregrounds ethical deliberation as the foundation of female agency. Her protagonists are not defined by acts of rebellion alone but by their capacity for moral reasoning, introspection, and conscious decision-making within restrictive social and cosmic frameworks. By emphasizing interiority and ethical self-reflection, Kane shifts the locus of agency from external action to internal autonomy, challenging deterministic readings of myth that privilege obedience and sacrifice.
The study further argues that Kane’s feminist intervention does not dismantle mythic tradition but reworks it from within. Rather than rejecting cultural memory, her narratives inhabit familiar mythological structures while exposing their gendered assumptions. Ethical choice becomes a mode of resistance that allows women to reclaim subjectivity without severing ties with tradition. This approach distinguishes Kane’s work from both classical retellings and overtly revisionist narratives, positioning her fiction as a nuanced form of feminist mythmaking.
Through close textual analysis supported by existing critical scholarship, the paper situates Kavita Kane’s fiction within broader debates on feminist reinterpretation, moral autonomy, and narrative authority. It concludes that Kane’s emphasis on ethical choice offers a redefinition of feminine selfhood in myth, one that privileges moral agency over predetermined destiny. By restoring ethical consciousness to mythological women, her fiction expands the possibilities of feminist engagement with cultural memory and affirms the relevance of myth as a site of ethical and gendered re-examination.
Keywords Kavita Kane; ethical choice; moral agency; feminist myth criticism; female selfhood; destiny and free will; mythological fiction; narrative ethics
Field Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In Volume 16, Issue 2, July-December 2025
Published On 2025-12-06
Cite This Ethical Choice over Destiny: Moral Agency and Female Selfhood in the Fiction of Kavita Kane - Md. Ghulam Sarwar, Dr. Binay Shanker Roy - IJAIDR Volume 16, Issue 2, July-December 2025.
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