A Treatise on Marriage

All over the world and “In India there is no greater event in a family than a wedding, dramatically evoking every possible social obligation, kinship bond, traditional value, impassioned sentiment, and economic resource.” (Source: U.S. Library of Congress) Simone de Beauvoir states, “Marriage today still retains, for the most part, this traditional form…There are still important social strata in which no other vista opens before her…Even when she is more emancipated, she is led to prefer marriage to a career because of the economic advantages held by men…who she hopes will make a quicker or greater success than she could.” (450) Beauvoir declares, “To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man.” (Beauvoir, 1983) Diana Meyers charges, “Deeming women emotional and unprincipled, these thinkers advocated confining women to the domestic sphere where their vices could be neutralized, even transformed into virtues, in the role of submissive wife and nurturant mother.” Virginia Woolf in her essay Professions for Women highlights her own inability to express female passion and expressions of female body because of social taboos and central idealogies of womanhood. (Woolf, 1942). Jane Tompkins too expresses the same embarrassment in expressing her feelings in her writings in Me and My Shadow. (Tompkins, 1996). Comments Wilcox “Once she had been ‘trimmed’ and ‘garnished’ for the marriage market, a young woman continued to be expected to remain silent in marriage.” (Wilcox, 2007).

Woman was never deemed complete without marriage. Diana Meyers observes, “…Simone de Beauvoir's trenchant observation, “He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other,” sums up why the self is such an important issue for feminism. To be the Other is to be the non-subject, the non-person, the non-agent—in short, the mere body. In law, in customary practice, and in cultural stereotypes, women’s selfhood has been systematically subordinated, diminished, and belittled, when it has not been outright denied.” (Meyers, Stanford) In her quest for acceptance, woman sprints blindly towards marriage. Love becomes the casualty in the melee for pipping the post. Both men and women settle on devotion to marriage, instead of devotion to each other in a bid to maintain the status quo. Consequently, import of marriage as a social institution has never diminished. As centuries have passed, woman is parceled from father to husband. She is always in a state of flux, grooming herself for marriage spawning a vast industry by itself for match- makers, go-betweens, on-line marriage bureaus, reality shows, on-line dating, friends and relatives, to pitch in and help the hapless girl and boy get married. Her education too is centered on marriage-grooming. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg observes, “These school years ordinarily marked a girl's first separation from home. They served to wean the daughter from her home, to train her in the essential social graces, and, ultimately, to help introduce her into the marriage market.” Nancy Armstrong ironically suggests, “In order to make otherwise undistinguished young women desirable to men of better social position, conduct books and works of instruction for women…as those that such men should want in a wife.” (Armstrong, 1996) Nobody tells a man that he has to get married. If he is single he is eligible bachelor and if she is single she is on the shelf. He is complacent in the knowledge that he is a good catch in the marriage race because he is “he” and not “she”  

Greeks were virulently misogynistic. Romans allowed women more freedom. Aristotle reduced them to mere incubators. St. Thomas consistently assumed that a woman is her husband’s property. (67) The medieval era projected sex even within marriage as sin; because of the original sin of Eve, and accordingly all women to be punished throughout their lives. Katherine M. Rogers’ The Troublesome Helpmate: A History of Misogyny in Literature discusses why men become misogynists. She stresses that men are in dread of women becoming their masters if freed from their constraints. “If femininity is equated with sexuality and sexuality with sin, woman is naturally seen as a degraded being whose only hope of salvation is through suppressing herself as much as her frailty permits." (22) Rogers quoted from The Saturday Review, August 28, 1920: “[It] is man’s last stand against the subversion of his rights of virility by a tyranny which, unless we are much mistaken, will prove to be at once humiliating and dangerous. Humiliating, because it is the submission of the superior to the inferior sex. Dangerous, because, if it be pushed beyond a certain point, it will be overthrown by an appeal to physical force.” (217) H.L. Mencken, a confirmed misogynist, claims that: Men destroy themselves trying to satisfy the (financial) needs of women. Marriage is slavery with man the slave. (Rogers, 1966)

Gilbert vocalizes the situation of earlier women being discouraged from reading and writing, deeming it to be men’s activities. Women’s entire life centered on serving men. Hence, they did not need education. “From Eve, Minerva, Sophia and Galatea onward, after all, patriarchal mythology defines women as created by, from, and for men, the children of male brains, ribs, and ingenuity.” (Gilbert,1986) The first major feminist struggle in the nineteenth century was for a married woman’s right to her own property and income, since at that time a husband was legally entitled to all his wife owned and anything she might earn.” (210) Betty Friedan in her pioneering book The Feminine Mystique comments, “The old prejudices - women are animals, less than human, unable to think like men, born merely to breed and serve men - were not so easily dispelled by the crusading feminists, by science and education, and by the democratic spirit after all. They merely reappeared in the forties, in Freudian disguise. The feminine mystique derived its power from Freudian thought; for it was an idea born of Freud, which led women, and those who studied them, to misinterpret their mothers’ frustrations, and their fathers’ and brothers’ and husbands’ resentments and inadequacies, and their own emotions and possible choices in life.” (Friedan, 1963).

Judith Lowder Newton in Power and The “Woman’s Sphere” analyzes, “…decline in women’s economic activity and the recognized value of their work was linked with a decline in their status as well…unpaid domestic work lost visibility…” (Newton, 1996).Nirmala Prakash concludes, “The contradictory attitudes expressed about women in classical texts persist in contemporary society. On the one hand, they are regarded as the highest embodiment of purity and power - a symbol of religiousness and spirituality, on the other; they are viewed essentially as weak and dependent creatures requiring constant guidance and protection. While girls are also considered necessary, the birth of a boy has been considered more desirable.” (Prakash).

The marriage landscape everywhere is now slowly and perceptibly changing. The change is pronounced in western countries and glaringly obvious in urban India. The rural India seems to be caught up in a time wrap with women being exploited in the marriage market as before. What has wrought this change in the modern Indian women? It could be education, employment, economic independence, different cultural exposure, and increase in self-worth; any or all of the above factors. Woolf’s essay Professions for Women describes Angel in the house symbolizing domestic bliss, “…that selfless, sacrificial woman in the nineteenth century whose sole purpose in life was to soothe, to flatter, and to comfort the male half of the world’s population.” Gilbert and Gubar assert, “She must confront precursors who are almost exclusively male, and therefore significantly different from her…they attempt to enclose her in definitions of her person and her potential which, by reducing her to extreme stereotypes (angel, monster) drastically conflict with her sense of self-that is, of her subjectivity, her autonomy, her creativity.(48). What is discernable today is the New Woman who has distanced herself from Woolf’s angel in the house transforming into Gilbert and Guber’s mad woman in the attic when suppressed. She is poised, senescent and bolstered by the support of her friends. She is not alone and helpless anymore. She finds strength and support in friendship which nurtures her marriage. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg comments on, “The female friendship of the nineteenth century, the long-lived intimate, loving friendship…ranged from the supportive love of sisters, through the enthusiasms of adolescent girls, to sensual avowals of love by mature women. It was a world in which men made but a but a shadowy appearance…Young girls helped each other overcome homesickness and endure the crises of adolescence. They gossiped about beaux, incorporated each other into their own kinship systems, and attended and gave teas and balls together. Married life, too, was structured about a host of female rituals…supervised by mothers, sisters, and loving friends… structured around elaborated unisexed rituals. (Rosenberg, 1975)

Meanwhile, marriage has not gone out of fashion nor demand for it has diminished. It has become a bond of comfort and not a band of necessity. A New Woman, before she is ready to marry tries to know the guy well to test their compatibility. Both are equal partners with love blossoming before or after marriage between them. There is no hesitation in dissolving the marriage when either love or commitment is found lacking. Marriageable age of both boys and girls has gone up. They are knowledgeable about love and sex and then settle down to marry. Because of different set of rules for boys and girls and the patriarchal censure on unchaste girls, the marriageable girls still look and act demure. Most of the younger male generation is satisfied if the girl is faithful after marriage, while not poking into her unnecessary past. Then again this change has come over the Indian milieu in the recent past. While western culture exhibited tolerance and acceptance of woman’s sexuality, the Indian mindset is slowly grinding towards that goal. More and more girls are being educated, encouraged to work, allowed to stay alone, their social life accepted and their decisions trusted by their parents.

Works cited:

Annette Kolodny. “Dancing Through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism.” Critical Theory Since 1965.Florida: Florida State University Press. 1986. 507

Armstrong, Nancy. “The Rise of The Domestic Woman.” Feminisms: an anthology of literary theory and criticism. Eds., 

Robyn.R.Warhol. and Diane Price Herndl. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers university press, 1996.894.

Beauvoir de Simon. The Second Sex. trans. H.M.Parshley. Penguin, 1983. 450  .

Friedan, Betty. “Chapter 5: The Sexual Solipsism of Sigmund Freud.” The Feminine Mystique. New York: Norton, 1963.

Gilbert, Sandra M. “Literary Paternity.” Critical Theory Since 1965.Florida: Florida State University Press. 1986.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Mad Woman in the Attic: “Infection in the sentence: The Woman writer and the Anxiety of Authorship” New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300084580.

Meyers, Diana. Feminist Persepectives on the Self.  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-self/>.

Newton, Judith Lowder Power and The “Woman’s Sphere” Feminisms: an anthology of literary theory and criticism. Eds., Robyn.R.Warhol. and Diane Price Herndl. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers university press, 1996. 775.

Patrick F. Fagan, Robert E. Rector, and Lauren R. Noyes. Why Congress Should Ignore Radical Feminist Opposition to Marriage http://www.ejfi.org/family/family-10htm

Prakash, Nirupama. “Status of Women in Indian Society-Issues & Challenges in processes of Empowerment.” Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, India.

<http://www.gasatinternational.org/conferences/G11Mauritius/proceedings/proceedings%205.pdf>.  <rupa@bits-pilani.ac.in>

Rogers M. Katherine.  The Troublesome Helpmate: A History of Misogyny in Literature.  University of Washington Press, 1966. < http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/book-sum/rogers1.html>.

Rosenberg, Carroll Smith. “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America.” Signs. Vol 1. No.1 (1975): 1:29<http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0097-9740%28197523%291%3A1%3C1%3ATFWOLA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-H>.

Stein, Allen. Mississippi Quarterly . Reference Publications. The Summer. (2004):6

<http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3524/is_3_57/ai_n29149803/pg_6/?tag=content;col1>.

Tompkins, Jane. “Me and My Shadow”. Feminisms: an anthology of literary theory and criticism. Eds., Robyn.R.Warhol. and Diane Price Herndl. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers university press, 1996.1080.

U.S. Library of Congress < http://countrystudies.us/india/86.htm>.

Wilcox, Helen. "Feminist criticism in the Renaissance and seventeenth century." A History Of Feminist Literary Criticism. Eds Gill Plain and Susan Sellers. U K:Cambridge University Press. 2007:29

Woolf, Virginia. The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. London: Hogarth, 1942

National Seminar: Contemporary Fiction:Indian Women Writers

Richard Dawkins in The God delusion narrates “As a child, my wife hated her school and wished she could leave. Years later, when she was in her twenties, she disclosed this unhappy fact to her parents, and her mother asked “...why didn’t you come to us and tell us?”  Her reply holds mirror up to the plight we women were in before we woke up to the reality; “…But I didn’t know I could.” (Dawkins, 23). Adrienne Rich in When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision states, “The sleepwalkers are coming awake…” It is also true, “This awakening of dead or sleeping consciousness has already affected the lives of millions of women, even those who don’t know it yet.” Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, has Helmer admonishing her, “Before everything else you’re a wife and a mother.” Nora’s reply, “I don’t believe that any longer. I believe that, before everything else, I am a human being, just as much as you are” (Ibsen, 74) is the true awakening of her consciousness, her humanness. Tornqvist suggests, “As Ibsen himself indicates in his speech…Nora’s conviction that she is ‘first and foremost a human being’ indicates, the connotation being that as a woman she fights for human rights.” (6). The Doll’s House by Ibsen is pertinent to woman-situation even today.  It is “....the exploration in dramatic form of the fate of contemporary woman to whom society denied any reasonable opportunity for self-fulfillment in a male world”. Ibsen’s jottings asked: “These women of the modern age, mistreated as daughters, as sisters, as wives, not educated in accordance with their talents, debarred from following their real mission, deprived of their inheritance, embittered in mind-these are the ones who supply the mothers for the next generation. What will result from this?” Susan Manly rightly cites Mary Wollstonecraft, “…the ‘desire of being always women’, rather than human beings first and foremost, that is the ‘very consciousness that degrades the sex’” (Ibsen, 9). It is laudable that in spite of not knowing, where she would head when she slammed out the door, Nora is committed to determining her identity, and living with dignity.

Feminist criticism records countless opinions on woman by early feminists and social critics. Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex: Introduction, Woman as Other inquires “what is a woman?” and charges “For him she is sex-absolute sex, no less” (13-16).   Carolyn worries, “I sometimes felt that we were just talking to ourselves when we should have been working in the public realm to change the political system known as patriarchy…” (Heilbrun, 16). Dorothy Sayers in her 1938 lecture queries “Are Women Human?” (Sayers, 165:78). Dorothy Parker firmly states as cited by Toril, “...My idea is that all of us, men as well as women, should be regarded as human beings” (Toril, 179). Brownmiller reveals, “As the first permanent acquisition of man, his first piece of real property, woman was, in fact, the original building block…” ( Brownmiller, 17:18). Women in literature and in real life have struggled to be accepted as wholly human as men. Mary Ellmann’s Thinking about women (1968) draws the 11 major stereotypes of femininity as presented by male writers and critics:  formlessness, passivity, instability, confinement, piety, materiality, spirituality, irrationality, compliancy, the Witch, the Shrew (Ellman, 55). Ancient Vedic literature such as Ramayana and Mahabharata portray women as two stereotypes; Sita the submissive and Draupadi the defiant confronting the male ego.

Women’s freedom movements, examine the quandary of identity-less woman. Betty Friedan talks of the problem that afflicted the American women of the 1960s, “The problem is always being the children’s mommy or the minister’s wife and never being myself” (Friedan, 73). As Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressing The Woman suffrage association (1892) observed more than a hundred years ago, feminism challenges women to concede they are isolated individuals as well. She exhorted women and men, to shape their identities, by becoming aware of themselves as individuals, as in the context of, Juliet Mitchell’s “consciousness raising”, without resort to stereotypes. Templeton observes, if women are to be truly free of the “chivalric ideal and the notion of a female mind” (Templeton, 138:45), they must strive for an identity.

The search for identity for a woman is the first step towards her becoming human. Identity as defined by the self, also encompass gender, homeland, geography, occupation, and role within the community. Earlier, a woman’s identity was in that of a wife, mother and daughter. Rajeshwari posits “…… within the family that the girl-children experience their first feelings of rejection or discrimination on account of their sex…recognition and articulation of this oppression is the first step in a feminist consciousness-raising…” (Rajan, 80:1) Juliet Mitchell clarifies, “…transforming the hidden, individual fears of women into a shared awareness of the meaning of them as social problems…this process is consciousness raising” (Mitchell, 61). Doris Lessing’s In Room 19,  which depicts Susan and her struggle in search of her true identity strikes a chord in us. (Lessing, 527) So does Kate Chopin’s poignant The Story of an Hour which outlines the tragic death of Mrs Mallard when her hopes of being free is dashed to the ground with the unexpected reappearance of her dead husband.

Tradition has always been a very staunch tool in patriarchal society to subjugate men and women. From the very beginning, girls and boys are expected to play the designated conventional roles doled out to them. Millet affirms, “Patriarchy’s chief institution is the family. It is both a mirror of and a connection with the larger society; a patriarchal unit within a patriarchal whole” (Millet, 25). Marriage too is a patriarchal tool. Sexual dominion is the most insidious ideology and concept of control of patriarchal society. A woman is faceless wife or a mother within the marriage. “The culture that created a Sita and a Gandhari has denied women the possibility of being a person capable of achieving individuation…and reluctant to view them as anything other than, objects of consumption, bearers of embryos, rearers of children, and guardians of home, and hearth”, opines Singh. (65:66).

In the Indian society a women is considered really lucky and happy if she has a good marriage, children and financial security. Sahgal delineates the helplessness of Indian women and indifference of society to their plight in marriage, “Our society conditions young girls to believe that Real Life consists of getting married having children, promoting one’s husband’s career by planning huge, endless meals for overfed people, buying the latest model of this and that and so-forth.” (Sharma, literaryindia.com)  Simone asserts, “The tragedy of marriage is not that it fails to assure woman the promised happiness-there is no such thing as assurance in regard to happiness-but that it mutilates her; it dooms her to repetition as routine.”(Beauvoir, 1947:502)

Recently the novels by women writers, take up the issue of personal problems, mainly of marriage and sex. Myles suggests, “…the creative writers especially woman fictionalists resorted to examining the role of the modern Indian women vis-à-vis family and society differently and more positively” (Myles, 308).  It focuses attention on the definition of freedom, creativity, and issues related to female oppression. Women are now learning to know and discover themselves, while working through legal, political and silent movements and psychological barriers. Seshadri states, “The new woman is assertive and self-willed, searching to discover her true self.” (Seshadri, 12). In this paper I would like to take up three texts; Mango-coloured Fish, Madras on rainy days, and Difficult Daughters by three Indian woman writers Kavery Nambisan, the upcoming woman writer Samina Ali and Manju Kapur respectively. The writers fall under the broad description of woman-writers, as they uphold the cause of woman in their writings. This argument would focus on the question of female identity with in the domestic circle of family. It poses the question- why can’t a woman be sufficient unto herself, without being tied to the relational self of a mother, daughter and wife. The three novels work out an essentially feminine argument on marriage. The argument being; every girl should be married within that marriageable age and to a highly suitable boy, approved by family and society. If not that girl is looked at as an oddity, a failure. In the patriarchal Indian society, marriage is a means of liberation from being socially condemned, a part of life’s pleasure, a phase of initiating Dharma, a connection with social and religious obligations. Love was not obligatory in marriage. A woman married, to have an identity. Manju Kapoor has given focus to marital bliss and the woman’s role at home as that which needs to be changed. Her bold thought and theme in those times is without adopting feminist posture. Kavery Nambisan seems aware of the fact that independent thinking due to their education makes a woman, the target of society’s and family’s intolerance. Samina Ali conveys the message that, impact of patriarchy on the Indian society, varies from that of the west. Each culture has its own way of dealing with its concerns. A panorama spanning a century opens up before us in these three novels. While Manju kapoor paints at the backdrop of freedom struggle the image of suffering but stoic Virmati; Kavery Nambisan handles with deep insight the anguish of Shari and countless Sharis in post-independent modern india, and Samina Ali zooms off into the sunset bridging India and USA in the vibrant portrayal of American born Layla, who is forced to be traditional.

Virmati the female protagonist in Difficult daughters is the first born of eleven children, the daughter of Kasturi and Suraj Prakash on whom the whole burden of household work falls. Due to her busy routine of house work and caring for her siblings, she cannot do justice to her studies and fails. She falls in love with a professor, a man who is already married. The protagonist Shari in Mango coloured fish, is of marriageable age, and is about to be married. It is a “semi” arranged marriage. Her Family looks up to distant Delhi for role models and is ashamed of her very dullness in her looks and her achievements. But now, for the first time in her life, the Family has approved of 22-year-old Shari's decision to marry an upwardly mobile computer whiz. Inevitably, this hearty familial support sets off the warning bells in her mind. In her family’s newfound unity, the lack of basic thread holding her to the family is visible to her. Layla in Madras on rainy days has been brought up in U.S.A and India. On her previous trip to America, she gets romantically and sexually involved with a student named Nate. Their relationship is risky, and now she is to be married to a man she hardly knows and the family is in crisis because of that.  Layla is defiant about the union the family has so carefully arranged for her, a marriage in which Layla has no interest, and which could be dangerous for her if her lost virginity and her pregnancy were revealed. Layla realizes that she has no choice but to forget the freedom to be her own self, to choose her own life, and instead submit to marriage. If she doesn’t she will be banished from her family and estranged from her roots.

Virmati wants to focus on her education but the lure of the professor distracts and traps her. She cannot hold out against the professor even though she knows it is an illicit love. Her dilemma pushes her towards suicide. Shari finds Gautam, a white collared computer professional, whom she meets in a party, who was the very object of her affection, now a source of disgust and suffering. She starts to doubt her love for him. All the indications that they are incompatible emotionally and intellectually were already visible but it took some time for her, for them to sink in. She pulls back from the matrimonial brink wracked by anxiety. Layla barricades herself behind the closed bedroom door, lies on her bed and listens as her mother throws herself at the other side of the door, begging her, cursing her, for not wanting to marry. Time moves on, “…the dust particles in the air are no longer visible. Nor are the outlines of my own skin.” (4). Layla’s fate too seems to disintegrate into nothingness, with slicing herself into different parts; of daughter, wife or mother. American culture is presented as distant but freeing, like a clear blue sky seen through a window, inviting the protagonist to soar. Indian culture is, as being present right there and then and claustrophobic. It is part prison, part yearned for home and the conflict between love and restriction is too deep.

 

The focal point of the novel is always on the characterization. Every character himself or herself is a story, and an interesting one at that. Virmati’s mother is too overburdened with her large family to notice any changes going on inside Virmati as a woman. Shari’s mother does not have a satisfying bond with her daughter. Shari does not find any role models in, the marriages of convenience of her mother, sister, friend or the rocky marriage of her brother. Layla’s mother is both a slayer and a savior, trying to cram her daughter into that very mould which had killed her womanhood. Layla narrates, “Amme’s sacrifices, the reason she had stayed on with Dad after he had cast her away, erasing her own future, was so she could give me the one thing she no longer possessed, a husband” (44). Individual voice and romantic expectations are luxuries that Indian womanhood simply cannot afford.

Virmati’s suicide attempt, buys her time, reminding us of the attempts at suicide by Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and recently Carolyn Heilbrun, who at the age of 70 though had discovered “Life was good” still opt suicide.” (Holt, FrugalFun.com). Virmati completes her education and returns to Amritsar to work as a principal, but because of Professor’s visits, she is dismissed. Shari embarks on a journey to Vrindaban to her brother’s place to understand her life. The time away from the family, helps her to put the different pieces of herself together. The split vanishes, unity arrives; a strong unity, which not only makes her defy others, but herself too. Layla is torn between clashing identities; dutiful Muslim daughter and free, independent American woman. She is desperately trying to glean some human connection or even identity out of the cultural and familial system that would suffocate her and countless women like her.  When Sameer and Layla go to Madras on their honeymoon, they discover the terrible truth about each other; Sameer that Layla was pregnant with another man’s child and Layla that Sameer is gay. For Sameer, Layla symbolizes freedom and escape from the conventional society and restricting religion. He reiterates to Layla that, they will go to America and make a new life for themselves. However such transnational movements don’t provide an ultimate answer, to the innate sickness of a conventionally anti-female society.

The novels portray, the deeply felt and suffered rebellion by the female protagonists, against the entire system of social relationships. There is a question posed on the concept of “real love”. Professor marries Virmati and returns home with her. During her conjugal life Virmati feels that, it would have been better if she had not been married to Harish. (195). After sometime she gives birth to a daughter Ida. Though Virmati, the central character of the novel, rebels against tradition, can she be a guerrilla girl or who can say “we are feminist masked avengers in the tradition of anonymous do gooders like Robin Hood, Wonder woman and Bat man? She is impelled by the inner need to feel loved as an individual rather than as a responsible daughter. Shari feels soul-connection with her blind friend Naren but is unable to share her grief with him, as she could share her happiness with him. “Sometimes we would think the same thought and it was like sipping through one straw” (99). She felt her love for Naren was good and wholesome but it must have been flawed. Suren Swamy, the Swamy at the temple, hints at the strength of character that Shari possessed but was not aware of it in her. (233:34). Once she had done that she would realize that love was never flawed. Layla knows that Sameer , “… is incapable of making me his wife” (243) nor any other women at all (249).

The novel’s assertion is that, female emancipation will be fully realized only when rights to the female body is given to itself, right to its own truth, its right to self-possession. Men accept the body and bodily response as natural, as part of human identity as they have been conditioned and sanctioned by society to do so. Are women’s bodies and bodily responses less natural? The novelists highlight the struggle of women to resist the internalization of role models thrust on them. These literatures of silence depict the cultural suffering women undergo, punctuating the concerns of feminist theorists such as ‘Showalter’ as they struggle with the emergence of their individual selves, a phenomenon that has swept the nation. Helen Cixous in The Laugh of the Medusa insists on the necessity of women to write to themselves, as a critique against Showalter’s Feminist criticism in the wilderness. Cixous insists on writing from the body (Sellers, 1996), to unfold the resources of the unconscious.

Virmati has to fight against the power of the motherhood, as well as the oppressive forces of patriarchy. Towards the end she tries to become free, free even from the oppressive love of her husband. She chooses to live alone. She gets branded as a difficult daughter by the family as she goes in search of an identity. Then she had to return. “For the moment, however, with the unrest in both the cities, the most practical solution was to go home to Amritsar and her husband” (DD, 245). Shari gradually musters up the courage for a cathartic emptying of the soul. It comes as no surprise that, Shari breaks off her engagement after her period of soul searching. She would go back to teaching the primary school children. “…When my moment of reckoning comes, I shall know what to do.” (241). Interestingly Bell Hooks writes, “I would start with stripping down to what fundamentally informs my life, which is that I m a seeker on the path” (Lewis, About.com: Women’s History). Layla learns of the brutal death of her young pregnant cousin Heera and Sameer’s inadequacy in preventing it, even though being in the vicinity. That is the turning point for Layla and Sameer. He owns up to his true character of cowardice and frees Layla from her vows as a wife. He says, “This is what your husband can provide. You mustn’t Ask me anything more” (MRD, 302).” In an ironic refraction from Akka Mahadevi’s legendary abandoning of her kingly husband, Layla leaves as the Muharram and Ganesh processions are being carried to their logical end. She is free now. “…So I was. My body hidden and safe under the chador, belonging only to me”(307).

Marriage is a much-flogged metaphor and its rejection is an expected expression of rebellion by erudite women. The novelists focuses on the evolution of thought within educated women in India, especially of the middle-class and the upper middle-class, westernized and modern but standing at cross-roads as they face the day to day dilemmas between the traditional organized life filled with role-playing and the western influenced modern life full of excitement and adventure. The drama of life inevitably plays out within the domestic circle. The narration by the female protagonists in a confessional mode weaves a myth of beauty, hollowness of upper-middle-class ambitions, elusive pursuit for meaning in life and quest for identity. There is deep sympathy and understanding of the conflicts that plague Layla or Shari or Virmati, the female protagonists who inhabit two planes of thought- traditional and modern or as in the case of Layla; India and the U.S.A.  Buckley, quoting Margaret Fuller in her Woman in the nineteenth century asserts, “Even if woman asks for equality from “the rostrum or the desk,” she will be misunderstood because she will no longer be a socially recognizable “she”. She will be masculinized by expressing her self and usurping the male’s role in society, let alone what becomes of “her” by expressing desire for a social other.”  (Buckley, 37). The questions that a self would ask is- what am I to others? - What is my role? It is an attempt at an exploration of the disturbed psyche of the woman; bringing forth the idea that ultimately each being is driven to fall back upon its own lonely resources eventually.

Works cited:                                                         

                                                                 

Ali Samina.  Madras on Rainy Days. Kundli: Replika Press Pvt. Ltd, 2004.Referred to as MRD

A History of Feminist Literary Criticism. Ed. Gill Plain, Susan Sellers. New York: Cambridge university press, 2007. 50.

Bauer, Margaret.  Chopin in Her Times:  Critical Essays on Patriarchy and Feminine Identity.  Durham:  Duke UP, 1997. 146.

Beauvoir, de Simone.  The Second Sex (1949). Trans. H. M. Parshley. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.  13:16                      

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