National Seminar : Recent Indian Women's Fiction

Vision begins to happen in such a life
as if a woman quietly walked away
from the argument and jargon in a room
and sitting down in the kitchen, began
turning in her lap
bits of yarn, calico and velvet scraps,
pulling the tenets of a life together
with no mere will to mastery,
only care for the many-lived, unending
forms in which she finds herself. (Kolodny, 1986)

Marriage is a status aspired by a woman since its existence. Even today, by and large a woman has no social identity without reference to her male members. Simone de Beauvoir comments on the preference by women to marriage over career, “…There are still important social strata in which no other vista opens before her…” and feels, “To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man.” (Beauvoir, 1983:450)

I would like to take up in this paper, three texts, Tiger Hills, Almost Single and Secrets and Sins by three Indian woman writers Sarita Mandanna, Advaita Kala and Jayasree Misra respectively. Tiger Hills and Almost single are debut novels of Mandanna and Kala, while Secrets and Sins is the sixth novel of well-known writer Jayasree Misra. These writers, though possessing different brand of experience and dissimilar skill in writing, are singular in the portrayal of their Eve and her identity in marriage. Their story spans three centuries and three generations; beginning from the small provincial hill town Coorg in Southern India to progressive England and back again to present day modern India. From the demure Devi of the 1880s, to the ravishing Riva of the 1990s, to the articulate Aisha of the 2010s, there is a seamless transition from tradition to modernity. The domesticated, home bound, Devi of Tiger Hills seems to assimilate convincingly into the westernized, egalitarian, sensual Riva of Secrets and Sins, evolving boldly into the poised, tender, daring but diffident Aisha, the quintessential New Woman we see around us; who is firm about what she needs and expects from life.

Devi, Riva and Aisha, the three protagonists of Tiger Hills, Secrets & Sins and Almost Single respectively are feminists. It was the time when feminist activists Matilda Joslyn Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were active in defense of women or when John Mill was supporting education for women. At the time when it was unheard of boys and girls to be seen together or to even express their personal feelings, Devi of Tiger Hills was choosing her own husband. She was just 11 and Machu the hero of Coorg was 21. When Betty Friedan was active against that ‘feminine mystique’ or when Gilbert was vocalizing the situation of earlier women being discouraged from reading and writing; Riva Walia the rabble riser and activist, the one-time president of Leeds University’s Student Union, the editor of feminist magazine Bitten Apple was crusading for humanistic causes. Along with that Virginia Woolf in her essay Professions for Women (Woolf, 1942) and Jane Tompkins in Me and My Shadow (Tompkins, 1996) discuss their inability to express female passion and expressions of female body due to prevalent social taboo and ideology of womanhood. Riva having imbibed Western culture which exhibits tolerance and acceptance of woman’s sexuality had never been as conservative in her views about marriage. Her marriage with Ben is on the rocks as she is the more successful of the two as writers. Aisha had made feminism her way of life. She is independent, economically secure but she needs a man’s name though not his money because of societal expectation. Yet She revels in the freedom of being all woman (54), patronizes trendy hotels, and comically refers to her world as ‘sailing in our raft’, which carries women in India…over twenty-nine and single, with jobs, not careers…”(3) Aisha has often tested the waters of love and moved on to put the failed relationships behind. Aisha is 29 and at certain points in her life laughs at the need in her life to have a man, which her friend Misha laughingly corrects as ‘watchman’ (80). It is interesting to note here the importance of friendship and bonding in women which nurture their well being. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg comments that in the nineteenth century world of female friendship, men made but a shadowy appearance. Devi finds true friend in her childhood friend Devanna, while Riva relies on Susan for her moral support and Aisha has her soul-buddies Misha and Anushka.

The question why women have been pushed into a position inferior to that of man in marriage and society is probed by Katharine M. Roger. Her decisive text The Troublesome Helpmate: A History of Misogyny in Literature discusses why men become misogynists. Greeks, Romans, Aristotle or St. Thomas variously put down women. Katherine stresses that men are in dread of women becoming their masters if freed from their constraints. The medieval era projected sex even within marriage as sin. When Devi is robbed of her chastity in one fateful moment by her childhood friend Devanna, she ends up marrying him to appease her family. Patrick F. Fagan has a fitting comment, “In personal and public life, in kitchen, bedroom and halls of parliament, men wage unremitting war against women.” “if any sex act against a person’s will were considered rape, the majority of men would be rapists.”

Marriage is a social and family commitment. Yet if man is single he is eligible bachelor, if girl is single, she is on the shelf. Diana Meyers endorses Simone de Beauvoir’s 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. Woman 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. Nancy Armstrong ironically suggests, to conduct books and works of instruction for women to make otherwise undistinguished young women desirable to men of better social position (Armstrong, 1996) Aisha tongue-in-cheek enumerates, “…the new male version of the gold-digger, once synonymous with the female of the species…he is good-looking, well educated, suave, sophisticated, with certain honorable pursuits such as golf and polo, and usually in the process of setting up a ‘start-up’ venture. The winning characteristic, however, is his ability to pursue a girl diligently to prove his love before marriage (90). In the words of her gay friend, such men are “…metro sexual,” when they quit their job after getting married. (91).

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.” It is true of Devi or Riva or Aisha when their mother blame them for the men’s transgression. Gilbert and Gubar comment on the attempt to enclose woman in definitions of her person and her potential which, by reducing her to extreme stereotypes of angel or monster subjugate her. (48).

All the three protagonists Devi, Riva and Aisha look for ‘love’ factor in marriage and find it. Devanna loves Devi which is reflected in his garden created for her, in his attempt to kill himself to free her, in his unquestioning acceptance of all her decisions. Devi realizes that Love is what endures, through the years (379). Ben, Riva’s husband knew what would bring the sparkle into their marriage; an unexpected gift, a romantic meal, a holiday somewhere warm, to show how deep he cares for her. Aisha has a sense of well being as she looks at her gay friends Ric and Nic glowing with the kind of love that comes with self-acceptance. Aisha confidently soliloquies, “ I have not felt lonely in the longest time…I bemoan my single status, but that’s just ‘habitual banter’, a Greek chorus, more for entertainment than an honest expression of misery. I am not discontented or lonely-in fact, far from it. I also know I want a wedding, but am I ready for marriage?” (277)

Aisha reflects the change in the modern Indian women. It could be due to education, employment, economic independence, cultural exposure, or increase in self-worth; any or all of the above factors. Marriage is good only with love. The famous tongue-in-cheek first line of Pride and Prejudice declares, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” He also must discover love. As Charlotte Lucas exclaims, “…Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”

                               Bibliography

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.

Kala, Advaita. Almost Single. India: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.

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

Mandanna, Sarita. Tiger Hills. India: Penguin Books, 2010.

Misra, Jaishree. Secrets and Sins. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.

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

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

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>.

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.

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