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.
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