Chapter
Three
Conclusion
Nair’s Ladies Coupe analyses the possibilities
of exploring changes within oneself. Her woman protagonist, Akhila
is
always willing and receptive for redefining attitudes and relationships shorn of
undue romantic embellishments. She wants to free herself from the stultifying
traditional concerns and cherish a spontaneous urge towards life. One can trace
the struggle of a woman protaganist to seek a meaningful definition of life. Anita
Nair vociferously puts forth the private truth about what woman want. Her women
feel their emotions strongly, yet retain a constant value judgement, about
themselves as well as, about other relationships they have to live through. Though
they belong to different stratum of society, they do possess an inner
independence to experiment with their life. In the process, life yields self-knowledge
which imparts them the strength of accepting that a woman’s desire
to
succeed like an individual is not incompatible with her desire for love or small
pleasures of domesticity. However Nair is excellent in depicting the inner
furies of women and their rising tone for emancipation and empowerment.
Ladies Coupe is a
portrait
of Indian women who rebel against the tradition bound old mode of life. Anita
Nair, through her novel, questions our hopeless certainty at our imagined
knowledge of worldly wisdom,our false joy in unproductive routine of life, in
short,our state of being. Her characters are so real and close to life. Priyanka
Sinha sounds right when she mentions the commoness of Anita Nair’s characters: “Hers
are commonplace, everyday characters. They are alive, their tears real, their
exasperation genuine and undramatic and their dilemma understandable. It could
very well be a story of anyone of us. We could be them, they us”.
Even
Anita Nair in an interview with Sheela Reddy express the same feeling,”I like
to write about ordinary people and don’t want to write about characters larger
than life”
The protaganist
of the novel Ladies Coupe, Akhila, after
listening to all the stories of different women in the coupe, finds herself
more determinant and more strong. She also realizes that there is no one
perfect solution to her dilemma. No one can teach her how to lead her life but
finds that for sure she had been doing it all wrong. All sacrifices and denial
to self, due to the ‘lakshman rekha’ drawn for women by the hypocrite society
can never be the right way of surviving. Now she wanted everything for herself
whether it is gratification of her physical desires or having family and
children. She even establishes a sexual relationship with a stranger in a hotel
room in Kanyakumari. She doesn’t even bother to ask this stranger’s name. She
is now a reformed and transitional being. This could also be concluded that
Indian womanhood has undergone complete metamorphism. Ladies Coupe tells the story of this metamorphosis-The
metamorphosis of muteness into eloquence. Woman today is open minded, mentally
and emotionally more stable than ever before. In fact, in Nair’s writing, the
restructuring of male-female relationships that can bring
changes in social and interpersonal attitudes, becomes the most important basis of feminist
emancipation.
The women in Ladies Coupe, through the attainment of
selfhood, gain the power not only to speak for themselves but for all
dislocated, isolated, marginalized women in India. By realizing their inner
strength as women, they made a success of their arduous journey from being a
victim to a victor. “.... Women are strong. Women can do everything as well as
men. Women can do much more. But a woman has to seek that vein of strength in
herself. It does not show itself naturally” (LC.209-210). The seminal question
that Anita Nair raises is not gender equality but gender independence, not just
women liberation but woman’s autonomy. Can a woman think of a position or a
status in society independent of man?. Is marriage a social imperative or is a
domestic constraint?. Marriage in
feminist fiction becomes only another enclosure that restricts the movement
towards autonomy and self realization. Akhila is a modern feminist in the
sense. Marikolunthu who belongs to the lowest strata of the society do share
the idea. Then there is Margaret, the
woman from the rich community. So
Marikolunthu, Akhila and Margaret, the representatives of three strata of
society are taken to voice their opinion against the institution called
marriage.
The one theme that underlies
Anita Nair’s novels is the question of finding and then asserting the identity,
then a constant search mainly by the protagonists, for the answer to the
questions like, Who am I?, Do I have a personality of my own? or Do I have just
to be what others want me to be or what I imagine myself to become?. Moreover,
we witness a conflict, internal and external, in this process of defining,
discovering and affirming their self-identity, once they realize what they actually stand for.
Although the degree may vary, the female protagonists of Nair’s novels exhibit eventually an assertion, a direct or
indirect statement of they being self-styled, self motivated and independent
thinking individuals, geared up for facing all the consequences of that assertion
and never give up. This quest for assertive identity has been a continuous
process evolving with each novel Anita Nair has come up with.
Works
Cited
Primary Source:
Nair,
Anita. Ladies
Coupe. New Delhi: Penguin
Books, 2001. Print.
Abrams,
M. H. A
Glossary of Literary Terms. New
Delhi: Centage Learning India, 2008. Print.
Devi, Indra.
“Women in Postcolonial
India: A Study of
Anita Nair’s Ladies Coupe.” Proceedings
of the UGC Sponsored National Conference on “The Postcolonial Novel: Themes
and Techniques.” Ed. Albert V.S., and John Peter
Joseph. Palayamkottai: St. Xavier’s College., (2009): 219-21. Print.
Homans, Margaret. Bearing
the Work: Language and Female Experience
in Nineteenth Century Women’s Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1986. Print.
Nubile, Clara.
The Danger of
Gender: Caste, Class
and Gender in Contemporary Indian
Women’s Writings. New
Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2003. Print.
Reddy, Sheela. “ I’d
like to be Labeled
a Writer of Literary Fiction: An
Interview with Anita Nair.” 16 Feb. 2014.
<http//www.outlookindia.com //
full. asp? fodname. htm.>Web.
Rose, Stella
M. “From Periphery to the Centre: Anita Nair’s Ladies Coupe.” The Quest. (2004):
44-48. Print.
Singh,
Savita. “Repression Revolt and Resolution in Anita Nair’s Ladies Coupe.” The Quest.
(2002): 34-35. Print.
Sinha,
Priyanka. “Women-centric? Yes, feministic? No;
A Review of Ladies
Coupe”. 16 Feb. 2014.
<http // www. tribuneindia.com/
2001/ 200110826/ spectrum/Books.htm.>Web.
Woolf,
Virginia. Modern Fiction Reader. New York: Harvest Books, 1953. Print.
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