Chapter One
Introduction
Indian writing in English has attained
an independent status in the realm of world literature. Contemporary Indian
English Literature no longer remains limited to the contributions made by the
writers who live in India.
It has broadened the scope of fictional concerns of these writers from purely
Indian to the global and transnational. Their writings show how the
developments in one part of the world have immediate and wider impact on
different parts of the world. Thus the writings of Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa
Lahiri, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, M.G Vassanji, V.S.Naipaul, to name a few,
provide an inside view of the problems faced by the displaced people in their
adopted homelands and it questions the traditional understanding of the concepts
like home, nation, native and alien. Other significant writers of the
contemporary Indian English scene like Arundhati Roy, Anita Nair, Vikram Seth,
Salman Rushdie, Jaishree Misra, Shashi Deshpande, Chetan Bhagat etc attempt to
highlight the sociopolitical scene in India after Independence.
Fictions by women
writers constitute a major segment of the contemporary Indian writing in English. The influence of
feminism is very much visible in the writings of the modern Indian women
writers like Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Anita Desai, Nayantara Sahgal,
Kamala Das, Bharati Mukherjee, Shoba De, Kiran Desai, Anita Nair, Arundhati
Roy, et al. These women writers show a very keen awareness about the social
change and they try to reveal the condition of women in the male dominated Indian society through their writings.
Feminism emerged in
the West as a revolt against the patriarchal set up. Most feminist believe that
“the western civilization is pervasively patriarchal – that is, it is male
centred and controlled, and is organized and conducted in such a way as to
subordinate women to men in all cultural domains: familial, religious,
political, economic, social, legal and artistic” (Abrams 94).
Feminism as a movement became popular in the 1960s. It
aims at the liberation of women from various manifestations of gender based
discrimination and exploitation. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) in his famous
book The Subjection of Women (1869) and Mary Wollstone Craft (1750-1797)
A Vindication of Rights of Women (1792) were the pioneers of the
Feminist Movement or Feminism. They frankly exposed the inhuman injustice done
to women and the hypocrisy underlying the obnoxious patriarchal social order.
Mill asserted that the liberty of women was essential for the evolution of a
just and orderly social order. Mary Wollstone Craft vehemently protested
against institutions that crushed women. She was an ardent champion of women’s
rights and liberties. The next important work is Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own which exposes the deprivation and exploitation
women suffered in English society.
The feminist writers of the 1960s exposed the oppression
and marginalization of women under male hegemony. A large number of women
writers – Helene Cixous, Elaine Showalter, Kate Millett, Julia Kristeva, Alice
Jardine, and many others stood firmly for the emancipation and empowerment of
women. They challenged the unjust and exploitative gender biased social
constructions and tried to change the general perception of women’s place in
society.
In Indian social thought, Manu, the law-giver of Hindu Dharma Shastra assigns woman a secondary
position in relation to man. According to Manu Smriti or Manu Samhita, a woman
should depend upon a man from her cradle to grave and should never live as an
independent entity. Manu Smriti as quoted by M. Stella Rose states:
During childhood, a female
must depend upon her father, during youth, upon her husband; her husband being
dead, upon her sons, if she had no sons, upon the near kinsmen
of her husband, in default, upon those of her father, if she had no paternal
kinsmen, upon the Sovereign, a woman must never govern herself as she likes (44).
Manu Smriti endorses servile existence of woman
therefore curbs the growth and development of woman as a free and autonomous
human being. Thus, the traditional representation of women in literary works of
both the west and the east has been done from the patriarchal point of view. As
suggested by Margaret Homans, the representation of women have long been “based
on pre-suppositions about gender that devalue women is constitutively masculine
while the silent object is feminine” (xxii).
Though many theorists have legitimatized the oppression
of women by insisting on their moral, rational and epistemological inferiority,
down the ages many sensitive writers have
also attempted to depict the problems faced by women. One of the primal and seminal
concerns of feminism is to declare that a woman is also a ‘being’. A woman is not the “other”; she is not an
appendage to man. She is an autonomous being, capable of, through trial and
error, finding her own way of self-assertion and individuality.
Vehement attack of the patriarchal system alone cannot
be identified as the thematic preoccupation of Indian women writers. Indian
writers in general and women writers in particular derive inspiration from
extensive parameter of themes, techniques, language and characterization. In a
single work, one may find individualistic, social, political, economic,
religious, spiritual and also psychological
patterns co-existing. Along with the gender issues they
discuss a series of issues and problems that are related to the society.
The emergence of a new generation
of Indian women
in the 1980s and 1990s who tend to interrogate the
tradition and images of women in terms of feminity and female identities and patriarchal value, led
to a radical change in attitude towards sex, social roles and marital
relationships. This concept makes many Indian women novelists to explore female
subjectivity. Among these post-modern Indian women novelists, Anita Nair is one
of the finest writers who shows her typical regional ambience of Kerala with
its wide variety of people of all classes. She wrote five novels so far, based on the trajectory of female
identity. Her maiden novel, The
Better Man has placed her among the most self conscious Indian novelists
and her second novel, Ladies Coupe (LC) is her best work. Rural Kerala is much depicted
in her novels and it reveals her deep connection with her
motherland. But she rules out the possibility of a nostalgic writer as she
writes on different subjects.
Anita Nair’s stories are
intense and replete with cultural detail. Her short poems are in narrative
mode, giving a local habitation and a name to agonising thoughts. One of the
finest example for this statement is Ladies
Coupe (2001). It was rated as one of 2002’s top five book of the year and
was translated into more than 25 languages around the world. The novel revolves around
the question, whether it is really possible for a woman to survive without a
man’s protection. Akhila, the protagonist of the novel, is a 45 year old single
woman working in an income tax office. Born in a conservative Brahmin family,
Akhila was brought up in an environment in which the society had the supreme
power and the people living in this society would never ever dare to rewrite
its norms. Akhila’s mother belonged to
the old school of thought. She, through her actions and words, taught Akhila
that a perfect woman is the one who blends with the surroundings and the
environment. According to her, “There is no such thing as an equal marriage. It
is best to accept that the wife is inferior to the husband. That way, there can
be no strife, no disharmony” (LC 14). But the point is that this very mother of
Akhila, on becoming a widow, expected her daughter to play the man of the
house.
Akhila played different
roles in her life; as a daughter, sister, aunt, etc but never got to be
herself. She was never Akhila until one fine day when she realized that she has
got nothing from life, not even good memories to look back to. ‘To change the
course of her life’, Akhila decides to do something she had never done before.
She buys a one way ticket to Kanyakumari to escape from the norms that stopped
her from being Akhilandeshwari. Anita Nair compares this journey to a journey
of self realization. On the way, in the ladies coupe, Akhila meets five ladies,
each with a story of her own but all of them had one thing in common and that
was their search for the real denotation of life. This journey changed Akhila’s life
completely. This was a journey from innocence to experience.
These five ladies helped
Akhila realize that she had given the society superfluous power of ruling her
life. These women and their stories helped Akhila to find out herself and the
answer to her biggest question – can a woman stay single and be happy or does
she need a man to feel complete?. There was a time when a woman needed a man
for protection but today she needs a man for companionship. This realization
makes Akhila get back in touch with the guy she fell in love with, someone whom
she did not accept for the fear of the society and its views upon an ordinary
girl’s life. The more she wants to get rid of her life she had lived for
others, she desires more of Hari and executes her decision to get reunited.
Finally she succeeds in her defiance against patriarchy. She subverts the
repressive forces of patriarchal ideas that
chained her and prevented her
from discovering her true ‘self’.
The repressive forces against women are varied in their manifestations – a
patriarchal society and paternalism;
sexual politics in marital relationships; sexual stereotyping with its
imposed code on female sexuality and an imposed definition of female roles; the
repression and marginalization of women affected through traditional
institutions in society and many more. The stirrings of revolt in the women
characters begin with a sense of dissatisfaction with their lot. The awareness
of repression leads into a questioning of the validity of their imposition. The
process of revolt is an intense and honest introspection on the part of the
characters leading to a painful sense of alienation and a self that is divided
between the old acquiescence and the new urge towards an individuality that has
so far been suppressed.
The final outcome of
this process of an awareness of repression and a sense of revolt lead the
characters on to certain resolutions that are bold and lead them to happiness.
These resolutions arrived at through introspection and the moral courage to
revolt is again varied in their manifestation.
The women characters of
the novel suggest courageously new patterns of feminine existence. The novel
redefines the lives of women. Anita Nair has done a commendable job in bringing
out the positive role and positive transformation of women in the ongoing
battle of establishing female selfhood.
No comments:
Post a Comment