How to go to your page This eBook contains two volumes. Each volume has its own page numbering scheme, consisting of a volume number and a page number, separated by a colon. For example, to go to page 5 of Volume 1, type 1:5 in the “page #” box at the top of the screen and click “Go.” To go to page 5 of Volume 2, type 2:5 in the "page #" box… and so forth.
RECRITIQUING WOMENIS WRITING IN ENGLISH (VOL -1)
"This page is Intentionally Left Blank"
RECRITIQUING WOMENIS WRITING IN ENGLISH (VOL -1)
Editor
DR. M.F. PATEL PRINCIPAL, SMT. c.c. MAHILA ARTS & SHETH C.N. COMMERCE COLLEGE, VISNAGAR, GU]ARAT.
SUNRISE PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS E-566, Vaishali Nagar, Jalpur - 302021 (Raj.)
Published by :
SUNRISE PUBLISHERS & DISTRIBUTORS E-566, Vaishali Nagar, Jaipur - 302021 (Raj.) Ph.: 9413156675,9772299149 Email:
[email protected] First Published - 2009
©Reserved
ISBN: 978-81-906067-7-6
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any mean without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed at: Jaipur
Dedicated to
MY DEAR WIFE, LEELA
"This page is Intentionally Left Blank"
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I am extremely grateful to Dr. V.5. Patel, Former Principal, Shri. & Smt. P.K. Kotawala Arts College, Patan for his encouragement, gui~ance and inspiration. His benevolent approach has always been a source of inspiration to me for editing this volume. I am also indebted to my esteemed friend, philosopher and guide Dr. Jaydipsinh Dodiya, Associate Professor, Department of English & Comparative Literary Studies, Saurashtra University, Rajkot for his generous help and advice. I have received great help and support in making of this book. So, it is my pleasure to record the obligations to all the contributors of India who contributed their tremendous co-operation for their scholarly papers. I am thankful to the President, Dr. Motibhai Chaudhari and Honourable Secretary, Shri Yogeshbhai Maniar and Shri Niketubhai Maniar of Shri Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati Kelavani Mandai, Visnagar for their positive attitude for my work. I am also richly grateful to my better-half, Leela, without whose co-operation this book would not have been possible. I must not forget to express my thanks to my dear daughter Khyati and dear son Aryan who never disturbed me in my work inspite of being deprived of my love and affection. Finally, I must express my heartfelt sense of gratitude to Shri Jitendra Gupta, Sunrise Publishers & Distributors, Jaipur, India for publishing this volume in very short time. Dr. M.F. Patel Principal
"This page is Intentionally Left Blank"
CONTRIBUTORS Dr. M.F. Patel, Principal, Smt c.c. Mahila Arts & Sheth CN. Commerce College, Visnagar, Gujarat. Dr. Poonam Rani Gupta, Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Baikunthi Devi Kanya Mahavidyalaya. Agra. Vinod Kumc>r Maheshwari. Reader, Department of English, Agra College, Agra. Dr. S. John Peter Joseph, Reader in English, St. Xavier's Autonomous College, Palayamkottai, Tamilnadu.
Dr. Ram Sharma, Senior Lecturer in English, Janta Vedic College, Baraut, Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh. Dr. Bhagabat Nayak, Department of English, Kandarpur College, Siddheswarpur, Cuttack- 754117, Orissa. Dr. Mallikarjun Patil, Reader, Department of English, Kamatak University, Dharwad- 580003. Dr. Basavaraj Naikar, Professor & Chairman, Department of Englisl, Kamatak University, Dharwad- 580003, Karnataka. Dinesh B. Chaudhary, Visiting Lecturer, Department of English, Arts College, Dhanera, Gujarat. Prof. Sankar Prasad Singha, Head, Department of English, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore-721102, West Bengal & Dr. Joyjit Ghosh, Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Mahishadal Raj College, East Midnapore, West Bengal. Dr. B.K. Sharma, Assistant Professor, Department of English, M.L.B. College, Gwalior.
"This page is Intentionally Left Blank"
CONTENTS
• •
Acknowledgements
1.
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian-English Women Poets
Contributors
Dr. M.F. Patel 2.
4.
5.
24
Rukmani as an epitome of Indian Womanhood: A Critical Consideration of Kamala Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve Dr. S. John Peter Joseph
35
Feminist Voices in The Novels of Kamala Markandaya
9.
49
Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds no Terrors as a Feminist Work
67
Shashi Deshpande's That Long Silellce: A Feminist Approach
Dr. Blzngnbnt Nnynk 8.
16
Vinod Kumar Maheshwari
Dr. MnlliknrjuJ/ PnW 7.
1
Feminism Reconsidered: A Study of Anita. Desai's Cry, the Peacock
Dr. Ram Sharma 6.
v
Existential Dilemma in Anita Desai's Voices in the City
Dr. Poonam Rani Gllpta 3.
iii
The Stolle Angel: The Story of a Woman with a Will Dr. Bnsavnraj Naikar
75 105
Role of Society in the Novels of Nayantara Sahgal
Dr.
l~nlll
Shnrma
128
10. Gita Hariharan's The Thousand Faces of The Night: A Study Dinesh B. Chaudhary
138
11. Feminist Element in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Get Ready for Battle Dr. Rudra Prasad Mahto
144
12. Abhiyatri: The Story of a Rebellion Woman Dr. Basavaraj Naiknr
151
13. Kamala Das's The Looking Glass: A Woman's Writing Prof Sanknr Prasad Singha & Dr. Joyjit Ghosh
189
14. Narrative Technique and Symbol and Myth Pattern in the Shorter Fiction of Shashi Deshpande Dr. B.K. Sharma
195
INDIAN FEMININE SENSIBILITY IN CURRENT INDIAN-ENGLISH WOMEN POETS - Dr. M.F. Patel
Indian women poets writing in English from Toru Dutt to Kamala Das and from Sarojini Naidu to Suniti Namjoshi reveal the mind-boggling variety of theme as well as style that poetry is capable of offering. In the last fifty years absorbing a variety of influences, dealing with a range of themes and generating diverse strategies of poetic expression. Each one of them has tried to speak in a distinctly personal voice, yet they form a part of chorus, a collective voice asserting the autonomy of women. It needs to be remembered that poetry written by women need not be viewed only as feminist poetry. In fact the belief that one is a woman is almost as absurd and obscurantist as the belief iliat is a man. However, literature by women tends to get marginalized because of the disparate tendencies of reception to their writings. In writing and particularly in writing poetry women are allotted personal but not public space, a private but not a political or rhetorical voice. Women poets have often raised their voice against social and cultural conventions that constrained their freedom and perpetrated a sort of institutional subjection of women. Women writers assert that the creation of a community of women is necessary antidote to the excess of individualism. They
2
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
believe that women need to explore their collective consciousness and shared experience in order to transcend the fragmentation and isolation of their lives. With regards to the new trends and techniques in women's poetry there is a remarkable movement connecting the domestic with the public spheres of work. Increased metropolitan activities, sophisticated life styles, globalization, urbanized influences of pop, disco and cafe culture, Anglo-Americanization and the public and convent education of the present generation of women poets have made their poetic language, chiselled, sharp, pithy and effortless. The deconstmctive strategies of narrative and conceptual frames, along with the simultaneous assimilation of pan-Indian elements have made their poetry a formidable area of study and research. Other than the skilful use of standard poetic devices, the semiotic, symbolical and metaphorical properties of language help to emphasize the feminist strategies of interrogation. The fissures and fragments of post-modern life are questioned and reflected in the highly experimental diction. The problems of sociological vis-it-vis literary politics, of gender inequities of margilization and subhumanisation of women, of their social and artistic exclusion and of the dominant need for inclusion and democratization, all contribute towards the distinctive character of this poetry. For the first time, mapping out new terrains the poetry of such Indian women poets bring forth the suppressed desires, lust, sexuality and gestational ~xperiences. This new poetry is new forms of new thematic concerns of contemporary issues have changed the course of human civilization as the country entered the new millennium. As such, it does not remain isolated from the global trends and can be corroborated by the fact that it has incorporated itself the manifestations of the feminist movements that swept through Europe, America, Canada, and Australia since 1960s. At the same time in India appeared the poetry of Kamala Das, Eunice de Souza, Mamta Kalia, Tara Patel, Imtiaz Kalia, Gauri Deshpande, Suniti Namjoshi, Gauri Pant, Lakshmi Kannan, Vimla Rao, Meena Alexander, Charmayne D'Sollza, Sujata Bhatt, etc. Tcjdeep Menka Shivdasni and a few other women poets who not only totally upset the phallogocentric discourse of Indian
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
3
English poetry by introducing in it a new array of thematic contents in new voices, but relate their experiences in their art from a broad spectrum of styles. Kamala Das is one of pioneering post-independence Indian English poets who have contributed immensely to the growth and development of modern Indian English poetry. Her poetry could be divided into three categories-positive poems negative poems and poems about her grand mother and ancestral house, leaving aside of few poems of some minor observations. The love poems where she expresses her happiness and the poems where she expresses her resentment against unfulfilled love may be termed as positive and negative poems respectively. The Freaks is a negative poem in which love turns to lust. The woman in the poem complains bitterly against the attitude of her man because there is no love between them and what keeps them together for a moment is the lust of the blood. The physical appearance of the man is repelling to the woman because his cheek is 'Sunstained', mouth 'a bark cavern' and teeth 'uneven.' There is no love between them and as he puts his right hand on her knee, "they only wander, tripping/Idly over puddles of Desire". 'Desire' here is personified. It stands for lust-mere carnal desire devoid of warmth of love and affection. Thus, the Woman asks angrily:
Can't this man with Nimble finger tips unleash Nothing more alive than the Skin's lazy hungers? What she wants is tenderness, heart correspondence and love beyond desire, which the man fails to fulfil as he is indifferent to her as a person. She knows that no ~)Utsider will rescue her as love is a matter between a man and a woman and exclusively a personal and private affair, thus she asks: Who can Help us who have lived 50 long And haw failed in love?
4
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
The answer to this question is an implicit 'no'. The heart of the woman becomes empty and ironically it is filled up with 'Coiling Snakes of silence ... '. A snake that 'Coils in silence' will bite at the first opportunity and that is what she does when spits venom on the loveless life between a man and a woman. The imagery used here is appropriate to the context. The snake is an archetypal symbol of sex. When love becomes mere lust, the woman expresses her disgust. Because what she needs is tenderless both lovable and lasting resulting in their consummation of love. In desperation she concludes: I am a freak. It's only To save my face, I flaunt, at Times, a grand, flamboyant lust. Kamala Das' Reminiscences of childhood at Nalapat House, her family home, are tinged with nostalgia as in My Grand-mather's House and A Hot Noon in Malabar. Her Grand-mother and the ancestral house dominate quite a few memorable poems. The house is a symbol of rootedness and sense of belonging to a place, In My Grand Mother's HOllse, the poet recalls the house, where she once received love and the old woman (i.e. the Grand-mother) who loved her dearly. She is nostalgic about it and the memory of the Grandmother makes her pensive. The poem begins with a note of nostalgia: There is a house now for away where once I received love ...... the woman died. Following the death of the Grand-mother a great change comes over the house. In the words of the poet, The house withdrew into silence, Snakes moved Among books I was then too young To read, and my blood turned cold like the moon. Through subtle imagery and figures of speech the poet brings out the changes in the house in the form of unused books and books that have been damaged due to lack of attentiull, which turned the blood of the poetic persona 'cold like the moon'. In almost a
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
5
Wordsworthian vein she recalls the past to write poetry as 'the emotion recollected in tranquillity". Thus she writes: How often I think of going There, to peer through blind eyes of windows Or just listen to the frozen air, Or in wild despair; pick an armful of Darkness to bring it here to lie behind my Bedroom door like a brooding Dog ...... You cannot believe, darling, Can you, that I lived in such a house and Was proud and loved. Kamala Das deeply loved and admired her grandmother. In a different situation, Kamala Das laments over the death of her Grandmother and decline of her ancestral place. In Compositiol1 Kamala Das writes: The only secrets I always Withhold Are that I am so alone And that I miss my Grandmother.
A Hot Noon in Malaber is another poem about her ancestral place. Here she recalls the activities of the people in a hot after noon. With all its peculiarities like 'beggars with whining voice,' men coming 'from hills with parrots in a cage and fortune-cars', 'brown Kurava girls,' 'bangles-sellers,' 'strangers,' and 'wildmen' coming to Malabar, the place fascinates her without end. Staying away from Malabar is a kind of torture for her. The hot afternoon seems to bubble with activities like buying and selling of bangles, 'fortune-telling' by fortune tellers and giving arms to beggars. But the afternoon is not without its perils for 'stranger' and 'wildmen' visit the place. The poet puts it in its proper perspective in the following lines: Is this a noon for strangers with mistrust in Their eyes, dark, silent ones who rarely speak At all, so that when they speak, their \,o;ces
6
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ... Run wild, like jungle-voice. Yes, this is A noon for wild men, wild thoughts, wild love.
Betrayal in love and physical exploitation underline the agony of the woman expressed in The Sunshine Cat. The poet describes the plight of a woman who has become a victim to the lust of many men. The poem, as usual with Kamala Das, begins abruptly with a conversational tone and colloquial speech rhythm. The opening lines almost read like news paper item imparting sensational news: They did this to her, the men who knew her, the men/she loved, who loved her not enough, being selfish/ and a coward, the husband who neither loved nor fused her, but was a ruthless watcher, and the band/ of cynics she turned to, clinging to their chests where/new hair sprouted like great winged moths, burrowing her / face into their smells and their young lusts to forget. To forget, oh, to forget. The woman is complaining as it were, against male chauvinism but the remedy is out of her reach. They were king only to be cruel when they "let her slide from pegs of sanity into/a bed made soft with tears." Her husband was the worst of the lot who confined her "to a room of books till she was cold and/half-dead woman, now of no use at all to men." This is one of the negative poems of Kamala Das in which the bitterness is loudly pronounced. The Invitation is not easy to read, for here, a complex thought pattern has been infused into the loose structure and thereby demands a close study of the text. The beloved invites the sea to take her away or wipe out her bitter memory of being jilted in love. She, CIS it were, invokes the sea: Oh! Sea, let me shrink or grow, slosh up, Slide down, go your way. I will go mine.
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian .. ,
7
The complaint against the lover is bitter and images chosen area appropriate to the context: He came to me between Long cOllferences, a fish coming up For air, and was warm in my arms And inarticulate .......... . The lover is likened to fish coming up for fresh air and diving deep when the need is over. The image of sex and note of betrayal go together. Since 'the man is gone for good', it would be foolish to wait for him. Bu t the memory lingers on and the pangs of separa tion abides. Thus she recalls: On the bed with him, the boundaries of
Paradise had shrunk to a mere Six by two and afterwards, when we walked Out together, they Widened to hold the unknowing city the sea. The sea seems to console her and offers a way out by saying 'End in me, cries the sea'. The woman (i.e the protagonist) of the poem to have entered into a dialogue with the sea by unveiling her heart and seeking consolation in order to get rid of this mental tension and physical separation. Thus, she recalls: All through that Summer's afternoons we lay On bees, our limbs inert, cells expanding
Into throubbing suns. The heat had Blotted our thoughts ..... Please end this whiplash of Memories, cries. The woman being young, the waiting is still there for the lover to come. "1 am still young/and need t.hatman for construction and/ Destruction", says the woman. With the rise and fall of tides in the sea, the passion of the woman rises and falls and the longing for the man becomes irresistible. Thl's the poem ends with an invitation to the lover, jllstifying its ti tie:
8
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ... The tides beat against the walls, they Beat in childish ..... . Darling, forgive me, how long can one resist
Gauri Despande is a name that the critic and reader of Indian English poetry cannot bypass without leaving a conspicuous lacuna in his repertorie. The canon of her poetry so far includes three collections namely Between Births (1968), Lost Love (1970) and Beyond the Slaughterhouse (1972). The first collection Between Births opens seriously with the reflection on death for whom poet is waiting. The relationship is immediately defined in metaphor of a tardy lover, further strengthened in the concluding lines of the poem where a characteristically Indian allusion to the saptapadi (seven steps), the ritual that confirms a Hindu marriage, is used, And walk the seven steps, With him that'll make him, My ally. (P.1) Unlike an established poet like Kamala Das whose flights are usually circular, Gauri Deshpande's encounter with life is multipronged, subtle, restrained and mature, with a cultivated idiom, making her a more impressive and readable poet. Menka Shivadasni's poetry holds together a private world of chaotic emotions through its logical development and its strikingly imaginative icons. Her Nirvana at Ten Rllpees (1990) is a careful selection spanning twelve year's work. Shivdasni, a well-travelled journalist who worked for a year in Honkong, was one of the founding members of the Bombay Poetry Circle in 1986. In her poetry, she had anticipated many of the new characteristics of Bombay poetry as it would develop during the 1990s. Her poems can be broadly categorized under three types of sceptical altitudes which reveal the writer's preoccupation with pessimism. The first category deals with the relationship between man and God, the second, with the human predicament and the third with the women's condition. In all three cases the life has hit her so hard that the situation is desperate and pathetic and death seems to be the only escape from the generally disturbing experiences of life. Her horrors and
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
9
temptations of living alone in a small flat, the anxieties of a single life which get complicated by being a woman, the sordid world of sex, drugs, broken relationship and the aftermath are portrayed in stark reality. She traces her own transition from a believer to an atheist in the very first poem of the collection, The Atheist's Confession. The poem starts with nostalgia of rosy faith in the "earth god" when she "ate Prasad only after a bath" is contrasted with a later stage when" gods no longer smiled when I prayed" because she had framed her cold logic that "They couldn't/They were of stone./ "and eventually comes the final word that "God didn't exist." The writer's uncertainly regarding the existence of God is further evidenced in the poems Are YOll Three and Somewhere on the Streets. The tedious nature, the sheer monotony of the modern mechanized existence is described in Destination where the daily commuter's journey in the second class railway compartment is between Church gate and insanity. Another poem Schoolgirl No More displays the modern women's predicament that having spent a lifetime in acquiring bookish knowledge at school, "nothing measures up to what it should. "Geography taught her the vastness of space, history not to live in the past and English Literature "That I belong nowhere. Physics, Einstein and his theory of relativity taught her to hate everything including herself. So mere acquisition of knowledge is fruitless without its moderation through contact with wisdom, seems to be the leitmotif of many of Shivdasni's poems. In the poem Safe-I Think, the human being is compared with a palm, tree, the coconuts of which are likened to the tears of human beings. The coconuts are "wrenched" for profit. Despite thinking that it is safe for the next one hundred and fifty years the trees are surviving under the permanent fear of destruction. The modern man's threatened condition is reflected in the concluding lines that offer a comment on the ever-growing materialistic attitude of people who are simply not concerned with the life and feelings of others: ...... Twenty four ridges on a coconut tree are not 150 years, unless some bureaucrat worried about his job, orders
10
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ... me cut because I'm standing in the middle where a building ought to be.
The little of the volume Nirvana at ten rupees comes from the poem Loser, Lose, Addict: When you are happy, only cliche's come to mind - the sky is blue, grass is green, butterflies are free then something happens, and solitary as a murderer, you twist the knife and stalk the streets, your brain being crushed to powder like the contents of vial of smack. Nirvana at tern rupees is cheap, but the sky has a silver tinge you could rather perceive as grey, the butterflies are pinned, heads down, their backs to the wall, like you. Highly metaphoric, at times almost surreal, her poems show a woman alienated from the expected conventions of social life, strongly aware of sexuality and mental unrest where her inner and outer life it is at odds. In the above mentioned poem though Shivdasni apparently mocks at the heart of the volume lurks a similar wage for a paradise or a nirvana, something better than the anxieties, dishonesties, repression, false needs hypocrisy and basic ugliness of ordinary life. The woman is still a 'football' who is kicked around, used and abused and when the man "scores his goals," he leaves her into the drain where it belongs once the game is over. She gets disturbed and angry at the maltreatment meted out to her but is there anything that she can do to alleviate her miserable plight? Another woman poet who is aware of the discrimination of the genders in the society is Tejdeep. The alienation and marginalization as the inevitable rate of woman in patriarchy is portrayed by her in her volume of poems entitled Fiut' Ft'et Six alld a Ha~f [Ilclles (1977), abbreviated F.F. in the following extracts:
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
11
It is always made solstice if they could
the sun would be spelled son (Five Feet Six, P.9)
and again a woman is depicted as a one holding a bruised soul in six yards of nylon. (Five Feet Six, P.9) Gender typing is one of the frightening consequences of conformity to patriarchal norms. The poet significantly observes in a poem Visionary. Visionaries at dawn do strange things with a handful of flour or chalk. (Five Feet Six, P.2S) Because it is her attempt to hoodwink evil form strangers: with chalk and powder she must attempt to hoodwink evil from under a stranger's spell. (Five Feet Six, P.29) fhe powerful subversion in "must attempt" makes is clear that the vitality hinted at the title is noticeable through its absence. In her case it is perhaps writing of poetry that provides the much needed healing and acts therapeutic: This has the raputised my aches of ferocious despair symbolized my attempt to search for the broken filament in a hundred watt bulb. (Five Feet Six, P.17)
[n another powerful metaphor she reminiscences and muses over the core of timeless wisdom and existential dilemma. Striving toward the process of self-actualization and recognition of the essential ingherent self her poetic outburst speaks volumes: Time seals memories in trunks of trees agitates pages in a diary ............ time erodes friendship burnishes new
12
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ... friends ............ time just does not leave it squats on eyelids endlessly. (Five. Feet Six, P.35)
Thought subjective and limited in scope, the works of Tejdeep compel the reader to take note of the underlying significant intent of her verse where she is trying to raise her lonely voice not only for herself but for many upcoming Tejdeeps to charter a new territory for themselves. Sujata Bhatt born in India and educated in the United States, now living in Germany has been shaped by cross-cultural experiences as reflected in her three collections: Brunizem (1988) which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asian Section), MonketJ Shadows (1991) won a poetry Book Society Recommendation and her third anthology The Stinkin Roe (1997) is the recent book with a selection from the first three books introduced by one new poem, the title poem. Rajana Ash in The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry describes Sujata's poetry as "the anguish of immigrants when they start lose their first language," and she comments approvingly on the poet's attempt use Gujarati line interspersed with English ones" onomatopoeia effect, and because for her certain subjects cannot be described in English." In fact, her bi-lingual poem explores the conflict of the self fragmented between different cultures. One can argue that incomprehensibility thus created is poet's deliberate design to draw the reader into her own sense of otherness in order to experience a predicament which allows only a peripheral existence. At the beginning of Search for My Tongue, an eight page poem, the Gujarati sentences are translated quite literally into English. As the poem progresses the Gujarati lines remain flat, prosaic and closed, while the English sentences that flow become longer and richer, spinning off associations and graphically building on them so that they work quite independently of the Gujarati original. Bhatt seems to be obsessed with the question of language, which she looks at from different points of view at different times. Aware of the limitations of language, she confesses:
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian ...
13
The bets sLory, of course is the one you can't write won't write il's something that you can only live in your heart
YOll
not on paper. Bhatt's recent work evinces her growing interest in the character sketch and its more evolved form, the dramatic monologue. Her exceptionally wide range of reference enables her to present characters as diverse as a young Indian girl during the partition and an old Spanish woman working in her field. The monologues are more numerous; a swimmer in New England, the snake-catcher; the artist in Dublin; Jane addressing Tarzen; and even Hannibal's personal elephant Sums talking to its master. What is generally missing however, is the under current of irony which constitutes the chief strength of Browning's dramatic monologues. By ~he large her poems do not seem Lo develop from social or personal relations; they are poems of the self experience and self definition. The title poem of Point No Point begins: Why name a place Point No Point? Does it mean we are nowhere. When we reach it? Does it ml'an that we lose our sense of mcaning, or sense at direction when we stop at Point No Point? In many other places, almost the same urge of exploring the implications of dislocations and tensions of living in an alien land get c\'ident as in the poem The Ollt' Who Goes Away from the book The Stll1kil1g Rose where she is searching for a place in order to keep her soul from wondering. Sometimes I'm askcd if I wen' searching for a place that can keep my soul from wondering
14
Indian Feminine Sensibility in Current Indian '" a place where Tcan stay without wanting to leave. This poem concludes tritely with: lam the one who always goes away with my home which can only stay inside in my blood - my home which does not fit with any geography.
Moving between countries and cultures, Bhatt is concerned with the construction of the self and its relationship with memory, history and iden tity. While honouring the importance of her heritage, she also seems to be striving to discover who she is; she fosters both the values of her birthplace and her Western self-confidence, bunt at the same time she revels her sense of alienation in the envimnment of the country of her domicile. The poems, therefore, in general are marked by the twin metaphors of loss and recovery. While the loss is real in terms of spatial and temporal distance from the motherland, the recovery can only be imaginary -or at best aesthetic. It is indeed remarkable that Sujata BhaLt has not only the right idiom at her command but also a native mode to express a new consciollsness. Meena Alexander's A HOllse ofl1 TllOllSI111d Doors for instance is an Indian woman living in United States. She often hears voices of the village women she left behind. During her birthing pains in New York these women come in dream to deliver her. In a moment of this primeval pain, all barriers collapse and women come together in mutual sympathy, understanding and concern. Suniti Namjoshi directly addresses the need to legitimize lesbianism and argues that a ,>"oman's love for a woman b both natural and quite ancient. She complains that books, stories and society all collude in propagating the myths of compulsory heterosex.uality and in all these versions men lo\'(' women and women love men, and men rick off and have all sorts of adventures while women stay at home. [n a numiwr of poems included in her collections Jl1ckass 1111£1 tile Lady and RIll!' DOllkey Fl1bl!'s /\l1l1ljosili celebrates lesbian eroticism.
Indian Feminine Sf'nsibility in Current Indian .. ,
15
These and many more recent women poets bring out the conflict of gender through the Indian female psyche in its interaction and correlation with the male psyche. Written in a personal and confessional style, their poetry acts as a social document because they themselves are victims and agents of social change. In the twilight zone in which the creative mind dwells, there is a natural feminine ability to turn inwards, to accept intuition and tenderness as values long with the gentle sensitivity to one's natural environment and to the latent communications among human beings which mobilize the feelings and imageries and bring forth the new feminine voices creating new terrains. Female bonding in literature has thus taken a variety of forms, the agenda being common, women need to come together and call into question all the diverse strategies of patriarchy. Works Cited 1.
Souza, Eunica de , Nine Indian Womcn Poets, Mumbai: Oxford University Press, 1977.
2.
King, Bruce, Modern Indian Poetry ill English, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 200l.
i.
lan, Hamilton, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Ce11t1lry Podr.lI ill English, Oxford: OUP, 1994.
4.
Shivdasni, Menka, Nirvana at TI:'I1 Rllpel:'s, Bombay: Praxis, 1990.
"l.
Tejdeep, Fipe Fl'et Six alld a Half Inches, Rupa, 1997.
6.
Bhatt, Sujata, Bnllli::t'111, Delhi: Penguin, 1993.
7.
Bhatt, Sujata, Point No Point: Selected Poems, Manchester: Ca rcanet, 1997.
R.
Rahman, AnislIr, Expressh.,l' form ill the Poetry of Kamala New Delhi: Abhina\' Publication, 1981.
9,
Dwi\'edi, A.N., Kamala HOllse, 1983.
Oa~
(/1/(/
OilS,
Her Poetry, New Delhi: Doaba
10. Nair, Rama, ed., Tr('llds mId leclllliqllt's ill Ctmft'mpornryllldiol1 EIl'~lisll Poetry, New Delhi: Prestige Books, 200 I.
DOD
EXISTENTIAL DILEMMA IN ANITA DESAI'S VOICES IN THE CITY - Dr. Poonam Ralli Gupta
In an age of chaos, confusion, 'fever and fret', man has to face variolls problems and difficulties in the form of spiritual stress and mental strain. Heavy materialism of today, the desire to be a face in the crowd' in no time, the complexities of life, home and society, have made man so materialistic, self-centered and egocentric that he can not help suffering from the inner problem - a conviction of isola~ion and meaninglessness. In day today life people suffering from existential problem fail to understand the purpose of life and their existential relation to this hostile world. Existentialism is a modern philosophical idea which deals with man's disillusionment and despair. It also implies human assertion to life. "Existentialism is the philosophy which declares as its first principle that existence is prior to essence" Udarjorie Green, 194'1: 4). Encyclopaedia Britannica defines: It as a protest against views of the world and policies of action in which individual human beings are regarded as the helpless playthings of historical forces or as ",holh' determined bv thp regular operation of nature}1 processes. All existential writers seek to jllstih' in some way the treeJom and importance 01 human personality.
Existential Dikmma in Anita Desai's Voices in the City
17
They all emphasize, too, the place of will in human nature by contrast with reason. (Britannica: 1968: Vol.8: 946)
It can further be defined as:
A philosophical movement, esp. of the 20 th century that stresses the individual's position as a self -determining agent responsible for his or her own choices. (Webster's College Dictionary: 1928: 468) Thus, existentialism deals with man's disillusionment and denial of reason and rationality. Existential sensibilities like loneliness, alienation, quest for identity, self assertion, sacrifice, problem of space, desire for independence etc. form the themes of various modern writer's works.
In the contemporary Indo-Anglian fiction Arun Joshi, Shashi Deshpande, Anita Desai etc. have come out as strong exponents of existentialism. Anita Desai, a distinguished, second generation, Indo-Anglian novelist has made significant efforts to delineate the existential dilemma of the modern man and woman. Her central theme is the existential predicament of the individuals which she projects through the problems of the self in an emotionally disturbed milieu. Delicately conscious of the reality around them, her protagonists carry "vith them a sense of loneliness, alienation and pessimism. Her characters are beset by the existential dread to such an extent that all of them directly plunge into this abyss to get at least an inkling of the affairs of life. The question 'what does it mean to exist?: sets them at fire with varying intensity. The uneasiness of 'how' comes much later and remains in background. Like Robert Browning she gets deep into the psyche of these characters ,md unscrambles their true nature lacerated by the forces of self, family and society. Anita Desai's second novel Voices ill the ('lty (196:;), understudy, in this paper is marked by tl1l:' same tendency of alienation and estrangemenl. The leading protagonists viz. Monisha, Nirode, Amla and Dharma are afflicted morl' or less bv estrangement from society and circul11st.mces they li,'e in, They are tortured b) their hollow existence ,1I1d llwaninglesslll'sS. All of them are ~truggling against
18
Existential Dilemma in Anita Desai's Voices ill the City
the odds. Some of them suffer because they are not happily married; for them marriages are not made in heaven. Some other face existential dilemma for they find themselves dislocated in the society. Nirode, a typical Bengali youth who has gone bitter against the entire well off people, is a rootless character drifting directionlessly, shifting from one goal to another, finally faced with a void, a sense of emptiness. He quotes Camus: In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering at least would give us a destiny. But we do not have even that consolation and our worst agonies come to an end one day. (Desai: 2001: 40) Like a true existentialist, he keeps on experimenting with failures in search of an abiding meaning in life. Although he achieves nothing, except for a couple of realizations in the end. This existential search of Nirode shows his intellectual inevitability engineered by emptiness. He has been portrayed by Desai as a predestined tryst with detachment for all the objects under the Sun. He says: You know, Bose; 'and his voice was swathed in cheap smoke, almost inaudible'. I've reached a point now - I always knew I would arrive at it one day -- when I would be impossible .. .I loathe those automatons at the top - I loathe their superciliousness, their arrogance, and their blindness. How dare they be arrogant when working at such senseless jobs? Spend their lives, their entire energy and intelligence at something that does not matter? l-low can one? Better to leap out of the window and end it all instead of smearing this endless sticky glue of senselessness over the world. Beller not to Ii\'e. (P.IS) Though consequences compel him to follow strange routes into a world where a person evolves into a meaning of life or failing to handle the dialectics of his personal angst and the daring to
Existential Dilemma in Anita Desai's Voices in the City
19
participate in life, an individual turns into a suicidal course. There are apparent reasons for that. It is after his father's death that his relationship with his mother undergoes a metamorphosis. Next, it is his own fixation to his mother and the latter's abandoning the house at Calcutta that generate in him a desire to extricate himself lock, stock and barrel. However, hard he may try; Nirode is unable to get away from his relationship with his mother. It infiltrates his sleep, and entering the world ordreams turns into a nightmare. Anita Desai puts his plight as: He soon saw why: he himself was not an inhabitant of it, he stom some distance away from it and between him and his mother's territory was erected a barbed wire fence all glittering and vicious. (P.128) Nirode's existential anxiety and withdrawal from the world is a withdrawal from the self which loves his mother. He feels loneliness and hollowness all around and hence when he folds his arm closely about himself wanting to announce to the world that he is a leper, it is a disease of his existential dilemma: I am a leper, leave me, do not come near, I am a leper, diseased with the loneliest of all diseases. (P.132) He does not want contact with other human beings, turns away from love, wants nothing to do with marriage, disapproves of his mother's friendship with Major Chaddha and resents her claims on him, which has alienated him from her and in turn fro m the rest of the world. Like a true existentialist Nirode realizes that his journey of life is doomed from the very start. He can not get away from the city that holds him down. He tells David: I want it (Voice) to fail quickly. Then I want to see if I have the spirit to start moving again, towards my next failure, I want to move from failure to failure, step by step to rock bottom. I want to explore that depth. (P.65)
20
Existential Dilemma in Anita Desai's Voices in the City
Thus, he experiments with failure like a true existentialist hero. Wearied by his own unsureness: He swept back and forth like a long weed underlating under water, a weed that could live only in aqueous gloom, would never rise and spring into clear day light. (P.63) Finally, his existential search for meaning and value in life ends in emptiness and bankruptcy. Nirode's married sister Monisha is another existential character. Her sha ttered married life to Jiban is marked by loneliness and lack of communication. Although she frantically tries to search for real meaning in her life, she ultimately fails. Her extraordinary powers of visualization endow her with sharp reactions against the degrading social values and ethical degradation. Married for three years to Jiban in an arranged, loveless marriage, she is confined to the big ancestral house with Jiban's extended family in BowBazar. She is propelled into the artificial love behind the threshold. Her experience consists of touching the feet of her various in-laws "rimmed with red alta" (P.1 09). The raised balconies with dar kened country yard are like "enclosing shadows like stagnant well water" (Ibid), "through the thick iron bars I look out on other walls, other windows - other bars" (Ibid). They create cold response and hatred and the city seen through the details of daily life, Monisha sees as a menace, a 'threat' which it arouses existential dilemma in her. In fact she is a sensitive soul oppressed by existential anxiety and alienation. She can not tolerate being a part of a joint family that leaves her with no privacy hence Depression! Tension! further Depression! And desire to ascertain her existence. Monisha herself discusses her plight: "Ah Yes, Yes, then it is a choice between death and mean existence" (P.119,). Again she concludes: "traceless, meaningless, and uninvoh'ed - does this not? amount to nonexistence? (P.140) Added to all this is the indignity of being unable to bear a child. She can not conceive as there is something wrong with her fallopian tubes. Thus, all routes to creativity and passion are blocked by an emotional and physical frigidity. She becomes an object of pity and
Existential Dilemma in Anita Desai's Voices in the City
21
neglect and ultimately of indifference. Her home is a place where she is merely tolerated and there she leads a life of utter humiliation and desolation. She has missed passion all her life that's why instead of moving towards fullness she retreats into a frozen state of a being. In her desire to be non-obtrusive, to obliterate herself she decides to go to the hog withholding from herself every single way of sustenance. Ironically when she actually destroys herself, it is not in search of anonymity but in search of existence, which she is unable to have. Monisha expresses the absurdity of woman's existence: Lives spent in waiting for noting, waiting on-men self-centred and indifferent and hungry and demanding and critical, waiting for death and dying misunderstood always behind bars, those terrifying black bars that shut us in, in the old houses, in the old city. (P.120) She asks: What does it all mean? Why are Jives such as these lived? At their conclusion, what solution, what truth falls into the waiting palm of one's hand, the still pet of one's heart? (P.121) Thus, Monisha, like Nirode looks for loneliness and longs for privacy. She prefers non, existence to a meaningless existence. She fails to relate to the reality of her life. She also fails to hold in harmony all the varying yet vital demands of her life. There is nothing in her Ii fe to sustain her. She herself utters: To pretend to have forgotten, to pretend to believe in these trivialities, these pettiness of our mean existence is that right. (P.40) This Clll pervading idea of nothingness has made her an e)"istential character the thing that she yearns more than anything else is 'pri\'ndent on males nor does she regard them essential in her life. Virmati is already engaged to a canal engineer, Inderjeet. But when she saw Shakuntala, tasting the wine of freedom, the seeds of aspiration are planted in Virmati. She secretly nurtures the desire> of being independent and leading a life of her own. She falls in love with Harish, a professor who is already married. Virmati's parent decides to marry her to an engineer, Inderjeet, but due to the death in his family marriage is postponed for two ye.1rs. During this period Virmati passes her FA exam and denies for marriage. Professor insists Virmati on being firm. Now Virmati becomes mentally disturbed and goes to TM.lshika and drowns herself. She is saved by the servants of her grand fathe>r. Everybody inquires the reason but finally she declares that she does not li"e the boy and wants to study further. So this marriage is settled with lndumatl, the second daughter of the family. Now Kasturi has to go with Virmati to Lahore for getting her admits in college and principal assures Kasturi that there will be no problem. Shakunta la who has been a source of inspiration for Virmati, visits her regularly. Professor's course of meeting to her has yet not stopped and during this period she becomes pregnant. She becomes restless and with the help of her roommate, Swarnlata, She gets abortion. When Harish comes to know of this he feels that she h.ld dOI1L' the right thing since he still could not decide to marry her. When Virmati returns home she finds that he had moved away without leaving his new address. Trapped by the circumstances and the professor's absence and unwillingness to marry her, She rl'.llizes: "Nothing was hers, not her body, her future, not even .1 pair ui paltry, insignificant gold bungles" (161) and feels trapped for llw life:
Manju Kapoor's DifficlIlt Dallghters: A study
210
She was his for life, whether he ever married her or not. Her body was marked by him, she could never look elsewhere, never entertain another choice. (163)
Professor Harish is an Oxford returned and highly educated person and the neighbour of Virmati's family. Temperamentally, he is romantic and believes in female education and the equally of sexes. He holds society responsible for women's present pred icament because it keeps them ignorant by not allowing them any sort of enlightenment through education. He writes to Virmati: Who is responsible for this state of affairs? Society, which deems that their Society that decides that Children - babies really - Should be married at the ages two and three as we were. As a result both of us needlessly suffer for no fault of ours. (95) Professor Harish's generosity and encouragement of Virmati for higher education are by no means without selfish motive. The real motive behind his desire to educate her is ha\ ing a good and educated companion and not a wife. Barish's attitude towards her is patronizing and demeaning. I tis interest in her is an extension of sdf love. But Virmati's emotionell dependence on the professor, who constelntly evades the question of marriage, stops her from doing elnything that he disapproves. After completing her B.T., she returns to Amritsar and is offered the principal-ship of a college at Sultanpur. But here too Harish \ isits her and these meetings elre observed by Lalaji, the manager of the college. She is dismissed bv college. At last she meets a close friend of Harish who is already aware of their intimate relationship. So he does not let her go and calls }-Ielrish. He performs all the rituals of marriage. Professor with Virmelti returns home. During her conjugal life Virmati feels that it would have been better if she had not been married with HJrish. After sometimes she gives birth to a daughter Ida. At the beginning of the novel this girl, Ida narrates her mother's life. The Concluding lines of the novel reiterate Ida's rejection of \,irmclti, not as a mother but as a woman:
Manju Kapoor's Difficult Daughters: A study
211
This book weaves a connection between my mother and me, each word a brick in a mansion I made with my head and my heart. Now live in it, Mama, and live me be. Do not haunt me any more. (285) Thus, it is not only about difficult daughters but also about difficult mothers. About mothers who do not understand their daughters, about daughters who want to break out into new paths. It starts very well and is quite gripping at the beginning with a daughter going on a quest to understand her mother, after the mother has died. The glaring and most interesting thing about the book is the unresolved dichotomy about the character of Virmati. On one hand she is very Strong and has strong will power and can resist all kinds of social and family pressure. On the other hand she is very weak, because she just cannot kick the professor out of her life. Manju Kapoor has her own concerns priorities as well as her own ways of dealing with the predicament of her women protagonist. The lives women live and struggle tmder the oppressive mechanism of a closed society are reflected in the writings of Manju Kapoor. Work Cited Kapoor, Manju, Difficult DallgTlters, New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998, P.l. (Henceafter the textual insertion are referred with page numbers in the text.)
DOD
"This page is Intentionally Left Blank"
![Encyclopedia of Privacy [Two Volumes] [2 volumes]](https://epdf.pub/img/300x300/encyclopedia-of-privacy-two-volumes-2-volumes_5aa5d9f7b7d7bc095fb24b16.jpg)
![Encyclopedia of Privacy [Two Volumes] [2 volumes]](https://epdf.pub/img/300x300/encyclopedia-of-privacy-two-volumes-2-volumes_5aa5da2fb7d7bc095fb24b18.jpg)
