The legal subordination of one sex
to another—is wrong in itself and now one of the chief hindrances to human
improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a system of perfect equality,
admitting no power and privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.(Mill
1)
John
Stuart Mill in his essay The Subjection
of Women felt that it is a hindrance to human development and improvement
to deprive women from contributing to the society. The emancipation of women
would bring positive benefits not only to women but also to men and to entire humanity.
Women
suffer a traditional prejudice and inevitably have to do what men dictate them
to do. Woman is subjugated by man and is exploited to meet out his selfish
gratification, to satiate his sensual pleasures, to scintillate and glorify his
life, to manipulate her for his growth and development, to defame and degrade
her for embellishing his dignity. On the contrary, men have never attempted to
elevate women’s status. Women were deprived of the basic amenities of life.
They were denied the right to education, voting, ownership of any form or land or business and they
were not allowed to pursue a career of their choice. Even in the present
context, women are denied equal rights in their work place. They are paid less
than men for the same work, denied promotions and training opportunities, shut
out of high paying jobs and occupations, and subjected to sexual harassment. A
woman was generally subject to the whims of man--her husband, her father or her
son due to social norms or patriarchal norms. In Pagan
nations, as has been tersely remarked, “Women are thrice slaves. Their fathers
govern them in childhood, their husbands in youth, and their sons in old age.”
According to the men’s perception of women or
the male concept, women were both physically and mentally susceptible and
therefore should be ‘taken care of’. Social theories affirmed this concept.
Women are confined to particular roles framed by men to limit their
freedom and oppress them from one generation to the next. It was necessary for
feminists to crusade against these convictions and delusions. The veracity of
the patriarchal norms were examined, defied and substantiated with feminist
theories. The patriarchal system favoured the male dominance and supremacy. The
egoistic predominance of men pervaded in all spheres of social, economic and
political activities. It oppressed, suppressed and women were in a jeopardy of
being lost in men’s world . “He is the Subject, he is the Absolute--she is the
Other”(Beauvoir xxii) –an insignificant, subordinate to men.
Women had to fight their battles to overcome the subordination and a
secondary place offered to them by men, to sustain their existence and make
their survival fit. Writing was the only instrument –a powerful weapon, through
which they were allowed to communicate their experience. They expressed their
defiance through their writings. The archetypes of the ideal women were
powerful and women writers had to struggle to break this conviction. The
concept and the position of womanhood had to undergo a drastic change to which
writers committed their works. Their emancipation lies in not limiting women
in their traditional roles but in expanding and awakening them to several other
possibilities. Simon de Beauvoir’s description of an independent woman in The Second Sex, where [woman]she , “
once ceases to be a parasite, the system based on her dependence crumbles;
between her and the universe there is no longer any need for a masculine
mediator” (Beauvoir 412)
Feminism focuses on limiting or eradicating gender inequalities,
promoting women’s rights and finding solutions to women’s issues. Feminists
have challenged the existing presumption and misconceptions about women.
Feminism strives to lobby for the rights of the marginalized. ‘Self’ is the
pivotal issue of feminism. Women have been subordinated, diminished, devalued
and belittled by the patriarchal systems. Women were kept in a state of
ignorance due their lack of education.
Indian women writers have involved themselves in sustained struggle to
retain their rights as writers and they attempt to expound the cause of women’s
sufferings and tried to affirm the position of women with respect to the Indian
context. Women writers like Kamala Markandaya,
Ruth Prawar Jhabvala and Anita Desai provided ground for discussion of women
and their problems against the traditional image by delineating women, their
psyche and their struggle to liberate and establish themselves as an individual.
Many women writers succeeded them in shattering the age old institutions of
marriage, family, human relationships and socio-cultural constructs. They dealt
with issues related to women and gave a great impetus to the growth of creative writing in English. They identify a
variety of existences with a range of
characters.
Cultural
alienation and loss of identity are presented with a deep insight by these
writers . The novel voices and espouses the need for emancipation. The
novelists became their mouthpieces to raise their voice against the aggressive
dominance of the male society and the unfair rigid code of conduct imposed on
them. The women novelists committed themselves to fictionalizing women’s issues
with an idea of ameliorating their deteriorated position.
Anita
Desai is indubitably a writer who enunciates the problems faced by women in a
patriarchal society. She is interested in the psychic life of her characters.
She is the pioneer of psychological novel as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.
She penetrates profoundly into the inner working of the mind. She briefly
describes the disappointments, disillusionments and the futility of life in a
world which is dominated by men. Desai’s women characters rebel against the
patriarchal community in order to explore their own potential or to live on
their own terms, regardless of the consequences that such a rebellion may have
on their lives. They criticize the cultural ideologies that obstruct their way
to freedom. Her characters have the habit of withdrawal and live a life of
detachment from the society. The self-chosen withdrawal is a form of weapon for
survival in a patriarchal community.
Withdrawal does not allow them to achieve the fulfillment and make them
‘complete’ beings.
Desai’s
women crave for freedom within their community and within the institution of
marriage. She does not envision an ideal marriage. Her married women
characters, for example, Monisha in the novel Voices in the City, become depressed, violent or self-destructive.
They kill or destroy themselves when they are unable to cope with the
expectations of the society, family and relationships. The women characters
grow up intellectually and psychologically. “The nemesis of these women is not a
private one, but an outgrowth of the complex social context, immediate family
environment and the relationships with their men”(Singh 94).
Desai’s
women characters find freedom not by living in their own narrow selves or by
clinging to others but by connecting with others and by asserting their
intellectual as well as economic independence. Education allows the economic
independence which helps them to exonerate themselves from mortification and
frees them from dependency on men.
Monisha’s
familiarity with the philosophies of Kafka, Dostoyevsky helps her to free herself
from the trivial talks of women in her household. She is unable to shrug-off
her emotional and psychological dependence on men, family, community and
society. She maintains a diary, which gives an outlet to her oppressed feelings.
She records her reactions and her impressions of the city. She is intelligent
but is not able to step out of the taboos laid on her by the joint-family
system. She cannot stand assaulting existential forces in the family and therefore,
she sets herself on fire. Monisha is strongly under the influence of the Gita ,
the holy scripture and the principle of stoicism and detachment. She does not
want to long or hanker for the love the society refuses to give her. She does
not passionately yearn for the husband to reciprocate her love. Consequently,she
is carried away by her suicidal impulses.
As
in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, biological needs like thirst, hunger, sex ,
security are not prioritized by Monisha. To her, these are all not the
essentials of existence. In her family which is pregnant with people, the
dreadful isolation makes her long for love and communion. Had she a child, she would not have felt
alone , but her fallopian tubes are blocked and therefore it becomes a distant
dream to be blessed with conception. And she suffers intensely because of the futility
of her life. Ultimately, she has an eternal quest for a meaningful existence.
Her
problems stem from the conflicts with the traditional identity of women and
from male domination and the rigid, retributive attitude of the patriarchal
Indian society towards women and from the various kinds of gender
discrimination and from the lack of solidarity among women. Monisha has no
alternative rather than to succumb to the expectation of her family.
Monisha
is in a male dominated society governed by rigid traditions, social taboos,
constrictions and restrictions. She wishes to extricate herself from the
obsequious servitude, inhuman torture of her husband and her
in-laws, the humiliating social taboos and the expected values of womanhood.
Her husband fails to reciprocate her love and fail to understand her emotions
and feelings. Nobody cares for her or her tastes or appreciates her presence. She is
inconspicuous by her presence. She is ignored by Jiban and he knows nothing
about her. Marriage builds harmony when there is a mutual understanding, sound
compatibility, love, loyalty and forfeiture. But as Simon de Beauvoir observes, “Marriage is
the destiny traditionally offered to woman by society” (52) .
In
Monisha’s marital life, marriage offers her nothing. She derives no happiness or
issues out of marital life with a “boring non-entity, this blind moralist, this
complacent quoter of Edmund Burke and Wordsworth, Mahatma Gandhi and Tagore,
this rotund ,minute –minded and limited official” (Voices in the City 198).
There is no proper understanding, mutual love and harmony which marriage
promises to a man and wife. Her relationship with her husband is characterized
only by ‘loneliness’. She lacks privacy and a sensitive woman who feels
desperately lonely and lost” the lost princess of the fairy tale, under a
secret spell”(Voices 197). Her private parts, her organs are scrutinized by her
sister-in-laws “…my insides: my ovaries, my tubes, all my recesses moist with
blood, washed in blood, laid open, laid bare to their scrutiny”(Voices 113)
The
patriarchal practices which reduce women’s status to inferior social beings are
further perpetrated by myths and traditions which are rooted in Indian society.
Women’s oppression is based on the familial structures of patriarchy. The laws
are men-made laws and so there is discrimination in these laws. Men are spared
from punishments for their sins. Pre-marital virginity, post-marital fidelity
and chastity are sole property of women and insisted upon women by the
traditional society while men are allowed sexual liberty and others. As Nirode, she is not able to live a life of
escape as she is a woman who “struts
and frets [her] hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more”.
And then is heard no more”.
Women
have strongly opposed and incessantly fought against such double-standards and
claimed equality and freedom. They fought firmly to get back their birth rights
because the liberation of women necessitates the liberation of all human
beings. They need to shatter all the system that shackles their existence.
Her life is without a touch of love, hate or warmth. Instead of the
element of love , element of fear is replaced in her. In the Bow bazaar house,
the endless chanting, the people, the aunts, uncles, in-laws makes her fear
them and desolate herself from them. She finds solace in the darkness on the
roof-top and finds peace which she feels cannot be found even in sleep that has
nightmares. She grows smaller every day, loses more and more of weight and
wishes to be invisible. The house makes her wish to become invisible instead of
living a meaningless life. She is accused of stealing her own husband Jiban’s money.
Jiban instead of supporting her and rescuing her from the accusation by his mother,
fails her. The charge of theft is the heaviest blow she receives from the
family and from Jiban.
The humiliation she suffers, the barrenness which is discussed and
mocked by her sister-in-laws, her sterility, their sarcasm on her wardrobe full
of books, her void life, lack of love and
the final remark of the mother-in-law “I will not have a thief in my house”
(Voices 137) makes her feel that she’s living a “Traceless, meaningless,
uninvolved (life)—does this not amount to non-existence,please? “(Voices 140)
The predicament of the entire ill-fated young brides in the Indian
society ‘doing nothing’ but simply waiting meaninglessly and doing petty
household work “to sort the husk from the rice…” (Voices 121) is explicitly
portrayed in the novel. Though death is not what Monisha or any young bride
wants, she engulfs herself in the flame. Her suffering is unique, and she bears
the brunt silently. As her barrenness, her life is also barren without a speck
of greenery. She is entranced, entrapped, encased, enclosed ‘in a steel
container’, ‘closed in a cage.’ Even her death does not present a solution to
the quest for meaning existence. She is not able to carve her destiny. She is
rather battered, crossed and lacerated by the society. Not able to survive, she
succumbs to death.
Anita Desai’s women are victims of circumstances in an uncongenial
environment and they fight a persistent battle against her lost self and in the
process of the search is doomed to degeneration and destruction. Anita Desai’s
concern is with “ the journey within” and the recurring theme is “ the agony of
existence in a hostile and male-dominated society that is not only conservative
but also taboo-ridden.” (Dhawan 12)
Anita Desai has dexterously portrayed the pathetic struggle the women
undergo in their life. Her women refute and defy the patriarchal norms to
liberate them from the clutches of the traditional myths of subjugation and
submission.
References:
o
Desai, Anita. Voices in the City. Orient Paperbacks. New Delhi.2001
o Beauvoir,
Simone de. The Second Sex. trans. H.
M. Parshley. Harmondsworth: Penguine, 1983.
o Mill,
John Stuart. The Subjection of Women.D.Appleton
& Company. New York. 1870.
o Dhawan,R.K.
ed. Indian Women Novelists. Set
I:Vol.1. Prestige Books. NewDelhi. 1999.
o
Piciucco, Pier
Paolo. A
Companion to Indian English Fiction. Atlantic Publishers & Distributors. New Delhi. 2004
o
Singh, Sunaina. The Novels of Margaret Atwood and
Anita Desai: A Comparative Study in Feminist Perspectives. Creative Books .New Delhi.1994
Paper Presented at the UGC Sponsored National Conference on Patriarchal
Predomination of Women in Indian English Novels: A Feminist Approach -8 & 9
October,2012, Bishop Heber College, Trichirappalli
