Mythological Allusions
in
GithaHariharan’s The Thousand Faces of Night
Githa
Hariharan’s debut novel, The Thousand
Faces of Night articulates the problems of women with the help of Indian
Mythology. She links the plight of her women characters with the Indian myths
as Mahabaratha, Sanskrit stories etc.; to the Gods, Goddesses, legendary
heroines in the epics of India. These stories were instrumental in supporting
the insidious patriarchal concepts. The lives of the three women in TheThousand Faces of Night—Devi, Sita
and Mayamma exposes the different dimensions of women’s oppression. The
reworking, revisioning and retelling of the myths as allusions of the
character’s story is the highlight of the novel.
The story of the three women tells
about the society’s patriarchal pattern. The society‘s expectations and the
taboos laid by men of the world are vividly portrayed. ‘Story within a story’
is the narrative technique which Hariharan employs in the novel. To
substantiate her stories, she uses mythological allusions from the great epics
of India.
For
any Indian women, institution of marriage ensures protection, love ,
compatibility and happiness. Marriage makes a woman expect a lot of happy
events, compassion, empathy, mutual understanding and a protective atmosphere
to live life in peace and harmony. Marital life in India, on the contrary lays
a lot of restrictions and constraints which constrict them from a life of
freedom . They suffer disappointment and
disillusionment in the face of reality.
The Thousand Faces of
Night is the portrayal of different facets of
women suffering different kinds of suffering
and depicts the status of women
in Indian society. It articulates the
problems of women with the help of Indian Mythology. It yokes together the
various vicissitudes faced by women of the puranas.
Devi
, a young educated girl with ‘the American experience’ struggles to cope with her husband Mahesh,
who is most of the time on business tour. She feels alienated in her own home.
She searches for an identity and tries to free her from the bondage of marriage
and the various roles levied on her .Grandmother’s tales heard in her childhood
days inspire her and she tries to replicate them with her own life. The stories which she heard every summer from the Grandmother is a kind of preparation
to her future life. The child’s mind is prepared to accept her role of woman.
The grandmother’s stories prepares the child towards her marriage where
fortitude, patience , endurance and perseverance are inevitable. Grandmother’s
stories are allusions to Gods, Goddesses, superhuman warriors, brave prince,
beautiful and virtuous princesses, men and women destined to lead heroic lives.
For each character’s problems, the grandmother indirectly narrates a story .
The stories are solutions to their problems but they “were not simple:they had to be decoded.”(27)
They were no ordinary bedtime stories.
The
stories were told for particular occasion to a particular character as
Gauri’s domestic problems is yoked with a story of the “ beautiful girl who married a snake”. Uma’s disastrous marriage was linked with how even Amba, a high born prince becomes a ‘victim of disaster’.Amma’s stories are yoked together with Gandhari’s story.Gandhari with all her fury “embraces her destiny –a blind husband—with a self-sacrifice worthy of her royal blood.”(29) . In the same way, Amma is a wilful, proud woman. Grandmother gives us an anecdote about how the father-in-law scolded her for not sweeping the floor of the pooja room. When she lost herself in playing the veena, the uproar of the father-in-law to put her veena away , Amma with a furiousness ” reached for the strings of her precious veena and pulled them out of the wooden base. They came apart with a discordant twang of protest.”(30). The heart-rending music was never heard again .
Gauri’s domestic problems is yoked with a story of the “ beautiful girl who married a snake”. Uma’s disastrous marriage was linked with how even Amba, a high born prince becomes a ‘victim of disaster’.Amma’s stories are yoked together with Gandhari’s story.Gandhari with all her fury “embraces her destiny –a blind husband—with a self-sacrifice worthy of her royal blood.”(29) . In the same way, Amma is a wilful, proud woman. Grandmother gives us an anecdote about how the father-in-law scolded her for not sweeping the floor of the pooja room. When she lost herself in playing the veena, the uproar of the father-in-law to put her veena away , Amma with a furiousness ” reached for the strings of her precious veena and pulled them out of the wooden base. They came apart with a discordant twang of protest.”(30). The heart-rending music was never heard again .
Gandhari might have blindfolded herself as a
subservient wife just because her husband was blind or she might have
blindfolded herself to rebel against the injustice urged on her to marry a
blind husband Dhritrashtra . Gandhari wants to punish people who have imposed
her the marital life with a blind man. It might also be interpreted that she
refrains to see what her husband is not let to see because of his blindness. As
a subservient wife, she completely shuns the scenes which the husband cannot
see. Gandhari is the very enigma of women of protest.she is a wilful, proud
woman who denies, sacrifices “ sight” as an answer to the injustice done to
her. In the self same way, Sita also discards the Veena as an act of denial and
sacrifice to retaliate to the father-in-law’s curt remarks , “Are you a wife, a
daughter-in-law?”(30)
Hariharan’s
novel is a dexterous conglomeration of numerous stories besides the story of
the protagonist Devi. And the technique is “Passing-on” narration from one
character to the other. The narration passes from Grandmother’s stories, the
Baba’s stories and to Mayamma.
In
the novel,Sita as a young daughter-in-law also equivalently protest in
Gandhari’s fashion. When the grandmother cannot find a precise mythological
equivalent for the experiences women had, she uses to corelate them with
stories of “the beautiful girl who married a snake”.
Indian families have a plethora of
relationships to saveguard the system of marriage. But when there is a familial
problem, nobody supports her. She fights her battles alone—her battles with men.
“A woman fights her battles alone.” Devi
, who lives a lonely life, not able to bear the solitary life frees herself
from the bond and rejoins her mother. She fights her battle alone.
Devi’s
father-in-law, Baba is a typical
illustration of a male-dominated patriarchal world. His character is revealed
through the stories which he elaborates to Devi. They are elucidation of the
codes laid down by Manu which
explicits the virtuous and chaste women who inspires their husbands along the
path of Dharma by their sacrificial nature, self-abnegation and subservience.
Baba’s
stories are different from Grandmother’s stories. While grandmother’s stories
“were a prelude to my womanhood, an initiation into the subterranean
possibilities. His define the limits.”(51) Baba’s stories were not ambiguous
and its centre-point “an exacting touchstone for a woman, a wife.”(51). Baba’s
stories always reflects that women should be devoted to their husbands .He
explains the means of reaching Heaven by serving their husband with devotion
and care. Baba sets the criteria for a good housewife and even afte he left his
hynotic voice quavers, “The housewife should always be joyous, adept at
domestic work, neat in her domestic
wares and restrained in expenses. Controlled in mind, word, and body,
she who does not transgress her lord, attains heaven even as her lord
does.”(70).
Muthuswamy
Dikshitar’s story, Purandara Dasa, Syaama Sastri, Thygaraja’s second wife story
are Baba’s illustrative stories. Baba gives out philosophical note from Manu,
“All men are enjoined to cherish women, and look after them as their most
precious wards. Fathers, brothers, husbands and brother-in-law should honor
brides, if they desire welfare. Where women are honoured, there the gods
delight; where they are not honoured, there all acts become fruitless.”
Baba
says that women had always been instruments of the saint’s initiation to
‘bhakthi’. He recites the story of Jeyadeva who sang Gita Govinda , to say how
great man can see the spiritual greatness of his wife.
Baba
alludes the story of Purandara Dasa, who became miserly as his fortune grew.
One day when a Brahmin asked for money to conduct upanayanam, he kept putting him off. So the Brahmin went to
Sarasvati Bai, who without thought gave her nose-ring. But when Purandara Das
came to know this, he sent a messenger to bring her ring. Not knowing what to
do, when she was about to drink the poisonous potion, she saw the exact replica
of nose-ring. After this incident ,Purandara was humbled and he lead a austere
life.
Baba’s
another story of Narayana Tirtha, talks about how a virtuous wife devoted to
her husband dies before him, a sumangali,
her forehead unwidowed and whole with vermillion, her arms and neck still
ornamented with bangles and gold chains.
He narrates how Syama Sastri’s wife died five days before he did and how
Thyagaraja’s second wife died after performing the sumangali prarthana .
Baba
summed up his illustrative stories: “By public confession, repentance, penance,
repetition of holy mantras, and by gifts, the sinner is released from sin. That
which is hard to get over, hard to get, hard to reach, hard to do, all that can
be accomplished by penance: it is difficult to overcome penance.”(67)
Githa
Hariharan’s Devi, inspite of the
continuous exposure to the mythical stories told by her grandmother from
childhood, and then after marriage the stories she hears from the father-in-law
and the real stories of Sita, Uma, Gauri and Mayamma does not help her to be a
submissive wife to Mahesh. Like how her mother-in-law revolted by leaving the
family in search of God, Devi’s elopement
with Gopal, is also a revolt against her husband Mahesh, who merely
wants her to keep waiting for his arrival as a submissive wife. His long tours,
her father-in-law’s departure to NewYork deprive her companionship.Her longing
to bear children to break the monotony , the loneliness and the meaninglessness
of life is not fulfilled. Finally, in a fit to give vent to her lone life, to
put an end to the “yawning emptiness”(68),she chooses to elope with Gopal . She
hopes to find solace with the company of Gopal but in vain. So, the hankering
for love ends and she goes alone in
search of her identity.
Her life long search for an identity ends when
she reaches her mother. Her search for
identity, her quest for identity, gets fulfilled only when she reaches her
home. All the grandmother’s stories which were told to condition her mind
towards the womanhood she would attain had not helped her to live a life of
subjection to her husband. She even dismisses the very thought of conception
and leaves Mahesh. Her acquaintance with Dan and the whole course of stay in
America fails to give her an identity in an alien country. Her fear to accept
Dan’s marriage proposal is part of the “American Dream”. Her fear to reject the
proposal for arranged marriage after she comes to India, refuses her an
identity . Her acceptance to marry of Mahesh and later to be his wife(the way
he wanted her to be) does not satisfy her . She tries to bear children and
would have satisfied herself as a mother, but refuses .
When
she probes into the lives of women in the myth of her grandmother, she recalls
all of them: Gandhari anger to blindfold herself in protest against people who
caused injustice,Sita who vows not to touch the most coveted Veena in protest
against her father-in-law’s accusation, Amba who gloriously triumphed against
Bheeshma who wronged her, Devi’s grandmother who accepts her destiny as a widow
,Parvati who revolts by leaving her family to God... Devi’s protest is self-assertion.
Devi’s marriage with Mahesh is absolutely meaningless, with his constant tours
and his” purposeful love-making”. Mahesh finds fault with her upbringing and he
says, “this is what comes out of educating a woman”. (74). His remarks of the
other women who are not well educated but happy, active, enthusiatic and
confident for example he citesMrs.Thara. She revolts against Mahesh by refusing
his craving desire for a child. Her revenge against Mahesh is fulfilled when
she elopes with Gopal making him a cuckold.
Githa
Hariharan is a feminist writer. Her protagonist tries to free herself from the
so called notions, taboos of the society, expectations of the scriptures. She
tries to break the bond a woman has with the society and she never wants to
oblige to the expectations of the patriarchal world. She wants to free herself
and takes the rebels of the myth as examples to find her identity. In reality
too, she takes examples of women who had revolted and rebelled against the
social pattern of the chauvinistic society. The characters in the novel are
enigmatic to Devi and she judges herself against them.
References
Hariharan,Githa.
The Thousand Faces of Night. Penguin Books. Penguin Books India
.NewDelhi.India, 1992.
Ray,
Mohit K. & Rama Kundu. Ed. Studies in
Women Writers in English. Vol.III Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, New
Delhi.2005.
Sarada,
T. “ Marriage : A Boon or Bane? A Study of Githa Hariharan’s The Thousand Faces
of Night”. Women’s Writing in India: New
Perspectives. Sarup and Sons.New Delhi.2002.
Trika,
Pradeep. Indian Women Novelists.Vol.6
Prestige Books, New Delhi.1995.
Singh,R.A.
Critical Studies on Indian Fiction in
English. Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, New Delhi.2005.
