‘Why should boys have all the fun?’
Women and Contemporary Literature
Nibir K. Ghosh
I was
elected by the women of Ireland,
who instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system. - Mary Robinson
Being a
woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you’re important and nice but you take
second place all the same. - Iris Murdoch
Women are a huge powerhouse in today’s India. Look around you. There are
women racing in all kinds of fields…finance, literature, broadcasting, art,
IT, design, law, science, medicine, education – and are a huge powerhouse in
today’s India.
A powerhouse, true And yet this is a
powerhouse with over 90% of the power switched off. These are women who don’t
even know they have choices. - Imtiaz Dharker
The Backdrop
The Bible says the Lord God created Eve out of the
rib cage of Adam, giving thereby a derivative nature to her existence. There is
an equally charming myth associated with the creation of woman by the Supreme
Creator, "Bramha." Bramha first created man and in his generosity,
wished to give man a companion. He borrowed several components from the
beautiful creation of nature and made woman out of them. Hence the reference of
woman as Prakriti. Bramha presented woman to his earlier creation man saying
"She will serve you lifelong and if you cannot live with her, neither can
you live without her."
Both myths indicate that woman is either an "after
thought" of a male God or a play-mate created for man as a psychic compensation
for his innate loneliness. If the primordial myth gave woman her ritually
prescribed status, all literatures since time immemorial expose the desperate
marginality of female existence whether these women have lived in solitude, in
extended families or in nuclear families, be it in ancient Athens or the world
of Manu. Though Manu, the lawgiver, accepts that "A woman's body must not
be struck hard, even with a flower, because it is sacred," he is well
known for stating: “A woman is never fit for independence. Her father protects (her) in childhood, her husband
protects (her) in youth and her sons protect (her) in old age…Day and night
woman must be kept in dependence by the males.”
It ought not to be surprising,
therefore, that in the world’s most powerful democracy, when the Statue of
Liberty, which portrays a woman holding the torch of freedom, was opened to the
public on October 28, 1886, no woman was invited to the ceremonies on this
important occasion. Even to the nineteenth century conservative in America, the
idea of equal rights for women had appeared ridiculous and unwarranted as can
be evidenced from the following statement:
The
power of woman is in her dependence…But, when she assumes the place and tone of
man as a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary; she
yields the power which God has given her for protection, and her character
becomes unnatural. If the vine, whose strength and beauty is to lean upon the
trellis-work and half conceal its clusters, thinks to assume the independence
and overshading nature of the elm, it will not only cease to bear fruit, but
will fall in shame and dishonour into the dust.
These social stereotypes have been reinforced by archetypes
for ages, amply supported by Freud’s classic finding ascertaining that “Anatomy
is Destiny.”
Articulating Silence - Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s
Own
Important
questions like Who is the real woman? Where is the real woman? What is her real
entity? Has she an identity of her own? lay submerged in the conspiracy of
silence. From the perspective of the Seminar’s central theme, mention must here
be made of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929), a document that
veritably challenged the paradigms of such a silence. In passionately
reclaiming the woman's voice muted by patriarchal society – where men have all
the power and money, hold all the important positions, make all the important
decisions – Virginia Woolf’s narrator in the essay explores the British Museum
in London and is dismayed to find that though there are too many books written
about women (almost all by men) there are hardly any books by women on men or
by women on women.
Reflecting
on such a great disparity, the narrator gives convincing evidence why genius
has so infrequently flowered among women. In A Room of One's Own, Woolf
ponders the significant question of whether or not a woman could produce art of
the high quality of Shakespeare. In doing so, she examines women's historical
experience as well as the distinctive struggle of the woman artist. She says
“genius like Shakespeare's is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile
people." In her view, some kind of genius must have existed among women
then, as it exists among the working class, although it never translated to
paper. The narrator argues that the difficulties of writing - especially the
indifference of the world to one's art - are compounded for women, who are
actively disdained by the male establishment. By boldly advocating the fact
that both the freedom from economic dependence and the freedom from fetters to
the mind and body are conditions of the possibility of genius and its full
expression, Woolf laid the foundation of the feminist movement. She asserts how
Judith Shakespeare still lives within all women, and that if women are given
500 pounds a year and a room of one's own, that is money and privacy, she will
be reborn. Woolf’s essay raises three inextricable questions: women and what
they are like; women and the fiction they write; and women and what is written
about them.
In breaking the conspiracy of silence and in giving
expression to the untold stories of women, the revolutionary roles played by
The Feminist Press in New York and Kali for Women in New Delhi need not be
overemphasized. The Mission of the Feminist Press is
to publish and promote the most potent voices of women from all eras and all
regions of the globe. The Press has brought more than 500 critically acclaimed
works by and about women into print, enriching the literary canon, expanding
the historical record, and influencing public discourse about issues
fundamental to women. The Feminist Press continues to bring vital new voices to
public attention.
Started in 1984, in a Delhi
garage by Ritu Menon and Urvashi Butalia, Kali for Women has been providing a viable
publishing mouthpiece to Indian feminism. Kali's objective is to increase the
body of knowledge on women in the Third World,
to give voice to such knowledge as already exists and to provide a forum for
women writers. Apart from publishing English translations of significant fictional
writings by women from various Indian languages, Kali also seeks to
redefine issues of women's lives in a positive way. Kali for Women has now
split into two independent imprints. The co-founders of Kali, Urvashi Butalia
and Ritu Menon have established their independent publishing imprints - Zubaan
and Women Unlimited respectively.
Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House
When Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) tells her
husband Torvald Helmer before leaving
him for good, “Our house has never been anything but a play-room. I have been
your doll wife, just as at home I was daddy’s doll child. And the children in
turn have been my dolls. I thought it was fun when you came and played with me,
just as they thought it was fun when I went and played with them. That’s been
our marriage,” Nora comes to the point where she takes a drastic step ahead of
her time. The play created a sensation when it was first produced and many
women refused to play the part of a woman who deserts her husband and children.
Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying
Erica Jong advocates both emotional and economic autonomy
as imperatives in the woman’s struggle for liberation. What is significant in
Erica’s stance is that she is not unaware of the ground realities and the
attendant hazards of Nora’s decision in Ibsen’s play. She takes into account
all the dialectics involved in theories of Western Feminism propounded by
Germaine Greer, Kate Millet, Ellaine Showalter, Simone de Beavoir and the rest
and yet she is highly critical of the “whole package of lies that passes for
feminism.” She states that fulfillment cannot be attained through idle flights
of fancy, martyrdom or suicide. Fulfillment lay in exploring the “inner space”
of the self to conquer one’s own sense of vulnerability.”
In Erica Jong’s view the awakened Eve, especially in the
American context, has gathered the confidence to voice her protest against the
tyranny of man not by virtue of her legal battles or the attainment of political rights of equality but through her
rejection of roles imposed upon her by a male-dominated society and through her
discovery and acceptance of the true essence of her own selfhood. At the end of
the novel, Isadora Duncan, the protagonist, is seen musing over the ambivalence
of the choice she had made: Commenting on the powerful status of the
institution of marriage, she states in the novel: “In 19th century
novels, they get married. In 20th century novels they get divorced.
Can you have an ending in which they do neither? But whatever happened, I knew
I would survive it…Surviving meant being born over and over. It wasn’t easy,
and it was always painful. But there wasn’t any other choice except death.”
Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying also brings to the fore
the misconception that we in India normally have about the western idea of
marriage and family life. One tends to believe as a result of such
misconception that the woman in western society is endowed with all kinds of
freedom that are denied to women folks in India, especially the right to live
as one desires. Tired of playing the game of musical beds, the protagonist becomes
aware of ground realities even in the most powerful democracy in the world: “
It is heresy in America to embrace any way of life, except as half of a couple.
Solitude is un-American. It may be condoned in a man…But a woman is always
presumed to be alone as a result of abandonment, not choice…There is no
dignified way for a woman to live alone. Oh! She can get along financially
perhaps (though not nearly as well as a man), but emotionally she is never left
in peace. Her friends, her family, her fellow workers never let her forget that
her husbandlessness, her childlessness – her selfishness, in short is a
reproach to the American way of life.
Doris Lessing
While talking of the fate and predicament
of women in contemporary literature, one cannot ignore the dominant presence of
Doris Lessing in any discourse both as creator and protagonist. In awarding the
2007 Nobel Prize for Literature to Doris Lessing, the Swedish Academy cited her
as “that epicist of the female experience, who with
scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to
scrutiny." The award, that came a few days before her 88th birthday
makes her the oldest recipient of the coveted honour. Author of dozens of books of fiction, as well as plays, nonfiction and
two volumes of autobiography, she is the 11th woman to win the Nobel
Prize in Literature.
Lessing wrote persuasively about
politics, feminism, Communism and black-white relations in Africa before moving
on to explore the emotional dimensions of the human psyche in her
groundbreaking 1962 novel entitled The Golden Notebook which took the world
by storm. Lessing’s focus has always been her concern about the inner lives of
women and she is extremely articulate in rejecting the notion that they should
abandon their lives to marriage and children. Having known what it means to be intelligent and frustrated
and female in an essentially male-dominated world, she states: “Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected
talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.” Lessing critically and realistically explores the controversial
questions being debated the world over – the stereotypes, marriage, motherhood,
the predicament of emancipated women, sisterhood and finally arrives at the conclusion
to be free one must be self contained.
Lessing
motivates us all to demonstrate an optimistic approach to life and its
complexities and suggests that we ought not to wallow in self-pity, regret,
sentimentality or seek to evade responsibilities. Instead we are to face each
problem as it comes. She emphasizes the need for positive engagement with the
world and prefers a delicate balancing of social responsibility and
self-interest. In spite of the cosmic misalignments, humanity has the ultimate
choice for good or evil, she says. According to Lessing, “The New Jerusalem
does not come down from heaven—it is constructed by humanity in whatever
geometric shape they want…What is a hero without love for mankind.”
Indian Literature
Images
of woman in Indian literature is characterised by contradiction - there is a
conventional image and there is a protesting voice. Post independence
literature reveals the woman's quest for her identity giving rise to a number
of issues. The new woman is emerging and there are a number of new themes and
issues to be taken by the future. However, two overall views of woman
dominating Indian literature from ages. The Sita and the Draupadi archetypes.
There is silent suffering with utmost loyalty to man in the Sita type and woman
as an Individual demanding social justice in the Draupadi types. Sita absorbs
all inflicted misery and humiliation of the male ego whereas Draupadi
challenges the male ego to the epitonic limits of human excellence. Sita
accepts, accommodates and withdraws. Draupadi resents, rejects and involves
herself in the process of life as a protagonist. These two feminine archetypes
define the limits of feminine experience in reality, especially the Indian
Reality. The gender divide in modern Indian literature moves between new
iconizations of these two bold and primordial figures.
Pratibha Ray’s Yajnaseni
As
an appropriate illustration of the two primordial figures mentioned above,
Pratibha Ray’s novel foregrounds the anguish and anger of Yagnaseni who rightly
questions whether man has the right to consider woman merely as his movable or
immovable property. Placed on the brink of utter humiliation when brought
dragging to the court by Dushshasana, Yagnaseni doesn’t plead for mercy but
demands justice. Pratibha Ray’s protagonist Yagnaseni boldly affirms the stand
she had taken in that critical moment, a stand no less significant in today’s
India than it was in that mythological space: “When that wicked man was
stripping me, helpless like chaste Sita I could have disappeared into the depths of the earth to hide my
shame. If I had prayed, would not the earth have opened? But I did not do so.
If I had done so my modesty would have been protected but the wicked would not
have been punished. In the future this problem would remain unresolved for
women…The remaining days of my life I will fight against injustice, adharma,
sin. Though the world may call me an ogress because of this, the world must
know that woman who creates, is auspicious, is also the destroyer of the sinful
and the wicked…Let the world know that while a woman’s heart is delicate, it is
not weak.”
According
to Ray, Draupadi is a challenge of womanhood, the embodied form of action,
knowledge, devotion and power. Such a woman who has faced torment, insult, mental
and emotional dilemma like Yajnaseni Draupadi – has not yet been born on this
earth. Yet, the pain and the agony of mythical Draupadi is not an anachronism
in contemporary Indian society, a fact that is highlighted by Ray through the
narrative she recounts in the “Afterword” to Yagnaseni- The Story of
Draupadi:
All of us know something of Krishnaa’s sacrifice,
dedication, strength of character. The name of the younger sister of a lady
known to me is Krishnaa. Leaving her debauched drunkard of husband she is
living in her father’s house. Everyone said
Krishnaa should remarry. But in our society today the remarriage of one
discarded by her husband is not that simple and easy. For diverting her mind,
Krishnaa went away to her brother in West Germany. Sometime later, she married
a young man there. She has two children now, a son and a daughter. Her conjugal
life is comfortable. But the peculiar thing is that those who were at one time
sympathetic towards Krishnaa, said after the second marriage, “Well, when her
very name is Krishnaa, she could be happy only after taking a second husband.
Arre! The Krishnaa of Mahabharat took five husbands, and still not being
satisfied, was attracted to Karna and Krishna.”
After such knowledge, what forgiveness! It is interesting
to note, sad though it is, how societal attitudes refuse to acknowledge the
need for change in spite of epoch making advancements and technological future
shocks. Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, the novel that won her
the Man Booker Prize, we are brought in touch with the harsh realities that
reflect the social and cultural stigma of divorce in India and the fate of the
“wretched Man-less woman": “a married daughter had no position in her
parents' home. As for a divorced daughter according to Baby Kochamma, she had
no position anywhere at all." Let us not forget that the novel’s location
is Kerala, the province which has the highest literacy rate in India.
Mahashweta Devi’s “Draupadi”
On the other extreme, and contrary to the stereotypical
patterns of the female image, the hope, perhaps, sadly lies in the emergence of
the exceptional woman like Dopdi in Mahashweta’s story “Draupadi” who can live
on her own terms by rejecting the stereotyped image of the ‘truly virtuous
woman’ who is ever willing to conform to the standards set by a male-dominated
society. Unlike the legendary Draupadi in Mahabharata who in her
helplessness pleads to Lord Krishna to protect her from being ignominiously
disrobed in public, Mahashweta’s protagonist subverts the stereotypes of
“female virtue and modesty” by boldly daring the exploiters of her modesty to
touch her again: “What’s the use of clothes? You can strip me, but how can you
clothe me again? Are you a man?…There isn’t a man here that I should be ashamed.
I will not let you put my cloth on me. What more can you do?”
The Contemporary Scene
The
image of woman in literature emerges out of the existing world. In India, which
has been regarded by sociologists as a traditionally male dominated society,
both men and women writers have seen woman in this relationship with man,
primarily as mother, wife, mistress and sex objects. Woman as an achiever is
either non-existent or considered an exception. A woman's individual self has
very little recognition. But we have to remember that family plays a pivotal
role in the Indian scheme of life. The new woman in Indian literature does not
break the family but dreams to make the family "Home Sweet Home." Be
it small or big, be it in the courtyard or in the courtroom woman is the cause
of all action. But they are still walking on a tight rope to achieve their
human rights and social justice. Indian woman at the turn of the century are in
a transitional phase via-a-vis the interface of tradition and modernity. Though
women writers are tolerant and respectful towards the traditional obligations,
they are still confident of their own new self and sensitive to the
dogmatization of traditional values.
At the
turn of the new millennium Indian literature as far as the feminist thrust is
concerned, is not free from family, history and social modernism. The women are
more educated, sophisticated and even rebellious but the woman herself is wary
of shedding off the traditional values which forms part of her inherited
consciousness. Once upon a time, not very long ago, the story of Savitri was
held up as a prime example of the lengths to which a wife could go in aiding
her husband. The myth relates how the good wife saves her husband from death,
follows him anywhere, proves her virtue, remains under his control and gives
him her power. We must however admit that the times are changing even if the
pace of change is marginal. As an evidence of the changing scenario we may look
at a statement by Anees Jung in her pioneering book titled Unveiling India:
A Woman's Journey (1988):
Not
long ago a woman who spoke about herself was considered a loose woman. To voice
a pain, to divulge a secret, was considered sacrilege, a breach of family
trust. Today, voices are raised without fear, and are heard outside the walls
of homes that once kept a woman protected, also isolated. Some of the women who
speak here have stepped out. Others who have not, are beginning to be aware,
eager to find expression. But let them speak for themselves…Their looks have not
changed, their manner has. Individually they have gained a name, collectively
an identity. Their new power was not imposed upon them but already existed,
enclosed within walls. Now that power has stirred out into the open. Their new
strength stems from personalities defining their own terms, lending grace to
living.
Anees Jung exemplifies another writer in search of new
images of women. She explains the change that has taken place in Indian society
so that now women will tell their own stories. Jung herself, who grew up
completely secluded in purdah, has remained unmarried and become a successful
writer. She says about herself: "My reality no longer has one face. I have
stepped out of an enclosed reality into one that is larger, more diverse, and
mobile…I continue to live out an experience for which I have yet to find a
name.”
Conclusion
Reflecting at the epigraphs
with which I opened this essay, it becomes imperative to realize that women
empowerment is a very complex issue endowed with subtle shades of variant
approaches that require the perfect poise to navigate between rocking the
cradle and the system in order to restore a major share of the power that
currently stands switched off. Perhaps, what is needed is that every feminist
worth the name must learn to acknowledge what she has in common with others of
her sex who are all similarly shackled by conventional notions of her
predicament. Neither the path of open confrontation nor an uneasy truce but the
confidence to move in harmonious unison as co-partner in the power game,
without compromising honour and dignity as an individual, ought to be the real
goal of woman’s emancipation.
It must be borne in mind that
specific reforms related to the emancipation and empowerment of women must
supplement the basic need for a change in attitude towards women, since women
need self-trust, self-reliance, and self-respect in order to assert their
individual identity and existence. The fact cannot be ignored that sex is the
only instance in which representatives of the unequal groups live in more
intimate association with each other than with members of their own group to a
greater extent than any other underprivileged group. Femininity must,
therefore, exist as the complement to masculine power, not as its subversive
supplement, an excess that would undermine the boundaries of gender. As such,
it would be appropriate to bear in mind the words of Betty Friedan that come at
the end of her The Feminine Mystique:
Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to
become themselves? Who knows what women’s intelligence will contribute when it
can be nourished without denying love? Who knows of the possibilities of love
when men and women share not only children, home, and garden, not only the
fulfillment of their biological roles, but the responsibilities and passions of
the work that creates the human future. It has barely begun, the search of
women for themselves. But the time is at hand when the voices of the feminine
mystique can no longer drown out the inner voice that is driving women on to
become complete.
I am optimistic that “the search of women for themselves” will
bring to the fore multiple facets of women’s experiences: the power, the
passion, the pain, the hopelessness, the fury, the joy. It will be a rewarding
experience to comprehend simultaneously the diversity of women and the
diversity within each woman as portrayed in literature and life. It is
intrinsically significant to ask how these experiences touch women writing on
the whole. Do these writings address seminal questions and issues? How do women
themselves view such writings? Is it marginal or central to their lives? What
is the relationship between such writing and the political involvement of the
writers? What are their concerns, and what is the creative energy at work? Our
response to these questions will go a long way in creating the much desired
democratic space in harmonious living.
Professor Nibir K. Ghosh is Chief Editor, Re-Markings (www.re-markings.com)
