E.
Monica
Research
Scholar,
Research
Department of English, The American College, Madurai.
Abstract
Women
represent their own stories. In times of war, personal story of a woman becomes
a parallel account to that of the national conflict. Rehana, the protagonist of
“A Golden Age” by Tahmima Anam, struggles and survives as a mother and as a
widow in the war. She grows politically aware as her children grow as freedom fighters.
She drowns into the male stream against her will. As an ordinary woman, she is
caught up in the extraordinary times. This paper shows how a woman overcomes
the dilemma in supporting her children’s involvement in war and in fear of
their security. This paper will also compare the psychology of the protagonist
with the Id psychic zone of Freud.
Keywords: Motherhood/
Widowhood, patriotism, national struggle, revolutionist, Bangladesh Conflict of
1971, Psyche of Woman.
A
Golden Age, the first novel of Anam’s trilogy is the commencement of novels
about the Liberation War of 1971 in English.
This debut novel of Anam is mostly based on her grandmother’s story
during the war. Though she left
Bangladesh at the age of two, she covers all the lively moments that had taken
place in the streets of Bangladesh during the wartime. The emotional pull towards her country makes
her to interview people who experienced the war and do research on the
historical base of the war. Born after
the Liberation War and grown up mostly outside the country, the researches she
made had helped Anam in writing her fiction.
Through A Golden Age she
fictionally recreates the story about the birth of Bangladesh which is made
clear in the article of Prasad as, “The very title suggests that the freedom
struggle has dawned a new age, a golden age, Sonar Bangla for the people of
Bangladesh.” (52) In the novel she
traces out the life of a family with the background of war.
A
Golden Age of Tahmima Anam is from the perspective of woman. It is also said that the story of the
protagonist Rehana is in a way parallel to the life of Anam’s grandmother. Chatterjee in his article depicts the
character of Rehana as,
“Anam’s protagonist in A Golden Age, Rehana, can be located
against the backdrop of this cultural discourse surrounding the gendered
embodiment of the nation and the mobilization of motherhood as a site of agency in the nationalist project.”
(139)
The
plot opens with Rehana, a widow throwing a party for her children Sohail and
Maya in the house she built; meanwhile the country is filled with the
excitement of recent election. None of
the guests in her party can foresee what will happen in the days and months to
come. This time the country that is then
East Pakistan is on the brink of war.
After this the family’s life is about to change forever. In this chaos everyone like student
protestors, rickshaw-wallahs, women, country leaders and army soldiers must make
their choices. In the struggle to keep
her family safe, Rehana is caught up with unbearable difficulties.
Rehana is in the fear of
losing her children, as she already lost them for a year after her husband
Iqbal’s death. “Dear Husband, I lost our children today.” (3) Her
husband’s brother Faiz and his wife Parveen take Rehana’s children away from
her for a year saying that she is not matured enough to take care of them on
her own. This loss of her children for a
year defies her life. “Just for a few years’, Parveen
said, ‘Give you time to recover’. As though it were an illness, something
curable, like what was happening to the country.” (7) So she does not want to
lose Maya and Sohail in the screen of war.
When Sohail approaches Rehana saying that he is about to join the army
to help them in war, she accepts it though she does not want to. She even extends her arm for help by giving
her house to bury weapons. In the same way she allows Maya to India where she
becomes a press writer for the nationalist against the Pakistan army in Calcutta.
Thus Rehana supports her children unconsciously, though she does not want them
to be in war.
As Rehana is a widow, the conflict
between the personal loss and the national commitment provokes her constantly.
The way she perceives war is different from her children’s perception. As a woman and as a mother her contribution
to the war is abundant though she is not a nationalist. At first when Sohail approaches her saying
that he wants to be in war, she refuses thus:
“They need volunteers’. . .
Rehana held her head in her hands and tried not to sound desperate. . . ‘This
isn’t war. It’s genocide. . .I can’t sit back and do nothing, Ma. Everyone is
fighting. Even people who weren’t sure, people who wanted to stay with
Pakistan” (91, 92)
The involvement of
children in war provokes her in doing something to the nation. She allows Sohail and his friends who are
involved in war to hide the weapons in her house, Sohna. “You want to use Shona’. . .Proud, vacant Shona of
the many dreams. ‘The house is yours, Sohail. Your birthright’. . . It didn’t take
long for Sohail to set up Shona as the Dhaka headquarters of the guerrilla
operations.” (117) She
finds herself becoming an involuntary revolutionary. However she is less impelled by the
nationalist favour and more by the desire to make her son happy.
Rehana
is set against the backdrop of the political and historical discourses that are
embedded in the nation. In the beginning
Rehana feels that there is no sense in the partition but on seeing the
atrocities of the East Pakistan army and her children’s involvement as
revolutionists, she is provoked as a nationalist. Though she doesn’t belong to Bangladesh, her
instinct connection towards the nation makes her to do something by supporting
Maya and Sohail. Her children provoke
her in becoming a revolutionary, which is obvious with the author’s description
thus: “No,
Rehana did not have the exactness to become a true revolutionary. But she had
realized long ago that, while the children would remain fixed at the centre of
her life, she would gradually fade out of theirs.” (55)
According
to Freud the Id is based on the
pleasure principles, which wants whatever feels good at the time without
considering other circumstances. Thus
Rehana in A Golden Age can be viewed
through the lens of the Id psychic
zone of Freud. She does whatever makes
her feel good. She does not act
according to the circumstances. Her
deeds are never based on others’ words; she acts on her own desires. Rehana is torn between the admiration of her
children’s bravery and fear for their safety.
The novelist records this predicament thus: “Rehana’s children were safe.
That was the most important thing. She could not help feeling grateful to Mrs
Chowdhury for holding Silvi’s engagement party that night, keeping her children
close to home” (81) As
all her friends and neighbours hide in their homes because of war, Rehana
becomes revolutionary though she does not want to. Her love for her children makes her become an
involuntary revolutionary unconsciously.
She is provoked more by the desire to make her son happy than the
nationalist admiration. She does not
want the nation to be separated, which is clear from the article of Prasad,
“Even Rehana sees no sense having a country in two halves, poised on either
side of India like a pair of two horns” (44)
But however she becomes a rebel of the Pakistan Army.
According to Freud the Id is entirely unconscious
part of the psyche that consist the primary components of personality. The pleasure principle of the Id seeks
immediate gratification of all the needs and desires and if the gratification
is not possible tension is created. Thus
in the case of Rehana, there has been love for the Major for a brief time. Her feelings are good in the presence of the
Major is narrated thus: “Rehana looked at him and felt a surge of pride in his
solid presence, as though he were a fallen angle, ugly and beaten, but maybe
still a little blessed.” (135) She never
wants him to go from her. She is torn
between the dilemma of the love with the Major and her love for her son. But as she is a brave mother more than a
lover, she sacrifices her love for Major.
Her desire over the Major is not fulfilled, and at the same time the Id
personality in her creates extreme tension but that is replaced with the
mother’s love. Her maternal love wins in
the dilemma. Bruce King depicts the love between Rehana and the Major and
Rehana’s love for Sohail thus: “The war helps liberate her but
forces a choice between love for her children and love of the first man in her
life since her husband’s death. Love for the children triumphs.” (210)
From the perspective of the researcher A Golden Age deals with the
transformation in the psyche of a widow on seeing her children’s involvement in
war. Rehana’s personality cannot be
fixed at one point, it differs invariably.
In the beginning she is reluctant to the partition, Sohail joining the
Guerilla, Maya joining the communist party in the Dhaka University, the Major’s
admission and his departure. But she is
provoked by the transformation in her surroundings, in which her children play
a vital part. Despite her reluctance
over a course of time Rehana learns how to let them go. She does whatever her children say because
she is entangled by the love towards them.
She is an Urdu speaking woman from west but she has made the Bengali of
East as her home. Besides all her
desires she is more motivated by the desire to make her children happy. From the beginning till the end of the novel
there has been a psychological development in her character.
The
ungratified desire of Rehana is alternated by the love over her son. She does not care about the reality, the
needs of the Major who was in love with her but on her own satisfaction. Rehana’s maternal love wins over her love for
the Major. Her satisfaction is to make
her son happy and to safeguard him from the war. The Id
is from the newborn babies. Rehana does
not behave like a child, but she behaves based on her children’s pleasure
principle. When the id needs, wants or
desire for something, nothing else is important. Likewise, Rehana goes to any extent to make
her son happy regardless of the consequences.
She responds immediately to her instinct. Her instinct is based on her children.
Thus
the motherhood/widowhood in war is revealed through the novel A Golden Age, which has the background
of the Liberation war of 1971.
Work Cited:
Anam, Tahmima. A Golden Age. Penguin Books. 2007
Prasad, Brajesh. “A
Golden Age From Gestation to Delivery of Bangladesh.” Cyber Literature 32.1
(Jun 2014)
Chatterjee, Antara. “Remembering Bangladesh: Tahmima Anam and the Recuperation of a
Bangladeshi National Narrative in Diaspora.” South Asian Review 35.3 (Dec
2014)
King, Bruce. “From
Mecca to Dhaka.” Rev. of A Woman of
Substance: the memoirs of Begum Khurshid Mirza Ed. by Lubna Kazim; A Very
Strange Man by Ismat Chugtai; Filming by Tabish Khair and A Golden Age.
Journal of Postcolonial Writing 44.2 (Jun 2008)
