Author: Ms K B Geetha, Assistant Professor, Department of
English, Faculty of Science and Humanities, SRM Institute of Science and
Technology, Kattankulathur, Chennai 603 203, Email: kbgeetha16@gmail.com
ABSTRACT:
Research
in social sciences has analyzed the status of women in societies, especially
their social, economic, political and literary empowerment and how it has
enhanced to the condition of women in India, the Caribbean, African and the
Arab world. It dealt with the themes of dowry in Hindu marriages and rape and
the legislative rights of women in custody respectively. Postcolonial women
writers foreground issues of female identity and its structures. It also
brought forth social and political problems through the psychological
explorations of the ‘woman’s condition.’ According to Mary John and Janaki Nair
the question of modernity is framed on the middle class women. Her morality and
her spirituality matters, as she embodies the custodian of the nation’s
morality and symbolizes ‘Shakti.’ Thus her sexuality is virtually annihilated
because of this pure idealism. Contemporary thinkers regarded gender identity
to be fluid and never fixed. Queer writing and Queer theory perceived such
concepts of identity as trans-gendering, Transvestitism, drag and camp, and
other sexual identities. Homosexuals have been known as ‘Other’ of ‘normal’
heterosexual identities, thus they are reduced to the status of being gays.
KEY WORDS: Literary Empowerment,
Structuralization, Readdressing, Transgender, Gay-Lesbian, Homosexuality, Queer
Theory, Symbolism, Culture, Stereotypes.
INTRODUCTION:
Research in social sciences has analyzed
the status of women in societies, especially their social, economic, political
and literary empowerment and how it has enhanced to the condition of women in India,
the Caribbean, African and the Arab world. It has also focused on the impact of
the ‘Third World’ writers through which the possibilities of ‘Third World’
feminism were analyzed. The reclamation of women literary writers from the
margin has enhanced the women’s role in the structuralization of the society
and nation. During the postcolonial period literary traditions focused on
writings by males; a male bastion whereby women’s texts and narratives were
ignored or regarded as ‘domestic fiction.’ Elleke Boehmer opines gender has
been “intrinsic to national imagining” (2005b:5).The major themes dealt by
post-colonial women writers were political equality and social emancipation. Writers
like Assia Djebae and Anita Desai questioned the role of the family in
governing women, an eventuality of egalitarian society. While Women’s fiction
illuminates issues of female identity, it also propounded social and political
problems. Public genres such as street theatre women’s organizations especially
raised social awareness through plays like Dafa180
and Om Swaha. It dealt with the themes
of dowry in Hindu marriages and rape and the legislative rights of women in
custody respectively. Postcolonial women writers foregrounds issues of female
identity and its structures, it also brought forth social and political
problems through the psychological explorations of the ‘woman’s condition.’
Much of the literary works dealt with
abused and the abandoned women in oppressive situations. Nayantara Sahgal a
prominent Indian novelist foregrounds the exploitation and oppression of women
workers in Rich like Us (1986). Meena
Alexander’s Nampally Road(1991) is one of the few novels that speaks of Naxalism in India. Writers like Bankimchandra
Chatterjee and Rabindarnath Tagore epitomized women as an icon of Indian
tradition, while Imtiaz Dharker believed that woman are fit only as subordinate
creatures. She describes women as ‘freaks’ in the poem ‘She must be from Another
Country’. The Innocence of the Devil,
by El Saadawi, treats women as a depositary of man’s honour or family honour. According
to Mary John and Janaki Nair the question of modernity is framed on the middle
class women. Her morality and her spirituality matters, as she embodies the custodian
of the nation’s morality and symbolizes ‘Shakti.’ Thus her sexuality is virtually
annihilated because of this pure idealism.
C. S. Lakshmi states; “The ‘notion’
of an unbroken tradition is constant and attempts are made to write this notion
of tradition on the body of the woman to dictate its movement, needs, aspirations
and spheres of existence even while the body is moving along time, space, and
history”(1999:55). In contemporary India there have been deliberations on dress
codes for Indian women and ideas of ‘suitable
dress for Indian women or appropriateness’ of dresses are contemplated. Even
socially or politically powerful women in the society are conceptualized within
‘good mother or bad mother’ thereby fixing them in a stereotype role of fixed
womanhood.
DISCUSSION:
In Anita Desai’s, Clear high of Day (1980), she makes the
connection between gender roles and the traditional and conventional symbol of
nationalism. Anita Desai’s Fire on the
Mountain (1977), Feasting, Fasting
(2000) and Bharati Mukerjee’s Wife
(1975) project self-sacrificing women. Some of the sites of identity which
are generally focused on are the home, community and tradition are seen in the
novels of Desai and Keri Hulme. The Completeness of the womanhood is generally identified
with marriage and family. Many women writers in India portray that marriage is
pernicious to the women’s identity .The notion of motherhood and the image of
chaste submissive wife in the family governs the average Indian women and thus
becomes a central theme for many writers. Rukmani in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve is proud of the fact
that she has never addressed her husband by his name (10). So also in Bharathi Mukerjee’s Wife(1975).
The character Dimple ascertains that
her life had been devoted to pleasing others not herself (1975:211). Adriene Rich
comments that the “Woman has always known herself both as daughter and as
potential mother” (1986[1976]):118). For women, marriage indicates the end of
self –reliance, and that by itself a question whether they were independent in
their fathers’ house. Motherhood as a theme addresses the problems associated
with it .The stress on delivering or producing heir to the family is
unimaginable. Female infanticide is the result of this stress, problem which
still persists in many parts of India; Sahgal in her Mistaken Identity describes this as ‘Custom-ritual’ because the
Hindus prefer a boy-child
The 1990s -
the oncoming of Queer writing:
Contemporary thinkers regarded gender
identity to be fluid and never fixed. Queer writing and Queer theory perceived
such concepts of identity as trans-gendering, Transvestitism, drag and camp, and
other sexual identities. Homosexuals have been known as ‘Other’ of ‘normal’
heterosexual identities, thus they are reduced to the status of being gays. And
yet within homosexuality there are various dimensions. The themes that are
presented in queer writing are race, ethnicity, sexuality, family relationships
and the queer diaspora and globalizations. Kamala Das was one of the first
daring writers to discuss sexuality. In a conservative and patriarchal society
her autobiographical work, My story (1988)
exhibits the conditions a girl grows up, her bold expression of sexuality and
the presupposition of sexual behavior before marriage. At a period of time when
bodily functions, body diseases, sexual pleasures and attractions are forbidden
subjects especially for women, Kamala Das was one of the writers to move
towards a feminist way to discuss sexuality.
Her poem ‘The Stone Age’ describes the conditions in which women live after
marriage. Women writers of 1980s and 1990s exposed the literary silence on women’s
desires. Imtiaz Dharker, independent of marital relationship expresses:
Desire can be a delicate thing,
…………………………………………….
Who needs as much as the naked
breast? lust is aroused by a wrist
revealed
the hollow at the neck,
the ankle-bone,
half –concealed. (Object, 2001:108)
Shashi Deshpande showcases bold
themes and characters such as individual morality and social morality. In Small Remedies (2001) and Moving On (2004), Deshpande has
discussed extra marital affairs, women leaving ‘their’ home and women who
pursue their professional interest. Discourses of morality were another
important way of regulating sexuality. Professing sexual desire or preferences
on being promiscuous was labelled as ‘immoral’.
Autobiographical writing /life
writing, memoirs, diaries –personal accounts, underlines both individual and
communal experiences in the author’s own voice. Such writings by women present
a challenge as they resist blending into the larger category of ‘Third World Women.’
Most of these writing are available as translations. In India Dalit writings by
women were a lived experience of poverty, violence, rejection and suffering. It
functions as a collective document from individual to community through a re-telling
of trauma. Bama describes her caste –based trauma in Karukku. Relationships are
invariably transient and unstable. In The
Boyfriend by Raja Rao homosexuality is passable between a heterosexual relationship
between a mother and a respectable professional. In Kamal Das’s poem ‘Composition’
her protagonist expresses doubts about herself:
I asked my husband,
Am I hetero
Am I Lesbian
Or am I Just plain frigid? (1967:46)
Suniti Namjoshi expounds in Because of India (1989b): “As a creature,
a lesbian creature how do I deal with all other creatures who have their own
identity” (84) Modern Indian women symbolized a dual identity, a westernized
education and an Indian ingrained tradition. This woman can be seen in Anita Desai’s
Clear Light of day (1980). ‘Bimala’
trapped between her ideological sentiments of education and the Hindu system of
upbringing. Queer literature often raises questions of identity demanded by
families. Dattani’s plays (Do the needful
on a Muggy Night in Bombay) critiques gays who accept the generality of
family and sexual preferences. Ruth Vanita opines in an important essay ‘Gender and sexuality to liberate both women
and men into developing different kinds of family on collective living’(1997:16).
Readdressing
the systems of family and Kinship is the nexus to a queer narrative:
Migration has shaped the gay and
lesbian communities; many move to the USA working there, away from their
family- this has liberated them from the limits of heterosexual family. Amitava
Kumar comments on Kureishi’s writing as creating a “Whole new world of
migration and that race and sexual freedom” (2001:117). Many writers argue that
race and sexual identities overlap at a certain point. Sexuality is as much
domain of discrimination of race and the close alignment of the two causes an
oppression with miscegenation. Although gay-lesbian alliance globally moved
towards to a better politics alliance, it may erase cultural specificity for a
uniform gay-lesbian identity. The Indian lesbian poet Anu, in her poem ‘Who am
I’ depicts the racial imaginary of sexual identity, thus:
WHO AM I?
I
am Uncivilised, Barbaric, Heathen,
Primitive,
Oriental
I am PASSIVE, Submissive,
Self-Sacrificing,
Obedient
Sati-Savitri
I am Dyke, Deviant, Queer,
Assimilated
Bitch-from-Hell
……………………………………..
WHO AM I? (1994: 19_21, Emphasis in Original)
CONCLUSION:
The ‘Third World’ Gay and lesbian
writers who have migrated to the ‘First World’ cities have tough time of
identity formation. Urvashi vaid relates her experiences of growing up into a
lesbian-Asian woman in the USA:
I lived in two worlds – American
outside the home and Indian with family and
Friends… In college, my life
struggles revolved around my growing awareness
Of sexism, racism and my own sexual
orientation. Because I had no Indian
Community outside of family…the place
where I defined my identity was in-
side grassroots political
organizations. After I came out as a lesbian, my worlds
Became even further splintered-I had
a queer life, a mainstream American life
And an identity within my Indian
family and community. (1997:8)
Works Cited
Alexander,
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Books, 1991. Print.
Ellake, Boehmer, and Susheila Nafta. “Motherlands: Black Womens Writing
from Africa, the Caribbean and
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Das,Kamala. My
story. New Delhi: Sterling, 1996. Print.
Dattani, Mahesh.
Collected Plays I. New Delhi: Penguin,
2000. Print.
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