Which type of feministic issues do you find from the Chitra Benrjee’s stories?

· Name of institute: Swami Sahjanand Collages of Commerce and Management of Computer Sciences (SSCCM)

·       Topic of the assignment: Which type of feministic issues do you find from the Chitra Benrjee’s stories?

·       Roll no: 07

·       Name: Drashti V. Dave

·       Course: M.phil

·       Year-2015          

·       Paper-3 : Indian writing in English

·       Unit: 4

·        Brief introduction about Chitra Benrjee:

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (born Chitralekha Banerjee, 1956) Novelist, professor, poet, essayist, short story writer, author, fiction writer, nonfiction writer, children's fiction writer, young adult fiction writer, book reviewer, columnist, she is an Indian-American author, poet, and the Professor of Writing at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Her short story collection, Arranged Marriage won an American Book Award in 1995, and two of her novels (The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart) as well as a short story The Word Love were adapted into films. Mistress of Spices was short-listed for the Orange Prize.

Divakaruni's works are largely set in India and the United States, and often focus on the experiences of South Asian immigrants. She writes for children as well as adults and has published novels in multiple genres, including realistic fiction, historical fiction, magical realism, and fantasy.

Divakaruni's first collection of stories Arranged Marriage, which won an American Book Award

·        Writing style of Chitra Banerjee:

Arranged Marriage is a collection of eleven stories, covering almost all the aspects of marriage. The stories are diverse in theme, characters and narration, and yet bound together by the common thread of marriage.

Some of these stories talk about the steady love that glues a couple together while others expose the misplaced trust a woman places in her violent husband. And, still others revealed the bitter sweet relationship a wedded duo enjoys. In short, almost every aspect of marriage is dealt with in the span of just 300 pages by Chitra Banerjee.

 Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s works chiefly evolve around the immigrant experiences that women undergo, their struggle to settle in the alien country and culture, their dilemma of new roles and the old beliefs inculcated through traditional upbringing. As a result of existing in this “in-between” space, the woman living in America develops an altered consciousness in order to preserve her own culture while at the same time adapting to her current American surroundings.

Her women characters think more rationally, but they mentally retain some of the traditional believers, struggling to carve out identities of their own. Gender plays a crucial role in the way in which immigrants experience diasporic feeling.

·        Multiple Roles of Women Depicted in Chitra Banerjee’s Stories:

®   The story “The Bats” is an excellent example of realism. In the story mother is a typical Indian traditional woman caught in a social prejudice and victimized by social conditioning to be a silent, submissive, and voiceless creature that is afraid to free herself from her past and lacking the strength to move forward. Even the daughter is caught trapped between her father’s cruelty and her mother’s love.

Bats were used as a powerful symbol of misplaced trust. As the bats return to orchards despite poison, so did the mother trust his abusive husband again and again only to be thwarted once more? The story indicate many other things like; life of a woman especially married woman, emotion of a girl, social or financial issues, symbolism, rural life and even mystery of life.

Banerjee beautifully describe all the events together. Here in this story feministic issue shows through particular character.

She is incapable to understand the reason behind the bruises that her mother has on her face which are evident of violence that she goes through frequently. Her mother’s decision to move to her grandpa uncle’s house filled her with happiness though this happiness lasts for very short time. The depiction of the bats being killed in the large number is symbolical of her mother’s return to her husband to be abused violently.

®   In the story 'Clothes' Sumita the protagonist, changes clothes at different stages of her life symbolizes her changing characteristics which describes constant clash between her emotions and external pressures which results a new hybrid identity to Sumita. She wears sari at her home in India and migrates to America after her marriage.

Ø Sari is a unique and an important part of Indian identity. For Sumita it reflects hopes, her feelings and her thoughts. Her wet and yellow sari reflects her feelings about a new change which is about to come after her marriage and her immigration to America. The sari of pale- pink in color is symbolic as she thinks of herself in a new country with her partner. While blue and red are the colors of possibilities and luck. She continues to wear sari at her in-laws home as her Indian identity continues but at the same time she starts making a transition from an Indian woman to a western lady. The change in the clothes constantly and gradually indicates gradual transformation which takes place in her personality. After her husband’s death, she emerges with a new identity; identity of an independent, empowered and strong woman. The clothes at different stages of her life symbolize her changing identity and at the end it symbolizes her embracing the western culture with empowerment and her freedom of choices. She finally decides to stay in America and work as her husband and she herself has dreamt.

Ø Banerjee skillfully describe married women’s life her hopes and wishes. When one girl has to go her in-laws home at that time her mother give advice to her daughter that make balance between both the ‘home’ this type of advice shown in this sentence;

“A married women belongs to her husband, her in-laws”

This type of stereotypes shows conditioned mind of woman or rather we can say that woman has been conditioned to think like some particular way.

Ø Another notable feministic issue in this story is that woman’s desire, her dreams and her happiness which is reflected in this sentence by Mita;

“That’s our dream (mine more than his, I suspect)”

It shows that woman’s happiness is connected with her husband’s

Ø Although the newly married wife in “Clothes” becomes a widow shortly after her arrival in the United States, she chooses to stay rather than return to her Indian homeland.  Mita decides:

“I don’t know yet how I’ll manage, here in this new, dangerous land.  I only know I must.  Because all over India, at this very moment, widows in white saris are bowing their veiled heads, serving tea to in-laws.  Doves with cut-off wings…(p. 33)”
Chitra Benrjee’s women characters are learning choice, independence, and self-reliance, often for the first time, as they transform their lives in a strange but enticing land. 

It shows how Mita’s character is changing and become powerful and independent at the end.

®   The Ultrasound was another great story of two friends, who get pregnant at the same time, and yet owing to different cultural settings, use Ultrasound for altogether different purposes.

®   In “Silver Pavement, Golden Roofs,” Chitra Benrjee has presented the humiliating racial discrimination in the American society. Jayanti observes that something must have terribly wrong with her uncle by looking at his scar. This story depicts the life of an Indian man who comes to America dreaming of becoming a millionaire. But he ends up as a garage mechanic, a victim of discrimination, he believes. The women are afraid of their fathers or husbands and are afraid to leave their homes in protest because they fear a scandal in society. Pratima Auntie tolerates her husband’s abuses and frustration patiently, without protest. She is the victim of his anger.

®   Like other stories of the collection, the next two stories – ‘The Word Love’ and ‘A Perfect Life’ portray Indian women, caught between two worlds. These women are liberated as well as trapped by cultural changes. ‘The Word Love’ depicts the dilemma of an Indian immigrant woman who falls in love with a U.S. born young man. She lives with him but does not want her mother to know of her affair with a foreigner, perhaps considering it a sin. A turmoil which goes on in her heart eventually results in the estrangement of her relations with Rex, her boy friend. She suffers; she tries to cross the boundaries of age-old Indian traditional cultural ethos in which Indian mothers can never marry their daughters to the Americans. The story ‘ The Maid Servant’s Story’ also reiterates the dichotomy of the Indian and the Western outlook. The female protagonist here enjoys a liberated relationship and lives with a foreigner whom she might never marry.   

®   Meaning of marriage in her story:  Marriage is described as a blessed union of two souls, happily ignoring the hardships of a lifelong commitment, the hazards of living with a man of your exact opposite nature, making small and big compromises with or without your consent, while inwardly hoping to let things be alright by themselves. But, as a coin has two sides, one side can never be overlooked in preference to the other, in reality both aspects of marriage are equally important

In both the stories ‘Bat’ and ‘Cloth’ Banerjee described her characters married. One is escape from the marriage life and another is ready to face the problems which came after her husband’s death. Both are different from each other but than even they have one similarity that is “change”.

Chitra Banerjee reflected that how woman have to change after marriage, she will have to be ready for all types of problems.

·        Conclusion: The image of women presented in the literature has undergone slow evolution and in spite of only dwelling around the theme of self sacrificing, submissive women and their predicament the writers of current time have attempted the conflicts and hurdles which women has to face while performing duties inside and outside the house and family. Different shades of experiences presented through variety of characters where women takes action according to the intensity of deep rooted traditional value system. Some of them are successful to change the life by taking risks as the story, “Disappearance” represents while characters like mother in “Bats” returns to her problematic world. In a way The Arranged Marriage is a collection of stories which represents conflicts and predicament experienced by Indian women living in India or abroad. It is a realistic portrayal of women living in India under the shadows of patriarchal social conditioning, their internal clash between the hope for change in life and their deep rooted traditional programming of values. There are problems of assimilation whether it is about post marriage adjustments or immigrant experience in the new culture. Sometimes they submit to the circumstances and surrender to the destiny and some of the characters are making courageous actions to fulfill their own choices and standards which help them to create their own identity.

·        According to Anita Desai “The Indian woman is always is working towards an adjustment and compromises…” Banerjee break down this tradition and portrays a tapestry ‘New women’ in her prize winning short story collection. 

Ø Empowerment is shown in many of Benrjee’s stories

Ø Banerjee’s woman characters are self-motivated, adamant, liberated and ambitious, empowered and ready to face the arguments against society as well as her-self. They always choose the path which is self-dependent; they have exercised their freedom of choices never subjugating themselves to their male’s mercy.

Ø Chitra Banerjee gives a wakeup call to the future female generations through the portraiture of her vivacious female characters, and she makes  it known to all that women are now determined to fight for their rights to live happily because they have also desires, dreams, hopes, happiness, thoughts, hobbies, thinking and it only possible when women has to face the things confidently and ready for the all the problems.

Ø So we can say that Chitra Banerjee’s many stories are female-centered and it reflects many new things which one woman have to definitely learn from this stories, we find many feministic issues from the Chitra Banerjee’s stories. It reflects realism of society.

Work cited:

·        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitra_Banerjee_Divakaruni

·        http://scribblesofsoul.com/arranged-marriage-chitra/

·        http://www.browngirlmagazine.com/2011/05/storyteller-chitra-banerjee-divakaruni/

·        http://raijmr.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/6_23-25-Minal-J.-Damor.pdf

·        http://www.shortstoryinsights.com/home/arranged-marriage-by-chitra-banjeree-divakaruni

·        http://www.studytable.in/p/love-stories.html#axzz3nu8UFCNC

·        http://impressions.50webs.org/jul07/ar_maltia.html

Post colonialism: its Indian context

·       Name of institute: Swami Sahjanand Collages of Commerce and Management of Computer Sciences (SSCCM)

·       Topic of the assignment: Post colonialism- its Indian context

·       Roll no: 07

·       Name: Drashti V. Dave

·       Course: M.phil

·       Year-2015          

·       Paper-2 : Literary theories and criticism: Background and Contexts  

·       Unit: 1

                                                      

Post colonialism is an interdisciplinary field.

First of all let’s understand the meaning of post colonialism;

Post colonialism or postcolonial studies is an academic discipline featuring methods of intellectual discourse that analyze, explain, and respond to the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism, to the human consequences of controlling a country and establishing settlers for the economic exploitation of the native people and their land. Drawing from postmodern schools of thought, postcolonial studies analyses the politics of knowledge (creation, control, and distribution) by analyzing the functional relations of social and political power that sustain colonialism and neocolonialism—the how and the why of an imperial regime's representations (social, political, cultural) of the imperial colonizer and of the colonized people. As a genre of contemporary history, post colonialism questions and reinvents the modes of cultural perception—the ways of viewing and of being viewed. As anthropology, post colonialism records human relations among the colonial nations and the subaltern peoples exploited by colonial rule. As critical theory, post colonialism presents, explains, and illustrates the ideology and the praxis of neocolonialism, with examples drawn from the humanities—history and political science, philosophy and Marxist theory, sociology, anthropology, and human geography; the cinema, religion, and theology; feminism, linguistics, and postcolonial literature, of which the anti-conquest narrative genre presents the stories of colonial subjugation of the subaltern man and woman.

·        Definition: Post-colonialism is an intellectual direction (sometimes also called an “era” or the “post-colonial theory”) that exists since around the middle of the 20^th century. It developed from and mainly refers to the time after colonialism. The post-colonial direction was created as colonial countries became independent. Nowadays, aspects of post-colonialism can be found not only in sciences concerning history, literature and politics, but also in approach to culture and identity of both the countries that were colonized and the former colonial powers. However, post-colonialism can take the colonial time as well as the time after colonialism into consideration.

·        Post colonialism is an interdisciplinary field that examines the global impact of European colonialism; it begins in the 15^th century to the present. Post colonialism as both a body of theory and a study of political and cultural change. It is broadly a study of the effects of colonialism on cultures and society.

Postcolonial identity:

A decolonized people develop a postcolonial identity from the cultural interactions among the types of identity (cultural, national, ethnic) and the social relations of sex, class, and caste; determined by the gender and the race of the colonized person; and the racism inherent to the structures of a colonial society.

·        Postcolonial writers interested in nationhood and nationalism

·        Post colonialism deals with the conflicts between ruler & subject, mainstream & marginalized.

·        Reclaiming  the past, searching for cultural and personal identity

·        Development of postcolonial theory: The term “decolonization” seems to be of particular importance while talking about post-colonialism. In this case it means an intellectual process that persistently transfers the independence of former-colonial countries into people’s minds. The basic idea of this process is the deconstruction of old-fashioned perceptions and attitudes of power and oppression that were adopted during the time of colonialism.
First attempts to put this long-term policy of “decolonizing the minds” into practice could be regarded in the Indian population after India became independent from the British Empire in 1947. However, post-colonialism has increasingly become an object of scientific examination since 1950 when Western intellectuals began to get interested in the “Third World countries”. In the seventies, this interest lead to an integration of discussions about post-colonialism in various study courses at American Universities. Nowadays it also plays a remarkable role at European Universities.

A major aspect of post-colonialism is the rather violent-like, unbuffered contact or clash of cultures as an inevitable result of former colonial times; the relationship of the colonial power to the (formerly) colonized country, its population and culture and vice versa seems extremely ambiguous and contradictory.
This contradiction of two clashing cultures and the wide scale of problems resulting from it must be regarded as a major theme in post-colonialism: For centuries the colonial suppressor often had been forcing his civilized values on the natives. But when the native populations finally gained independence, the colonial relicts were still omnipresent, deeply integrated in the natives’ minds and were supposed to be removed.
So decolonization is a process of change, destruction and, in the first place, an attempt to regain and lose power. While natives had to learn how to put independence into practice, colonial powers had to accept the loss of power over foreign countries. However, both sides have to deal with their past as suppressor and suppressed.
This complicated relationship mainly developed from the Eurocentric perspective from which the former colonial powers saw themselves: Their colonial policy was often criticized as arrogant, ignorant, brutal and simply naïve. Their final colonial failure and the total independence of the once suppressed made the process of decolonization rather tense and emotional.

Post-colonialism also deals with conflicts of identity and cultural belonging. Colonial powers came to foreign states and destroyed main parts of native tradition and culture; furthermore, they continuously replaced them with their own ones. This often lead to conflicts when countries became independent and suddenly faced the challenge of developing a new nationwide identity and self-confidence.
As generations had lived under the power of colonial rulers, they had more or less adopted their Western tradition and culture. The challenge for these countries was to find an individual way of proceeding to call their own. They could not get rid of the Western way of life from one day to the other; they could not manage to create a completely new one either.
On the other hand, former colonial powers had to change their self-assessment. This paradox identification process seems to be what decolonization is all about, while post-colonialism is the intellectual direction that deals with it and maintains a steady analysis from both points of view. So how is this difficult process of decolonization being done?  Language is the intellectual means by which post-colonial communication and reflection takes place. This is particularly important as most colonial powers tried to integrate their language, the major aspect of their civilized culture, in foreign societies. A lot of Indian books that can be attached to the era of post-colonialism, for instance, are written in English. The cross-border exchange of thoughts from both parties of the post colonial conflict is supported by the use of a shared language. To give a conclusion of it all, one might say that post-colonialism is a vivid discussion about what happened with the colonial thinking at the end of the colonial era. What legacy arouse from this era? What social, cultural and economical consequences could be seen and are still visible today? In these contexts, one examines alternating experiences of suppression, resistance, gender, migration and so forth. While doing so, both the colonizing and colonized side are taken into consideration and related to each other.

·        Post colonialism mainly focuses on these three things: racism, nation/nationalism or national problems and minority ethnic groups like; African, Asian, Native people etc.

Major Figures of postcolonial writing:

Some of the best known names in Postcolonial literature and theory are those of Chinua Achebe, Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, Buchi Emecheta, Frantz Fanon, Jamaica Kincaid, Salman Rushdie, Wole Soyinka, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

Post colonialism includes a vast array of writers and subjects. In fact, the very different geographical, historical, social, religious, and economic concerns of the different ex-colonies dictate a wide variety in the nature and subject of most postcolonial writing.

 Post colonial writers in LITERATURE: Chinua Achebe, Aimé Cesaire, John Pepper Clark, Michelle Cliff,  Anita Desai, Buchi Emecheta, Nuruddin Farah, Amitav Ghosh, Rohinton Mistry, Ezekiel Mphahlele, V.S. Naipaul, Taslima Nasrin, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Flora Nwapa, Grace Ogot, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Gabriel Okara, Ben Okri, Michael Ondaatje, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Leopold Senghor, Vikram Seth, Wole Soyinka etc.

Post colonial critics: Edward Said, Bill Ashcroft, Nagugi wa Thiongo, Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon, Chinua Achebe, Leela Gandhi, Gayatri Spivak, Hamid Dabashi, Helen Tiffin.

Some of the writers’ contribution is notable in post colonial writing.

®   Edward Said:

In his work he describe the "binary social relation" with which Western Europe intellectually divided the world—into the "Occident" and the "Orient"—the cultural critic Edward Said developed the denotations and connotations of the term Orientalism (an art-history term for Western depictions and the study of the Orient). This is the concept that the cultural representations generated with us-and-them binary relation are social constructs. He should be considered as the ‘father of post colonialism.’

®   Gayatri Spivak:

In establishing the Postcolonial definition of the term Subaltern, the philosopher and theoretician Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak cautioned against assigning an over-broad connotation Spivak also introduced the terms essentialism and strategic essentialism to describe the social functions of post colonialism. Spivak developed and applied Foucault's term epistemic violence to describe the destruction of non–Western ways of perceiving the world, and the resultant dominance of the Western ways of perceiving the world. Her work like ‘can subaltern speak’ is deal with this.

®   Homi Bhabha:

Homi Bhabha’s work including ‘The location of culture’ focuses on the politics, emotions and values that exist in the space between the colonizers and colonized. Bhabha like to use the word “Hybrid” to describe post colonial people.

·        Post-colonial development in India:

The Partition of India (also called the “Great Divide”) lead to huge movements and an ethnic conflict across the Indian-Pakistani border. Today, apart from the significant economic progress, India is still facing its old problems: Poverty, overpopulation, environmental pollution as well as ethnic and religious conflicts between Hindus and Muslims. Concerning post-colonial literature, Edward Said’s book “Orientalism” (published in 1978) is regarded as the beginning of post-colonial studies. In this book the author analyses how European states initiated colonialism as a result of what they called their own racial superiority.

The religious-ethnic conflicts between different groups of people play an important role in the early years of post-colonialism. Eye-witnesses from both sides of the Indian-Pakistani conflict wrote about their feelings and experience during genocide, being confronted to blind and irrational violence and hatred. The Partition is often described as an Indian trauma.
One example for a post-colonial scriptwriter who wrote about this conflict is Saddat Hasan Manto (1912 – 1955). He was forced to leave Bombay and to settle in Lahore, Pakistan. He published a collection of stories and sketches that deal with this dark era of Indian history and its immense social consequences and uncountable tragedies.

Furthermore, there are many different approaches to the topic of intercultural exchange between the British and the Indian population. Uncountable essays and novels deal with the ambiguous relationship between these two nations. One particularly interesting phenomenon is that authors from both sides try to write from different angles and perspectives and in that way to show empathy with their cultural counterpart.
The most famous novelist who wrote about these social and cultural exchanges is Salman Rushdie. Rushdie, who won the booker prize among various others, was born in India, but studied in England and started writing books about India and the British in the early eighties. His funny, brave, metaphoric and sometimes even ironical way of writing offers a multi-perspective approach to the post-colonial complex. This can be also seen in his book “Midnight’s Children”.

Another famous post-colonial novel is “Heat and Dust” (published in 1975) by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala that contains two plot set in different times: One about a British lady starting an affair with a local Indian prince in the 1920s, the other one set in the 1970s, featuring young Europeans on a “hippie trail” who claim they have left behind Western civilization and are trying to some spiritual home among Indian gurus. India has managed to become an independent state with its own political system and is still working to find its own identity. The longer the process of decolonization, the more we get the impression that only a middle course between the acceptance of British legacies and the creation of a new unique Indian self-confidence will be the right way to go for India.

Conclusion: post colonialism is a vivid discussion about what happened with the colonial thinking and at the end of the colonial era.  The term post colonial literature has taken on many meanings in that four things include 1) social and cultural change 2) misuse of power and exploitation 3) colonial abandonment and alienation 4) use of English language literature. It is interdisciplinary field it examines global impact of colonialism than even postcolonial writings have been found among much of Indian literature. Many Indian literary writers wrote on this and in India it is notable movement.

Work cited: (Some links which I referred during the assignments)

·         https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Postcolonialism&oldid=680913033

·         http://www.nilsole.net/referate/post-colonialism-definition-development-and-examples-from-india/

·         http://www.enotes.com/topics/postcolonialism/critical-essays/postcolonialism

·         http://www.academia.edu/2662908/Postcolonialism_A_Brief_Overview