· 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.
·
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:
No comments:
Post a Comment