www.research-chronicler.com Research Chronicler ISSN 2347 – 503X International Multidisciplinary Research Journal
Research Chronicler
A peer-reviewed refereed and indexed international multidisciplinary research journal Volume I Issue II: December – 2013 CONTENTS
Name of the Author Title of the Paper Download Dr. Archana Feminine Sensibility Vs. Sexuality: A New 1201PDF & Dimension Dr. Pooja Singh Dr. Akhilesh Kumar Interrogating Representations of History: A 1202 PDF Dwivedi Study of Mukul Kesavan’s Looking Through Glass Dr. A.P. Pandey Problems and Promises in Translating Poetry 1203 PDF Dr. Ketan K. Gediya Generation Divide among Diaspora in Jhumpa 1204 PDF Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth Dr. Nisha Dahiya Patriotic Urge in Sarojini Naidu’s Poetry 1205 PDF Md. Irshad Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence: A 1206 PDF Study of Assertion and Emotional Explosion Dr. Shanti Tejwani ICT : As an Effective Tool for Teacher Trainees 1207 PDF Dr. Manoj Kumar Jain Differences in Stock Price Reaction to Bond 1208 PDF Rating Changes: With S from India Maushmi Thombare Bahinabai Chaudhari – A Multidimensional 1209 PDF Poet Prof. Deepak K. Nagarkar Death as Redemption in Arthur Miller’s Death 1210 PDF of a Salesman Dr. Vijaykumar A. Patil Zora Neale Hurston’s Theory of Folklore 1211 PDF Dr. Jaiprakash N. Singh Dalitonki Vyatha-Katha: Dalitkatha 1212 PDF Raj Kumar Mishra Traces of Hindu Eco-Ethics in the Poetry of 1213 PDF A.K. Ramanujan Dr. Nidhi Srivastava A Comparative Study of Values and Adjustment 1214 PDF of Secondary School Students With and Without Working Mothers Sanjeev Kumar Pinjar: From Verbal to Audio-visual 1215 PDF Vishwakarma Transmutation Swati Rani Debnath W.B. Yeats: Transition from Romanticism to 1216 PDF
Volume I Issue II: October 2013 Editor-In-Chief: Prof. K.N. Shelke
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Modernism Sushil Sarkar Environment and Woman: Reflections on 1217 PDF Exploitation through Eco-Feminism in Mahasweta Devi’s Imaginary Maps Book Review Sangeeta Singh Goddess in Exile: A Sad Tale of Female 1218 PDF Existentialism Poetry Bhaskar Roy Barman On The Marge 1219 PDF Dr Seema P. Salgaonkar Entrapped 1220 PDF Jaydeep Sarangi I Live for My Daughter / Writing Back 1221 PDF Interview Prof. Masood Ahmed Interview with Poet Arbind Kumar Choudhary 1222 PDF
Volume I Issue II: October 2013 Editor-In-Chief: Prof. K.N. Shelke
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Goddess in Exile: A Sad Tale of Female Existentialism
Sangeeta Singh Govt. College, Hamirpur (H.P.) India
The novel Goddess in Exile reminds of wished it. The marriage was literarily forced TS Eliot‟s “Waste Land”. The novel‟s story on her against her wishes. Her grandfather is enmeshed in cross references, anecdotes, was a conservative orthodox Brahmin and it and mythical stories both from the Indian was his last wish to see her married. Harsha and western cultures. Yet a connecting wanted to pursue her studies, wanted to thread of a woman‟s existential choice runs prepare for IAS but her life was ruled by through the narrative binding it together. other people‟s whims and desires. She had Just as the “Waste Land” offers a solution to no say in matters that concerned her life. the depravation all around The Goddess in She was assured by all that once she had a Exile also has an embedded message for baby, things would be different and her women to find the strength within them to husband would eventually find a sense of free themselves from the exile of eternal bonding with her. She continued to live her servility and humiliation. life in the hope of things to change and then The story unfolds through the telling of she realized that the change has to come Harsha‟s story. She represents the repressed through her; not by waiting eternally for her status of women in a marital relation. husband to show some kindness. Harsha was Harsha‟s hope, which she realizes is nothing burdened by the experience of anguish and but eternal misery brings her to the decision solitude within the prison of her gender. of snapping all ties with her husband. Her She tries to reach out to her parents but husband was a compulsive alcoholic and when she realizes that they are bound by treated her like a piece of furniture. She was tradition she has to leave her husband to find totally disillusioned by her marriage. her future away from him. She is Though her husband was a renowned continuously plagued by her in-laws, parents surgeon but he was an extremely cruel and even her closest friends to reconcile husband. He ill treated Harsha and she had with her husband. No one understands her to undergo a marital rape and physical point of view because in patriarchal society violence whenever her husband desired. Life a woman cannot have a point of view. She was a living hell with him. Even though her takes a bold step of studying Journalism to parents were aware of her husband‟s live her life on her own terms. drinking problem, yet they got lured by his When she meets Alberto a family status and promises made by his Portuguese philosopher, she finds her soul father of his improved behavior after mate. He has immense respect and interest marriage. They gave Harsha‟s hand in for Indian philosophy, her ancient history marriage because Harsha‟s grandfather had
Volume I Issue II December 2013 (150) Editor-In-Chief: Prof. K.N. Shelke
www.research-chronicler.com Research Chronicler ISSN 2347 – 503X International Multidisciplinary Research Journal and heritage. He is a follower of Buddhist side window‟ which framed her existence religion. Alberto being a man has the becomes a metaphor that defines her life in freedom to follow any religion of his choice. exile and eternal waiting. Her meetings with Similarly, Sahoo appeals for freedom of Alberto were locked up in another box choice for Harsha and millions of women which she kept close to her heart and opened like her tethered to patriarchal expectations frequently. Initially their conversation never where woman is given no right to choose. bordered around their personal past but love Alberto and Harsha initially exchange does creep into their friendship when Harsha philosophical knowledge about various unwinds her sad past to Alberto. The things. Their relationship develops over physical violence, marital rape suffered by exchange of philosophical knowledge which Harsha at the hands of her husband had left is shared by them through a game of her body and soul battered. She was question and answer. “They were engrossed desperate for a shoulder to cry her heart out in a game almost as a routine for three and Alberto becomes the voice board for months. A wonderful game indeed; they had her. They share with each other their inner already arrived at the threshold of a deeper most distresses and wounds of the past that region as if they had gone into it by peeling haunted their present. “Alberto had provided off the skin, layer by layer” (Sahoo, her peace and poise to her unsteady mind, a Goddess in Exile: 11). Philosophical mind almost devastated by a violent discussions obliterated whatever difference tempest.”(Sahoo, Goddess in Exile: 135) that existed between the two. Their Sahoo hints at the limited choice that is discussions transported them into a world available to women in marriage and how where the lines of reality got blurred, women continue to negotiate their lives offering the much-needed respite from bearing the violence in silence. The novel solitude and anguish of reality. The hints at violence both physical as well as conversations on philosophy, mythology and sexual against women that is not fully art kept them away from the sad reality of criminalized under law in our country. their situation. Sahoo‟s novels and the characters that Harsha had compartmentalized her life, populate them are „real‟ to the degree that her life with her husband was locked in a she observes society and records her box which would open up whenever her observations in order to create awareness for parents called her, sad memories and the certain social problems and to effect change. eternal waiting by the “south side widow” The story of Harsha is also the story of would bring sad reminiscences. “Harsha many women from India. The inner psyche recollected the open widow on the south, the of a woman is telescoped through the widow that was never closed. The same narrative technique of stream of window kept her closed up inside like a consciousness by Sahoo. It lays bare the photo frame. She had passed through many mind and soul of Harsha. The novel depicts sleepless nights leaning against the widow.” the sordid realities of women married to (Sahoo, Goddess in Exile: 67) The „south violent spouses. Also according to Katrak:
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As wives, women may her life is threatened, she hardly has any subconsciously internalize sad- options given social conditioning and masochistic roles, and become censure. The experience of internalized exile unable to emerge from situations of unfolds as a process that includes Harsha‟s physical and psychological battering. complicated levels of consent and collusions The main cause for their silence is to domination which cannot be easily cast the complex web of female off. Sarojini is a progressive writer who has socializations based on unequal not severed her social responsibilities but power relations.…Given these layers she does want to draw the attention of the of female willingness to participate reader towards what is ailing in the in a male dominated model of institution of marriage. It is a gynocritic‟s marriage, women writers question effort to provide a corrective to the Indian whether such consent is an exercise code of righteousness. Maitreyee, Chaudhuri of free will or whether it is the only also opines in this regard that: option for most women in the In India most of us find it cultures depicted (166). difficult to tune in to the extreme In India a wife is constructed as an icon individualism that comes to us of submissive piety. The anxiety about through feminism. For instance, most family honour makes even the parents women here are unwilling to assert impose on her an entire set of oppressive their right in a way that estranges social and cultural practices. Faced with an them not from their family but also unending cycle of degradation with no from their kinship group and possibility of escape from this exile, Harsha community. They want to ensure that works towards her empowerment through their rights are respected and education. acknowledged by their family and The narrative laments the dead end life prefer to avoid asserting their rights of a woman trapped in a loveless marriage. in a way that isolates them from It is an eternal tragic irony for Harsha and those they consider their own. (31) many women like her who undergo torture Sarojini‟s protagonists too do gain an at the hands of their husbands. A woman is insight into the workings and mechanisms of not the master of her own body. The female patriarchal dominance but are not able to body is in a state of exile including self-exile subvert their situation. Sahoo validates and self censorship, outsiderness and un- Harsha‟s resistance to a life of subjugation belonging to itself within patriarchy. The and dominance. She is sympathetic towards novel is a message for other women that Harsha which is evident through her they have to come out of this exiled narrative gesture. existence. The Indian patriarchal norms Sahoo has the unique ability to move in rigidly situate a wife only beside her between the worlds of mythology, husband; hence even if she recognizes that philosophy and individual stories via her
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www.research-chronicler.com Research Chronicler ISSN 2347 – 503X International Multidisciplinary Research Journal creative voice and narrative. The technique when as a child she is deprived of nutritious of weaving mythology both Indian and food because the sons have to be well-fed in western into the story line adds depth and the family. Her body becomes a site of universality of appeal for readers. It is like a contestation when she is married; her body collage presentation of anecdotes and becomes a medium for begetting sons and if mythical stories. Sarojini Sahoo as a writer she fails to do so she is treated as a non- recreates ordinary and unusual events of a entity. Similarly, she is supposed to deny her woman‟s life with considerable imagination sexual urge. Sexuality is the arena where and artistry, using local folklore, myth and patriarchal control is exerted most distinctly her considerable imagination and artistry. over the female body. It is either the overt Sarojini Sahoo is considered the domination as rape, or through a variety of Judith Butler and Virginia Woolf of covert control of the female body such as the contemporary Oriya literature. And tradition of obedient wife and self yet for her, feminism is not just sacrificing mother. According to Jasbir Jain about battling male hegemony. For “The body needs to be recognized with all Sarojini Sahoo, feminism is linked its desires and unconscious drives as much with the sexual politics of women. as the feelings and thoughts which inhabit She refutes the limits that patriarchy the human mind.... Feminism is the places on female sexual expression recognition of this wholeness of existence and identifies women‟s sexual that encompasses all three- body, mind and liberation as the real motive behind soul” (Jain, Indigenous Roots of Feminism: the women‟s movement. (Parija) Culture, Subjectivity and Agency: 5). The protagonist Harsha in the novel is Women writers like Sahoo have depicted neither a character larger than life nor a through their artistic creations how women representative of feminist activism. She is a comply and consent to domination in common woman; the delineation of the marriage at all levels and internalize character of Harsha is a reminder that oppression. This toleration to domination repression and marginalization of females may even be embodied as female has been a precondition of prosperity for responsibility as in putting up with patriarchal powers. It is the woman‟s body oppressive marriages, complying with that needs to be liberated from the shackles dominant spouses, even making the body of patriarchal codes of conduct prescribed available for other‟s pleasure. Sahoo‟s narrative is a counter narrative where Harsha for her sexuality. A woman in India has to surrender her basic bodily needs in the decides to leave her husband after her hands of patriarchal forces at various encounter with what she believes is nothing junctures. A woman undergoes male short of marital rape and calls it prostitution. domination and subordination at every level “There is terrible pain in the innermost of experience from the most obvious to the corner of my heart. I feel the man does not most subtle. Her body suffers malnutrition find any difference between me and a prostitute.”(Sahoo, Goddess in Exile: 89)
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Although in traditional patriarchy this is for marrying her against her wish which hardly objectionable, Harsha decides to explains her denial mode when her mother exert her ethical singularity by making this scalds her hands inadvertently. Dissatisfied unacceptable as an act perpetrated on her with her married with no scope of female body. Socio- improvement Harsha is left with no option cultural parameters of womanhood are but to move beyond her confines to seek gauged through the narrative. Sahoo answers to some inner yearning. Yet her past questions the cultural norms that sorrows gnaw at her present, they cannot be consciously and unconsciously constitute an erased or forgotten. The chaos in human ideological framework that controls relationship has been depicted in the novel women‟s bodies. It is an artistic activism through Harsha‟s disjointed marriage. that enables a rethinking of dialectic relation The novel is an intervention of an between culture and power. artist to restore order. “Thinking minds, In Indian society, there is a grave dearth especially in the modern times, are acutely of options for a woman who leaves her conscious of the chaos and confusion husband‟s home; however apart from such lurking around, stemming out of a objective factors are the psychological and dehumanization and moral degeneration and subconscious holds of female conditioning have attempted to restore order and harmony through mythological stories and cultural through their philosophies or creative norms that define a woman as not only work.”(Sahoo, Goddess in Exile: 5) Sarojini belonging to her husband but as not having Sahoo‟s The Goddess in Exile is one such autonomous self that can make a life outside revisionist project. In the foreword of the of a marital sphere. The consequences of novel, Suman Mahapatra writes: “It is really stepping outside the boundaries established a paradox that in the midst of all the glow of by the cultural code of pativrarta (literally growing civilization and refinement, at the translated: husband as God), can be served societal front we encounter familial as in woman‟s ostracization in overt and instability, domestic disorder and witness subtle ways. Often, her parents, her only man degrading himself to the level of a refuge, encourage a married daughter to put beast.”(Sahoo, Goddess in Exile: 6) The up with physical and emotional abuse, until utter degradation of human character has sadly; she might pay the ultimate price of been portrayed in the novel to attract the her life. reader‟s attention for introspection. Sahoo presents a picture of the sad reality of a Harsha is unable to bear the repeated physical and mental abuse by her husband woman who undergoes marital rape too decides to discover a new life. Later in the evoke a response from the reader. “. . . He novel when she meets her husband after a went on biting on her face. He pressed his long separation she finds that her husband lips on her face so violently that her lungs was still abusive, still inhumanly possessive. were filled with the stink of alcohol. The She can never forget her mother and father man stripped her. But she could not cry aloud. She fell down like a leaf blown away
Volume I Issue II December 2013 (154) Editor-In-Chief: Prof. K.N. Shelke
www.research-chronicler.com Research Chronicler ISSN 2347 – 503X International Multidisciplinary Research Journal by wind” (Sahoo, Goddess in Exile: 145). liberate men from the impediments of their Sahoo probes the issue of female honour self-created caricatured identity. within the institution of marriage. Sahoo contends that: “The writings of Sarojini Sahoo are a While the woman‟s identity is faithful portrait of the deplorable certainly constitutionally different distress and victimization of the from that of man; men and women woman, a psycho-social reading of her still share a basic human equality. sufferings and torture. For her, a Thus, the harmful asymmetric woman is a respectable individual of sex/gender „Othering‟ arises God‟s creation with her free will and accidentally and „passively‟ from choice, her own freedom and natural, unavoidable inter fascination, her passion and sexuality. subjectivity. (Sahoo, Sensible She is never a person to be subjugated Sensuality: 132) and suppressed. A free expression of her sense and sensuality is the basic The paradox of a woman‟s predicament tenet of a healthy atmosphere, any is portrayed through Harsha: “Your name transgression from the basic norms and means happiness, delight, pleasing, blissful.” needs leads to deadlock.”(Sahoo, But in reality Harsha is sad, surrounded and Goddess in Exile: 6) shrouded by sorrow. According to Alberto she has become a great pessimist and has Sahoo tries to disrupt the binaries be it developed a disinterested attitude to life at a East/West, man/woman, culture/nature as young age. exemplified through Alberto‟s comments: “Yes, the girls are a bit tender in heart. They Sarojini Sahoo‟s writing attempts to are very kind. But I cannot cry before create an alternate construct of woman to strangers. Do you know, Hana, sometimes I make her apocalypse the power within her. burst into tears while watching a film or a She also uses strategies of drawing parallel documentary! People make fun of me for images or creating paradoxical traditional to being sentimental.” (Sahoo, Goddess in highlight this difference. “The woman Exile: 15) Sahoo lays bare the real nature of represents „Shakti‟, the dynamic source of human beings against the constructed gender energy and creation, but in the present differences that are prescribed for both men scenario, she is engulfed by sorrow and and women. These constructs bind both men depression. The protagonist is a sad replica and women into “prison of gender”; to of the divine feminine, in perpetual borrow a phrase used by Carolyn Hielbrun depression.”(Sahoo, Goddess in Exile: 9) in Writing a Woman’s Life. Patriarchy Harsha had become use to the sorrows that teaches males that violence equals strength engulfed her constantly that she feels guilty and this adage, if negated by men in India, when momentarily she comes out of this will not only help empower women but also prison of depression. “Standing under the shower, she wanted to wash off her visibly
Volume I Issue II December 2013 (155) Editor-In-Chief: Prof. K.N. Shelke
www.research-chronicler.com Research Chronicler ISSN 2347 – 503X International Multidisciplinary Research Journal marked imprints of untimely luster and glow lady of Benares. He was thoroughly selfish on her face. She wanted to go back to her because of his thirst for philosophy and old self, old Harsha, whose appearance was acquisition of knowledge.” People in search constantly engulfed by dark clouds . . . . of a goal are often lonely. “Harsha now Harsha stood before the mirror. In the mirror repented that she had run after Alberto only was the goddess of depression, half dead and out of deep attachment. But there was not half alive.”(130) much difference between that man and Harsha, who forbade him again Alberto. Harsha was a plate of rice for that and again, thought if Alberto arrived man which he would devour like a cow, and there at the moment, it would be very for Alberto, she was a book in which he good. But the next moment, she was would underline every page of it. Both gripped with a sense of fear and would use her in their own ways. The truth shame. Moreover, she could not free remained that she was used.”(Sahoo, herself from shackles of sense of sin. Goddess in Exile: 160) What was sacrilegious about it? She defines her relation with Alberto in Sometimes she became stronger, a soul stirring poem; an excerpt from the sometimes all her strength fell like a poem summarizes the time spent with pack of cards. (Sahoo, Goddess in Alberto: Exile: 47) So many days we walked together I She was living her life in a prison of narrated my sorrows and you simply gender. When Alberto asks Harsha about her nodded. You were so hard beneath a dream she replies, “I am terribly afraid of simple „yes‟. Had I known earlier, I dreaming, Alberto. It is all darkness when would have enjoyed. The yellow birds my eyes are closed. Have I ever dreamed? on the boughs. The rainbow in the sky, Always only nightmares as though there is the muddied small children. no respite from them. I want to forget my After making an insurance of past. You may take it to be my dream.” tremendous faith and hope When I (Sahoo, Goddess in Exile: 59) knew That your pocket contains the “Alberto, I am not bold enough to do plan of a future town. something freely transgressing the With the address of motels and societal norms and code of brothels I know that your new town is conduct.”(Sahoo, Goddess in Exile: ahead. And you will be lost in the 61) crowd, but you will carry with you my sorrowful story that I narrated during However her blissful relation with our walks together. (Sahoo, Goddess Alberto also did not last long. Alberto was in Exile: 165) in search of knowledge. Harsha in the end does not delete “Somehow she felt that Alberto Alberto‟s number from her mobile; this can belonged to nobody: neither hers nor of that be interpreted either ways: she wanted to
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www.research-chronicler.com Research Chronicler ISSN 2347 – 503X International Multidisciplinary Research Journal keep it as a reminder that she will not fall forth women‟s issues. A politics of the into another trap of being used by a man or female body involves the demystification of to keep it as a memory of a relationship that the several roles that reinforce control over surpasses the limits of temporal reality to be women‟s bodies. This analysis of how etched permanently and ethereally in her women are colonized within their very life. bodies and of how they try to transmute the Sahoo has elected to interweave fiction, controls of their female bodily spaces from mythology, politics and history whether patriarchal hands into their own hands, personal or public in her writing to bring offers significant knowledge to work toward broader changes in society.
Works Cited and Consulted:
1. Chaudhuri, Maitreyee. Feminism in India, Zed books 2005. Print. 2. Heilbrun, Carolyn. Writing a Woman’s Life. W.W Norton & Company, New York, 1988. Print. 3. Katrak, Ketu H. Politics of Female Body: Post colonial Writers of the Third World, Rutgers Univ Press, New Brunswick, N.J. 2006. Web. 9th May. 2012.
Volume I Issue II December 2013 (157) Editor-In-Chief: Prof. K.N. Shelke