R.K. Narayan: a Study in Transendence

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R.K. Narayan: a Study in Transendence Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1989 R.K. Narayan: A Study in Transendence Mary Beatina Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Beatina, Mary, "R.K. Narayan: A Study in Transendence" (1989). Dissertations. 2635. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/2635 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1989 Mary Beatina R. K. NARAYAN: A STUDY IN TRANSCENDENCE by Sr. Mary Beatina O. S. M. A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Loyola University of Chicago in Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 1989 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I gratefully acknowledge Dr. Harry Puckett,s encouragement and guidance. My thanks are also due to the readers Fr. Gene Phillips, S. J. and Dr. Micael Clarke for their critical reading and suggestions. ii VITA The author. Sr. Mary Beatina O. S. M., was born November 19, 1938 in Palayamcottai, Tamilnad, South India to Nazareth P. Rayen and Jesammal !Rodrigues) Rayen. She received her primary and secondary education in st. Ignatius Convent High School, Palayamcottai, South India, and completed her secondary education in March, 1954. Sr. Beatina is an alumnae of Holy Cross College, Trichy, South India (1954-58), Stella Matutina College of Education, Madras, South India 11967-68), St. Mary's College, Tuticorin, South India (1972-74), and M. K. University, Madurai, South India (1981-82). After obtaining her bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Holy Cross College, she taught at St. Mary's College for three years. From Stella Matutina, she received not only her bachelor's degree in Education, but also the award of a gold medal for her excellence in teaching. Since her graduation from St.Mary's College with her Master's degree in English, and also the top student award for her outstanding performance in 1974, she has been teaching there in the capacity of an Assistant Professor. In the midst of her service she obtained her M. Phil. degree from M. K. University. In 1985 Sr. Beatina entered Loyola University of Chicago. From 1985-1988, she held a tuition scholarship in English at Loyola. Under Dr. Harry Puckett's supervision, her dissertation work commenced in 1987. iii Sr. Beatina is an active member of associations and professional societies in South India concerned with teaching and scholarship. She will resume her teaching career at St. Mary's College, Tuticorin, when she returns to India after her studies in the U. S. A. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . ii VITA . · . iii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION: R. K. NARAYAN IN THE TRADITION OF INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE . 1 II. NAIVE TRANSCENDENCE .38 III. MATURE TRANSCENDENCE: THE ENGLISH TEACHER ... 99 IV. MATURE TRANSCENDENCE: THE GUIDE . .150 V. NARAYAN, FORSTER, AND "A MORE LASTING HOME" .. 188 IV. CONCLUSION ..•............... 221 REFERENCES . 2 3 2 APPENDIX . • . 240 v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: R. K. NARAYAN IN THE TRADITION OF INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE Karl Marx once remarked about Easterners: "They cannot represent themselves; they have to be represented" (Said 1978, 21). In the past, India let Westerners represent her wisdom and riches through translations and trade. But once the Indians became familiar with English, they began writing in that language though they did not call themselves "Indian English Writers'' or describe their work as "Indian English Literature." Of the various names given to this body of literature, such as "Indo-Anglian Literature," "Indian Writing in English," and "Indo-English Literature," the term "Indian English Literature" is preferred in this dissertation for two reasons: the first is its simplicity, and the second is its emphasis on the status of Indian English Literature as "one of the many streams that join the great ocean called Indian Literature, which though written in different lang­ uages has an unmistakable unity" (Naik 1982, 5). Indian English Literature simply means the literature produced in English by Indians. This definition excludes the literature produced by Englishmen in India or "works by 'Brahmanised Britons' who translated or adapted Indian source material" (Alphonso-Karkala 1964, 7). 1 2 There are many Indian English writers today, trying to express themselves in all genres. Rasipuram Krishnaswami Narayanaswami (1906 - ), or R. K. Narayan as he is popular- ly known, is from Madras, South India,l English is a second language for Narayan, as it is for almost all Indian English writers, with the exceptions of Ananda Coomarasamy*2 (1877- 1947) and Ruth Prawar Jhabvala* (1927 - ) . Narayan has always used English, the Western medium for the Eastern message, and his form is mostly fiction. Today, Narayan is one of the top ranking Indian English novelists who has been successfully representing the East through his thirteen novels since the start of his career as an Indian English writer in 1935. What he represents with exceptional clarity and sensitivity is the interactions between mundane and transcendent aspects of everyday Indian life. The integra- tion of the spiritual and the practical is not a discovery of Narayan, but is the very culture and tradition of this nation. Contrary to many Western notions about the Indian experience, it is only through this interaction that the full range and depth of Indian spiritual life can be repre- sented. 1 "Rasipuram" is the name of his family's ancestral village, and "Krishnaswami" is the name of his father. "Narayanaswami" was shortened to "Narayan" in 1935 when his first novel, Swami and Friends, came out and the publisher did not want it to sound autobiographical. 2 This term and all subsequent terms marked with an asterisk are explained in the glossary. 3 The "mundane" in this dissertation acquires a more complex meaning than the ordinary one, for example, "earthly" or "worldly." The mundane here refers to simple, ordinary, sometimes raw or frail human nature of immense potential to be fully alive and dynamic, which is not to be abhorred or destroyed but to be led and moved towards the transcendent. Regarding the discussion here of the "transcendent," what we find in Narayan's fiction is a form of spiritual ex­ perience usually accompanied by religious elements, which most novelists in the realist tradition do not attempt to portray. Hence, the "transcendent" in Narayan implies not necessarily any visionary experience or nirvana*, but a getting beyond the expected, a spiritual discovery. A sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness with a mundane life-­ often egoistic--initiates a step into a radically different world, a world that stuns the character and seems in many cases to be beyond the character's limits. The character does or experiences something that is "out of character" and, in a realistic novel, may verge upon the unconvincing-- the typically Narayan risk. This step into another world always involves a spiritual experience--the kind of ex­ perience that would normally be called "transcendent," and yet the experience that follows the transcendent experience often seems more genuinely spiritual than the conventionally religious or conventionally "other worldly" experience 4 itself. This wider and richer form of transcendence occurs when the character brings the transcendent experience to bear upon the mundane world. At this point it is difficult to say precisely where the larger transcendence begins and the mundane leaves off, because the two are inseparably mixed. Although there are no clear boundaries, the trans- cendence is identifiable. The result is, however, that our concept of the spiritual and the transcendent is enlarged and enriched. To do justice to a Narayan novel, one must therefore acknowledge two kinds of transcendence, which commonly appear together. The first is easily recognizable--an encounter with the gods, the donning of holy garb, the telling of religious fables, or an experience with automatic writing. However, few readers are likely to finish a Narayan novel with the idea that these are the most import­ ant or the most transcendent events. For, flowing out of these events are the larger, richer, and more "realistic'' events that nonetheless place the character in a world beyond that which the novel has led us to expect that such a character could enter. The study here undertaken is neces- sary precisely because this larger mode of transcendence, this larger sense of what counts as spiritual, needs careful explanation. At one end it is anchored in a conventionally spiritual experience; at the other it is anchored in the mundane. The multiple interactions between the transcendent 5 (in both senses) and the mundane deserve our closest atten­ tion. The term liberation refers to an aspect of transcen­ dence--the spiritual experience which liberates the self of its pettiness, allowing it to move toward a richer and wider horizon. Hence, any so-called freedom, which is not accom­ panied by spiritual experience and does not liberate the self is here regarded as mundane, and Narayan commonly makes it clear that such "freedom" is a kind of licence. Like- wise, any discipline (exterior or interior) that does not lead the self to some spiritual experience or to liberation is mundane. The process of movement with and from the mundane to the transcendent involves struggle and pain in every indivi­ dual. Narayan's extraordinary skill in revealing the comp­ lex relationships between the mundane and the transcendent, and depicting the movement from and with the mundane to the transcendent, elevates him not only to the level of a great novelist in the world of Indian English Literature but also qualifies him to rank high in World Literature in English itself.
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