Chapter One Introduction • Chapter I
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Chapter One Introduction • Chapter I Introduction Autobiographies are preferred next to fiction by the readers of today, an observation borne out by the increasing numbers of autobiographies being pubHshed every year in many languages of the world. The question "Who should write an autobiography?" is more or less irrelevant because it is clear that anyone who has created his or her own identity has a fit case for telling his or her own story. In other words, an autobiography is supposed to be an account of a significant and substantial life that offers experiences worth communicating to the world. The present research is an attempt to study critically the autobiographies of the Indian English writers mentioned in the title. This chapter discusses some attempts to define autobiography, the question whether autobiography is a literary genre, the reason/s for writing autobiography and the reasons for its popularity, and a brief historical survey of Indian autobiographies. It also discusses the need and relevance to study autobiographies concerned here for their contents. Here is a brief look at etymology. Originally the word 'Autobiography' is derived from three Greek words "autos", "bios" and "graphe" meaning "self," "life," and "write" respectively. Though it has a long history in Europe, autobiography was not classified as a genre by itself until the late eighteenth century. The major classical autobiographers are St. Augustine's Confessions, (398), Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, (1666), Rousseau's Confessions, (1770), and Wordsworth's The Prelude, (1850). Robert Southey coined the term in 1809 in the first volume of the Quarterly Review to describe a book of a long forgotten Portuguese painter on his own hfe. 1 In his book, Inside Out, E. Stuart Bates offers a functional definition of autobiography as "a narrative of the past of a person by the person concerned" (Bates, 1937: 2). Linda Anderson cites Lejeune's definition of autobiography as "(a) retrospective prose narrative produced by a real person concerning his own existence, focusing on his individual life, in particular on the development of his personality." (Anderson, 2001:2) According to Helga Schwalm, "autobiography as a literary genre signifies a retrospective narrative that undertakes to tell the author's own life, or a substantial part of it, seeking ...to reconstruct his/her personal development within a given historical, social and cultural framework."(Helga Schwalm, 11 April, 2014). According to D. N. Gokhale,"Discovery of self is most significant in autobiography. (Gokhale, 2000: 23-25). People from practically all walks of life have written the stories of their lives. It is in this sense that the autobiography becomes a "democratic province of the republic of letters (which) is open to all" as William Dean Howells puts it. (Howells, October 1909). Howells takes a liberal view of life of an autobiographer as he describes it as being "open to all", though it may be difficult to find an example. Who is interested in an ordinary, uneventful, unexciting life? An autobiography is not only an account of the writer's inward journey from childhood to maturity; it is also a unique representation of the milieu of which he is a part. Does an autobiography pander to our voyeuristic tastes and tendencies? Why is autobiography the most popular form of writing for readers? People are interested in the actual lives of other people, especially of the noted luminaries and want to know about others' pasts and feelings and desires. A well-known American critic, Jill Ker Conway has put it in a very effective way: We want to know how the world looks from inside another person's experience, and when that craving is met by a convincing narrative, we find it deeply satisfying. The satisfaction comes from being allowed inside the experience of another person who really lived and who tells about experiences which did in fact occur. In this way the lost suspension of disbelief disappears and the reader is able to try on the experience of another, just as one would try on a dress or a suit of clothes, to see what the image in the mirror then looks like. We like to try on new identities because our own crave the confirmation of like experience, or the enlargement or transformation which can come from viewing a similar experience from a different perspective. (Conway, 1998). Opinions are divergently divided on an important issue—whether autobiography can be considered as a form of literature. It is a question often raised and debated but not answered conclusively. Autobiography claims to be non-fictional (factual) in that it proposes to tell the story of a 'real' person. It is at the same time inevitably creative in nature. It uses the same material, i.e., experiences, events, situations from life, and it uses language as its medium, as literature does. And, then, there is imagination also at work. However, there is a difference between a literary genre and autobiography. A creative writer—a novelist or a dramatist— usually exercises a very careful selection or rejection of the material for his work in order to create a meaningful, consistent whole, while an autobiographer has apparently a narrow range to select mainly from his / her life although a significant "life" will surely be an extended account not only of the protagonist's life and works but a record of a whole span of history of the times under delineation. At the same time, an autobiographer is free to shape his/her life story in whatever manner he/she chooses. He/she is at liberty to select, what to include or omit. He /she can amplify an event, or write in a matter-of-fact way. As Bates puts it, "he [the autobiographer] will often be enlarging on special aspects of his life, such as the influences that moulded him...or the services that he rendered to what he most cared about;..." (Bates, 1937: 3). The way he or she selects and arranges the events of the story shows what the author considers important. For instance, Dom Moraes, in My Son's Father, emphasizes his problematic relation with his mother and his desire to go away from his mother and the country of his birth, India. Baby Kamble writes about the suffering and exploitation of her community along with the double suffering of women of her community. She very emphatically writes about the change that took place after Dr. Ambedkar made the downtrodden aware of their rights and told them to educate, organize and fight for the rights as human beings. Another difference between literature and autobiography is that autobiography can never be complete like a literary work, which is often described as a "slice of life" as the writer's life continues even after writing an autobiography. R.K. Narayan lived more than twenty years after his autobiography, and Khushwant Singh also lived for fourteen years more! The autobiographer looks back to tell the story of his/her life from the beginning to the present, tracing the story of his/her own making as a writer and as a human being. The incompleteness is a peculiar characteristic of an autobiography. Even after the creation of autobiography life goes on. Bhagvat Nayak observes that autobiography suffers from a congenital defect of incompleteness. Most autobiographers know that it can never have a conclusion like other literary genre. (Nayak, 2004: 36). It is perhaps one reason why (many) writers have written sequels. Hence, we have writers who have written more than one volume of their autobiographies like Amrita Pritam's Revenue Stamp and Shadow of Words, Dom Moraes' My Son's Father, and Never at Home, and Harivansh Rai Bachchan's four volumes. Marlene Fisher remarks: "Since no autobiography can be finished 'the life or the progress through Hfe that any such text purports to represent can only be one that is in the making and therefore a fragment of a life". (Fisher, 1995: 127).R. K. Narayan rightly asks, "Am I to call this last chapter, but how can an autobiography have a final chapter?" (Narayan, 2000: 181) Again there is no limit as to how many sequels should be there and in how much time a writer may take to write. One interesting but not easily answerable question is about the quantum of fact and fiction that an autobiography can accommodate, for it is not to be a presentation of a garbled account of a life, which will be a gross disqualification for an autobiography. Facts and related, relevant and appropriate interpretation of facts and events become the hall mark of a good autobiography. The question of truth is equally significant. The truth of autobiography should not be created or probable truth. It is based on the real-life experiences of the author. An autobiography becomes a work of art by virtue of its literary affiliations. More than being a mere historical record it is a work of art. That is one reason why the present study falls within the jurisdiction of literary research. For instance, Amrita Pritam narrates her dream relationships in realistic way. Her imagery is more powerful than her narration of events from her life. James Olney says that, "every work of art is a projection from the interior realm into exterior space where in becoming incarnated it achieves consciousness of itself "(Olney, 1980: p. 44) Why are so many people moved to write their life stories today? Sensitive human beings are basically interested in self-revelation. Self-expression is an inborn need, as the ancient story of the Frigean Cap suggests, in which the king's barber cannot keep for long the secret about the king's ears of donkey! Self-expression is an irresistible need.