BODHI International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

An Online, Peer reviewed, Refereed and Quarterly Journal

Vol: 2 Special Issue: 3 April 2018 E-ISSN: 2456-5571 UGC approved Journal (J. No. 44274)

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BODHI International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science (ISSN: 2456-5571) is online, peer reviewed, Refereed and Quarterly Journal, which is powered & published by Center for Resource, Research and Publication Services, (CRRPS) India. It is committed to bring together academicians, research scholars and students from all over the world who work professionally to upgrade status of academic career and society by their ideas and aims to promote interdisciplinary studies in the fields of humanities, arts and science.

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Dr. S. Balakrishnan Publisher and Editor - in - Chief [email protected] www.bodhijournals.com

BODHI INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN HUMANITIES, ARTS AND SCIENCE (BIJRHAS) An Online, Peer reviewed, Refereed and Quarterly Journal

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Dr. S. Balakrishnan Executive Director, Centre for Resource, Research and Publication Services (CRRPS) Tamil Nadu, India

Vice Editor-in-Chiefs Dr. Manimangai Mani Dr. B. Jeyanthi Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Assistant Professor & HOD of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Anna University, Tirunelveli Region, Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Tamil Nadu, India Selangor, Malaysia Dr. T. Marx Dr. Mamta Brahmbhatt Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Associate Professor of Management, Faculty of Modern Languages and B.K. School of Business Management, Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Gujarat University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India Selangor, Malaysia

Pradeep D. Waghmare Mr. B.P. Pereira Assistant Professor of History, Visiting Professor of English in Journalism, Ramnarain Ruia College, Madurai Kamaraj University, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India

Editorial / Review Board Dr. Sunil S. Narwade Dr. H.S. Rakesh Professor, Dept. of Economics, Assistant Professor of History, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada Davangere University, Karnataka, India University, Aurnagabad, Maharashtra, India Dr. Indira Banerji Dr. V.N. Kendre Assistant Professor of English, Yogoda Satsanga Assistant Professor of Sociology, Mahavidyalaya, Ranchi University, Ranchi, University of Mumbai, Mumbai, Jharkhand, India Maharashtra, India Dr. Punam Pandey Dr. Nana Pradhan Assistant Professor, Dept. of English & Modern Assistant Professor of Physics, European Languages, JR Handicapped Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai, University, Chitrakoot, UP, India Maharashtra, India Dr. Harshad Bhosale Dr. Prasenjit Panda Assistant Professor of Political Science, Assistant Professor, Dept. of English & Foreign Kirti College, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India Languages, Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya, Koni, Chattisgarh, India

Dr. H.M. Kantharaj Dr. Vaishali Pusate Assistant Co-ordinator of Education, Assistant Professor of Zoology, Davangere University, Karnataka, India Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India Dr. Vipin Kumar Pandey Associate Professor of English & Other Foreign Dr. P.V. Mahalinge Language, DSM National Rehabilitation Assistant Professor of Hindi, University, Lucknow, UP, India Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India Dr. B.V. Dhananjaya Murthy Assistant Professor of Political Science, Dr. Neelkanth Bankar Davangere University, Karnataka, India Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Mumbai, Maharashtra, India Dr. Vijaykumar Chavan Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Dr. Rajeshwar Andhale Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Maharashtra, India Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India Dr. Vijay Shankar Sharma Assistant Professor of Special Education, Dr. Anupama Mujumdar DSM National Rehabilitation University, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Lucknow, UP, India Ruparel College, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Dr. Sunil Shankadarwar Dr. Parvez Shamim Assistant Professor of Botany, Assistant Professor of Physical Education & Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai, Sports, Government P.G. College, Noida, Maharashtra, India G.B. Nagar, UP, India

Mr. Amit Agnihotri Assistant Professor & Head of Information Technology, JR Handicapped University, Chitrakoot, UP, India

FROM EDITORS’ DESK….

The genesis of subaltern emerged as a critical concept. The concept of subaltern studies prominence is derived from Marxism and Post-structuralism. One of the most recent sub divisions of post-colonial theory is the subaltern studies. It is also interdisciplinary subject. The Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci used the term ‘Subaltern’ and emphasized the significance of the word in terms of class, gender, caste, marginalization, race and culture of the society. The subaltern refers to any specific marginalized situation in any given cultural or social context. The advent of literary and cultural theories in the literary field has brought major changes in the way of rereading, reinterpreting and better understanding literature and culture. Subaltern consciousness is one of the characteristics of subalternity. The innovative, exciting, and intellectual discussion by the scholars of all domains will induce a high order to instigate and instil the aspirants and the experts of multifaceted disciplines to a considerable empowerment of the peak to achieve the best out of this Book which is of course literally one of the aims targeted too.

The editorial team appreciates all the contributors for their research novelty and innovative outcomes. We also appreciate all the readers who invest their time to cherish these ideas into practical steps. Language is to express and literature is to follow and live. We sincerely thank the publishers and the team who put their effort to bring out this edited volume.

At this Moment we make our Sincere thanks to Management and all faculty fraternity of English Department for this Successful Academic event backed by their wholehearted contributions and supports, which exhorted us at large that are really appreciably commendable.

Editors

Mrs.D.KARTHIGA RANI Principal, N.M.S. Sermathai Vasan College for Women, Madurai

Mrs.K.P.BAKHYA SEEMA Assistant Professor & Head of English N.M.S. Sermathai Vasan College for Women, Madurai

Dr.S.BALAKRISHNAN Editor cum Publisher, Bodhi International Journal

Mr.B.P.PEREIRA Founder Director, Speech Point, Madurai

BODHI INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN HUMANITIES, ARTS AND SCIENCE An Online, Peer-reviewed, Refereed and Quarterly Journal with Impact Factor

Vol: 2 Special Issue 3 April 2018 E-ISSN: 2456-5571

Aim & Objectives Academic Excellence in research is CONTENTS continued promoting in research support for young Scholars. Multidisciplinary of research is motivating S. Page. Title all aspects of encounters across disciplines and No No research fields in an multidisciplinary views, by 1 Life at the Periphery: The Bluest Eye 1 assembling research groups and consequently Honey Walia projects, supporting publications with this 2 Feminism in Meena Kandasamy “When I Hit You Or: A Portrait of the inclination and organizing programmes. 5 Internationalization of research work is the unit Writer as a Young Wife” seeks to develop its scholarly profile in research Mrs.B.Jasmin Angel Kumari through quality of publications. And visibility of 3 Sympathetic Portrayal of Women in research is creating sustainable platforms for Nuruddin Farah’s From a Crooked Rib 8 P.Sathya research and publication, such as series of Books; 4 Human Relationship in Anita Nair’s motivating dissemination of research results for Ladies Coupe 10 people and society. Dr.V.Kalaiselvan & G.Kayalvizhi 5 Social Pragmatism in Mulk Raj Disclaimer Anand’s Untouchable 15 Contributors are advised to be strict in G.Kayalvizhi academic ethics with respect to acknowledgment 6 A White Lady’s Humanity and of the original ideas borrowed from others. The Sympathy towards the Blacks : Publisher & editors will not be held responsible for A Reflection of Non-Racial Attitude in 19 any such lapse of the contributor regarding Nadine Gordimer’s Comrades plagiarism and unwarranted quotations in their Dr.S.Karnel manuscripts. All submissions should be original and 7 Ethnicity and Identity in Mahesh Dattani’s The Tale of a Mother must be accompanied by a declaration stating your 22 research paper as an original work and has not Feeding a Child been published anywhere else. It will be the sole Dr.K.Madhavarajan responsibility of the authors for such lapses, if any 8 Marginalized Women Characters in Select Short Stories of Shashi on legal bindings and ethical code of publication. 24 Deshpande

Dr.J.Selva Malar Communication 9 The Fangs of Caste System in Papers should be Mailed to Arundhati Roy's The God of Small 28 [email protected] Things Dr.K.Manju Kumari 10 Lose of Identity Crisis in Jaishree Misra’s A Love Story of My Sister 31

A.Muthu Kali 11 Quest for Identity in the Novel of Arun Joshi: The Foreigner 36 Ms.P.Shanmugapreethi

12 The Aspects of Indian Diasporic 27 Diasporic Predicaments as Projected 88 Womanism in the Selected Works of in Bapsi Sidwa’s Novels; A Study 40 Jhumpa Lahiri P.Sulochana Dr.N.Priyadarshini 28 Nation as an Imaginary Entity in 13 Primitivism VS Materialism in Arun Rohinton Mistry’s Fine Balance 90 Joshi’s The Strange Case of Billy A.Gowsalya Devi 43 Biswas 29 Self Immolation and Disembowelment Dr.N.Meenakshi in the Pursuit of Beauty in Toni 14 A Study of Similarities between Dalit Morrison’s The Bluest Eye 92 Literature and African American Dr.R.C.Sheila Royappa & 49 Literature K.P.Bakhya Seema A.Buvaneswari 15 Feminist Perspective in Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence 54 R.Ananthalakshmi 16 Gender and Sexuality in the Color Purple 58 Ms.G.Adhi Murugeswari 17 Feminist Tract in Doris Lessing’s The Cleft 61 R.Chinnamaruthayee 18 Subaltern Voices in Social Evil – Corruption in Education System with Reference to Chetan Bhagat’s 65 Revolution 2020 S.Puvaneswari 19 Internalised Racism in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye 68 Dr.P.Vanitha 20 The Theme of Marital Disharmony in Anita Desai’s Where Shall we go this 71 Summer? R.Rajalakshmi 21 Diaspora Writing in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “Arranged Marriage” 74 Mrs.M.Akila & A.Mary Glory 22 Literature as Social Discourse Life of Agony: A Study of Philip Roth’s Novel 77 Nemesis T.Malarvalli 23 Hypersensitivity in Anita Desai’s Cry, The Peacock 80 B.Lavanya 24 An Insight into Subaltern Studies 82 Dr.J.Sripadmadevi 25 Blanche Dubois: A Poignant Victim in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar 84 Named Desire Dr.C.Priya 26 Culture and Sexuality in Shyam Selvadurai’s Hungry Ghost 86 M.Leeladevi

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LIFE AT THE PERIPHERY: THE BLUEST EYE

Honey Walia Assistant Professor Department of English, Khalsa college for Women, Civil Lines, Ludhiana

Abstract Morrison's The Bluest Eye is an incisive probe into annihilation of a poor black girl, Pecola, placed in a racial predicament in an alien white world. The white cultural beauty constructs - Greta Garbo, Ginger Rogers, Jean Harlow, Shirley Temples, white baby dolls with blonde hair and blue eyes contribute to marring the mindset of black girls - "The most destructive ideas in the history of human thought" - romantic love and physical beauty, each perceived in accordance with what they exclude and created as distant beyond. Pauline's lack of rootedness, identity crisis to quite an extent, paves the way for her daughter's crisis and marginalised existence as well. Pecola, eventually does take that distant flight - the flight of freedom from the three fold marginalisation: of race, of gender and class. She had been compelled by the politics of culture to see others and herself through them and finally is not seen by herself until she hallucinates a self. The fact of her hallucination tragically connotes the "void" that is Pecola's 'un-being'. Through the character of Pecola, Morrison presents ramifications of embracing racial stereotypes, gender oppression and class construct. The Bluest Eye examines how aesthetic standards derived from white cultural domain can shatter black people in more ways than one. Significantly, the reader is to see the other and also to see what the other cannot see and use this enriched insight to facilitate the assimilation of the marginalized.

Introduction thinks by eating those she becomes one with Her blackness is the antithesis of a beauty: "To eat candy is somehow to eat the creamy white skin, her lips are thick, her eyes, eat Mary Jane, Love Mary Jane "(43). hair is kinky, and short. She is, in fact the Gripped with intense desire to escape the antithesis of American beauty... in this ugliness around she entreats, "please God, country she is ugly... when to her physical please make me disappear” (39) and gradually unattractiveness added a discouraging senses all parts of her body dissolving except depreciating mother-family-environment her eyes: "Almost done, almost. Only her into which she is born, there can be no tight, tight eyes were left. They were always doubt that she will develop a damaged left "(15). Fixated with self-hatred she puts self-concept and an impairment of her the onus of ugliness and violence around onto feminine racism (Hernton 10). herself wrongly believing that her eyes Morrison's The Bluest Eye is an incisive perceived ugliness for these must be ugly and probe into annihilation of a poor black girl, correspondingly, had these been beautiful it Pecola, placed in a racial predicament in an would have been beauty alone that would be alien white world. Rejected the day she is born absorbed. by her mother Pauline, for she is "ugly", she Pecola's existence is crippled for denial yearns to have blue eyes for she believes she stares large at her face from all quarters. Her would then be accepted in the white society. visit to the store to purchase Mary Jane Her obsession for white beauty springs from candies confirms her ugliness to her: her hatred for 'peripheral existence" and her "Somewhere, between retina and object, desire for assimilation. She drinks three between vision and view, her eyes draw back, quarts of milk so that she can hold the Shirley hesitate and hover. At some fixed point in Temple cup, admire the image of Shirley time and space, he senses that he need not Temple and perhaps reduce the black white waste the effort of a glance" (42). Looking up divide, at least in her mind. Fondness for at Yacobowsky she "sees the vacuum where Mary Jane candies is primarily because she curiosity ought to lodge.... The total absence of

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human recognition - the glazed In fact the movies, billboards, everything separateness"(42). Morrison here articulates seems to support the culturally skewed the collective experience of black girls located concept of beauty reaffirming the ugliness of in culturally marginalised existence. "She has blacks. Understandably then, Pecola ardently seen interest, disgust, even anger in grown prays for "blue eyes" which alone shall deliver male eyes. Yes this vacuum is not new to her. her from rejection and unworthiness. It has an edge, somewhere in the bottom hid Claudia pertinently enquires, what is the is the distaste. She has seen it lurking in the thing that made Maureen beautiful and not eyes of all white people. So, the distaste must them. Despite knowing that they are a "nicer, be for her, her blackness" (42). Pecola sat for brighter" they cannot ignore how "the honey long hours looking in the mirror, "trying to voice of parents and aunts, the obedience in discover the secret of the ugliness"(34), the the eyes of peers, the slippery light in the eyes ugliness that made her ignored or despised at of teachers all pour out to the Maureen Peals the school. She is the only member of her class of the world and not to them. The response of who sat alone at a double desk. Her teachers the people towards Maureen Peals and others tried never to glance at her, and called on her for whom Shirley Temple is the model makes only when everyone was required to respond. the sisters realize "the fact of their own lack, When one of the girls wished to insult a boy or variously identified as ugliness, or to get an immediate response, she would say, unworthiness, if not the essence of it" (Kuenz "Bobby loves Pecola Breedlove! Bobby loves 423). They register that they are "the other" Pecola Breedlove!" and there would be peals of and Claudia questions, "what did we lack? laughter from those in the earshot and mock Why was it important? (62). anger from the accused. She is convinced that The white cultural beauty constructs - her blackness accounts for the "vacuum edged Greta Garbo, Ginger Rogers, Jean Harlow, with distaste in white eyes" (37). Shirley Temples, white baby dolls with blonde Pecola's ugliness is not singular. The hair and blue eyes contribute to marring the Breedlove family was convinced that they mindset of black girls - "The most destructive were ugly. Perceiving themselves through the ideas in the history of human thought" (97) - eyes of others, their sensibility is shaped by romantic love and physical beauty, each the standards of white American culture. perceived in accordance with what they Morrison dwells on the processes and symbols exclude and created as distant beyond. of imprinting the self abnegating for being the Pauline "was never able to look at a face and antithesis of all that society values. Ugliness not assign it some category in the scale of becomes all pervasive with Breedloves. absolute beauty" which she had “absorbed in You looked at them and wondered why full from the movies” (97). She learns to they were so ugly, you looked closely and equate "physical beauty and virtue" at movies, could not find the source. Then you where she stripped her mind, bound it and realised that it came from conviction, their collected self-contempt by the heap. conviction. It was a thought some Witnessing "white men taking such good care mysterious all knowing master had given of their women, and they all dressed up in big each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and clean houses" (97), Pauline's unwillingness to they had each accepted it without accept the living at the "hem of life" surfaces question. The master had said, "You are and she perceives a fulfilling life for herself ugly people". They had looked about through the role of an “ideal servant” at the themselves and saw nothing to contradict Fishers. She has always felt a sense of the statement" (28). "separateness and unworthiness" (86) on account of her deformed foot and she never 2 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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felt at home anywhere, or that she belonged construct. Pecola is located encountering the anyplace. This feeling is intensified by the double jeopardy of race and gender. She is process of exclusion that she faces when she compelled to relinquish her individual and moves north and becomes a victim of politics cultural nuances and absorb the white of racism and a class consciousness, has a dictates and as a gendered entity, her sense of being when she is working for sisters: feminity is subordinated in the ambit of fetching groceries, arranging jars, keeping the patriarchal set-up. Morrison investigates order, the beauty, lapping up the praise Pecola's life back and forth, her showered and it becomes her private world". marginalisation on the axis of race to that of Pauline's lack of rootedness, identity crisis to gender. Pecola is pushed further into the pit of quite an extent, paves the way for her darkness by her father, Cholly Breedlove who daughter's crisis and marginalised existence violates her dignity, her sense of being and is as well. Pauline beats into her daughter "a instrumental for her psychological fear of growing up, fear of other people, fear of disintegration. Pecola's baby comes too soon life". She subjects her to utmost rejection and dies and Pecola retreats into a psychic when she on one hand fusses over the girl in death rummaging through the garbage pink at Fishers whose dress is smudged with searching for "the thing we assassinated" the juice of blueberries and on the other (163) abuses and slaps Pecola as she stands The novel investigates various levels of writhing in pain owing to burn on her leg and subjugation women accept likes of Mrs. Mac dismisses her as "none" (85). Ignored, hated Teer completely yield to the gendered roles and considered as an outsider, Pecola is and limitations. She is completely one with eventually thrown even out of the peripheral motherhood taking care of the family in rooms existence into the oblivion. "peopled by roaches and mice". Akin to other The damage done was total. She spent her women and the community, she dreads, "the days, her tendril sap green days, walking real terror life", being put outdoors" and left up and down, up and down, her head with "no place to go". Claudia talks of her jerking to the beat of a drummer so mother and other women in the community: distant only she could hear. Elbows bent “Being a minority, in both caste and class we hands on shoulders, she flailed her arms moved about... on the hem of life, struggling to like a bird in an eternal, grotesquely futile consolidate our weakness and hang on, or to effort to fly. Beating the air, a winged but creep singly up into the major folds of the grounded bird, intent on the blue void it garment” (18). Then there are “sugar brown could not reach - could not even see - but mobile girls” residing in fine houses with which filled the valley of the mind (162). porch swings, going to land-grant colleges, Pecola, eventually does take that distant normal schools, learning how to do white flight - the flight of freedom from the three man's work with refinement: home economics fold marginalisation: of race, of gender and to prepare his food, teacher education to class. She had been compelled by the politics instruct black children in obedience, music to of culture just to see others and herself soothe the weary master and entertain his through them and finally is not seen by blunted soul. One such girl, Geraldine, adds to herself until she hallucinates a self. The fact Pecola's sense of emptiness. She did not allow of her hallucination tragically connotes the Junior to play with niggers. Differentiating "void" that is Pecola's 'un-being'. coloured people and niggers she asserts that Through the character of Pecola, Morrison the coloured people were neat and quiet presents ramifications of embracing racial whereas niggers were dirty and loud, “grass stereotypes, gender oppression and class would not grow where they lived. Flowers 3 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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died... Tin cans and trees blossomed where from white cultural domain can shatter black they lived.. . Like flies they hovered, like flies people in more ways than one and how little they settled” (72). Geraldine turns Pecola out poor black girls like Pecola existed at the from her house calling her "nasty little black margins of society battling three-fold bitch and her gaze belittles her further. Pecola marginalisation. Significantly, the reader is to is seen as a girl with see the other and also to see what the other The dirty form dress, the plaits sticking cannot see and use this enriched insight to out on her head, hair matted where the facilitate the assimilation of the marginalized. plants had come undone, the muddy shoes with the wad of gum peeping out from References between the cheap souls, the soiled socks... 1. Hernton, Clavin. The Sexual Mountain She saw the safety pin holding the hem of and Black Women Writers. New York: the dress up (72). Anchor, 1987. Print. The hem is falling apart and so are the 2. Kuenz, Jane. “The Bluest Eye: Notes on people, compelled to be at the hem of life. History, Community and Black Female Morrison presents like a China, Poland and Subjectivity”. African American Review. Marie-women who choose to be "whores in Vol. 27. No. 3Autumn 1993. Web. 3.1.18. whores clothing", (43) who hated men without 3. Morrison, Tony. The Bluest Eye. London: shame, without apology or discrimination and Vintage bOoks. 1999. Print. yet significantly they too are removed to a 4. Rosenberg, Ruth. “Seeds in Hard Ground: remote distance from the probability of self- Black Girlhood in The Bluest eye”. Black expression and well-defined existence. American Literature Forum. Vol. 21. No. Morrison through The Bluest Eye 4. Winter 1987. Web. 3.1.18. examines how aesthetic standards derived

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FEMINISM IN MEENA KANDASAMY “WHEN I HIT YOU OR: A PORTRAIT OF THE WRITER AS A YOUNG WIFE”

Mrs.B.Jasmin Angel Kumari Assistant Professor of English, N.M.S.Sermathai Vasan College for Women

Abstract Kandasamy’s When I Hit You or: A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife” is a powerful analysis of ‘modern’ marriage through the art of fiction. An unnamed narrator takes us into her world of a misogynist husband; a father embarrassed by the shame that a possible divorce would bring, and a mother who tells her this is how things are, to be silent and to accept the situation because the first year of marriage is always hard; a mother who makes a “spectacle” of the narrator’s embarrassment and advises her that time will pass and all her troubles will be forgotten. The narrator escapes the brutality and the curfews imposed on her by writing letters to imaginary lovers. The book is a meditation on love, marriage, violence and how someone who is a feminist gets trapped in an abusive marriage.

Introduction "When I Hit You is a dazzling and Ilavenil Meena Kandasamy is an Indian provocative novel of an abusive marriage. poet, fiction writer, translator and activist Seduced by politics, poetry and an enduring who is based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, dream of building a better world together, the India.[1] Most of her works are centered on unnamed narrator falls in love with a feminism and the anti-caste Caste university professor. Moving with him to a Annihilation Movement of the contemporary rain-washed coastal town, she swiftly learns Indian milieu. Meena was born in 1984 to that what for her is a bond of love is for him a Tamil parents, both university professors, contract of ownership. As he sets about Named as Illavenil by her parents, she reducing her to his idealized version of an developed an early interest in poetry, and obedient wife, bullying her and devouring her later adopted the name Meena. She completed ambition of being a writer in the process, she a Doctorate of Philosophy in Socio-linguistics attempts to push back — a resistance he from Anna University, Chennai. Meena wrote resolves to break with violence and rape." her first poetry at the age of 17 and also Smart, fierce and courageous When I Hit started translating books by Dalit writers and You is a dissection of what love meant, means leaders into English at that age. and will come to mean when trust is Meena Kandasamy is a poet, fiction undermined by violence; a brilliant, throat- writer, activist and currently one of India’s tightening feminist discourse on battered boldest and most badass young voices. Most of faces and bruised male egos; and a scathing her works are centered on feminism and the portrait of traditional wedlock in modern Caste Annihilation Movement of the India. contemporary Indian milieu. She holds a PhD The journey towards that assertion is a in sociolinguistics and has published two tough one. It begins with a stripping of the anthologies of poems, “Touch” and “Ms narrator’s autonomy after her marriage to a Militancy”, and a novel “The Gypsy Goddess”. university lecturer, Marxist and one-time Her most recent work -“When I Hit You or: A revolutionary in south India who uses Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife” is a communist ideas “as a cover for his own dazzling and provocative novel of an abusive sadism”. When she moves with him to an marriage. unfamiliar city, an assault on her tongue, mind and body begins. The language barrier

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ensures that in public she can only speak over the last three years; it resonated so much words of wifely domesticity, shopping for because it tells a truth about the experience of vegetables or cleaning products. Her husband millions of women across the world who face manipulates her into the surrender of her abuse and violence of all sorts, whose voices email accounts, the suspension of her are battling the silence forced upon them (and Facebook page; he polices her mobile phone. the abuse faced by others who are Beatings and rapes follow, with everyday marginalised in other respects and are forced middle-class implements weaponries: the hose to stay silent). It wasn’t the fear of being of the washing machine, the power cord for abused that intimidated me; but, as a man, of her laptop. Shame, pride and a society in committing abuse, being complicit in it, that which everyone from parents to police expects did. Kandasamy writes, a woman to put up and shut up force the “Violence is not something that advertises realization that only she can save herself. itself…As long as a woman cannot speak, as Kandasamy writes with poetic intensity. long as those to whom she speaks do not listen, “Hope prevents me from taking my own life. the violence is unending. Hope is the kind voice in my head that In Kandasamy’s When I Hit You: Or, A prevents me from fleeing. Hope is the traitor Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife, the that chains me to this marriage.” Yet unnamed narrator, who quickly finds out that sometimes this intensity undoes itself: her husband is a psychopath, is far too clever “I imagine my vagina falling out of me like to commit murder. This is even after her spare change. Not with jingling noises, but in husband, a college lecturer in southern India, a wet, pulpy, silent way …” Such assures her that murdering her is very much phrasemaking can risk undermining our on his mind. She would leave but she is empathy. reminded that a broken marriage is a cross But even as she is beaten down – as, her entire family will be made to bear. “If you through Kandasamy’s use of stylistic devices break off your marriage, everyone in town will such as repetition, the narrator reflects that mock me,” moans her father over the phone. every moment has narrative potential. The Told by his daughter that her husband rapes risk of desensitization is averted: the novel her; that he beats her — with belts, electrical becomes a meditation on the art of writing cables and power cords — and that he about desire, abuse and trauma. She knows regulates her contact with the outside world, that writing can be her salvation – but “how the narrator’s father responds with the self- could I open up to strangers who buy the involved disgruntlement of an Indian fiction performed for their benefit?” When I patriarch. Hit You becomes her answer. She includes The memoiristic narrative is inspired by chapter epigraphs from Anne Sexton, Kamala Kandasamy’s own former relationship, about Das and Elfriede Jelinek. Thus linking herself which she wrote for an Indian news magazine to feminist writers beyond caste, race or in 2012. Although the market for confessional culture, even beyond language difference. It’s essays is booming in the west, in India the one way of subverting the argument made by appetite for truth is somewhat limited. Given the novel’s abuser that the Indian female the opportunity to look into the mirror, most writer working in English is akin to a Raj- people would turn it over. This is especially era whore. true when it comes to matters considered When I Hit You is a book that resonated so foundational to Hindu society — gender, caste much with me, as a feminist and an and class. anthropologist who’s been involved with front- Kandasamy’s writing—and her actively line workers and domestic violence prevention underscoring that aspect of her identity—is 6 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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what truly holds the book together. And it social circle; and finally, her husband—to would have needed to, for it’s a dense, rich whom marriage is an “re-education camp,” repository of memories that shifts across space “Communism 101,” to instill the virtues of and time: her childhood, her broken Communism in his bride, violently and relationships with lovers in her university, her brutally. affair with a politician, to her turbulent and Kandasamy shows—as feminists of all violent marriage. Kandasamy weaves back shades have done for so many decades now— and forth in time, through different layers of this is, in large part, a myth. She shows that her identity as a narrator. She writes, violence underpins and shapes the lives of “I remind myself of the fundamental notion women and other vulnerable peoples; that it is of what it means to be a writer. A writer is the both structural, and intimate. And the one who controls the narrative.” “Here, I am greatest violence perhaps—or certainly the the actress, the self-anointed director, the most egregious—is the failure to see it as cinematographer and the screenplay such. This has been such a cornerstone for writer…The story changes every day, every feminist and anti-violence politics: the hour, every single time I sit and chart it out. struggle to see violence as violence. The actors do not change, I cannot escape the set, but with every shift in perspective, a Conclusion different story is born.” Kandasamy has written about her own Her narrative in several parts is dialogic: marriage for the Indian magazine Outlook in her letters to lovers which exist only 2012; now, using an unnamed narrator fleetingly—she writes them in afternoons speaking in an urgent, first-person when her husband is away, only to delete voice, When I Hit You: Or, a Portrait of the them by evening; her conversations with her Artist as a Young Wife gives us “a woman at parents—who display sympathy, and whom society cannot spit or throw stones, ultimately helplessness as they ask her to find because this me is a she who is made up only refuge in silence, “for her own good”; her dead of words on a page, and the lines she speaks interactions with locals—who only talk about are those that everyone hears in their own the weather; her disappearance from her voice”.

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SYMPATHETIC PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN NURUDDIN FARAH’S FROM A CROOKED RIB

P.Sathya Assistant Professor of English, N.M.S Sermathai Vasan College for Women, Madurai

Introduction From a Crooked Rib explicitly bemoans Nuruddin Farah was born on 24 in the plight of women in Somali society, the November 1945. He is a Somali novelist. He novel cannot be reduced to being merely about has also written plays both for stage and the situation of Somali women or described as radio, as well as short stories and essays. a feminist work, because, in truth, all of Farah has garnered acclaim as one of the humanity is Nuruddin Farah’s concern. greatest contemporary writers in the world, In his debut novel Nuruddin Farah his prose having earned him accolades turned the spotlight on the restrictions and including the Premio Cavour in Italy, limitations experienced by women in his the Kurt Tucholsky Prize in Sweden, native Somalia where women are considered the Lettre Ulysses Award in Berlin, in 1998, not only inferior to men but as inherently the prestigious Neustadt International Prize flawed. Nuruddin Farah’s spare, shocking for Literature. In the same year, the French first novel savagely attacks the traditional edition of his novel Gifts won the St Malo values of his people yet is also a haunting Literature Festival’s prize. In addition, Farah celebration of the unbroken human spirit. is a perennial nominee for the Nobel Prize in From a Crooked Rib is written from the Literature. His first novel, From a viewpoint of one girl’s experience but through Crooked Rib (1970), told the story of her, Farah shows that her predicament is one a nomad girl who flees from an arranged faced by many of his countrywomen. Ebla is marriage to a much older man. The novel an uneducated eighteen year old orphan who earned him mild but international acclaim. runs way from her nomadic settlement when Farah followed this with Gifts (1993) she discovers her grandfather has promised and Secrets (1998), both of which earned her in marriage to an old man. She hopes to awards. His most recent trilogy make a new life for herself with a distant comprises Links (2004), Knots(2007) cousin and his wife in the city of Mogadishu, and Crossbones (2011). His latest but her inexperience and naivety make her ill novel Hiding in Plain Sight was published in equipped to deal with the reality of city life. 2014. The rarity of the Anglophone Somali She has never seen a plane or a car, has no writer as a species has placed Farah in a idea what a policeman is and doesn’t know situation where his work cannot be seen in a how to cook. Instead of enjoying an national context. Farah writes of a society in independent life, she is effectively sold in which nomadic values seem to be strongly marriage by her cousin, then experiences enshrined as central to the national self- sexual violence, poverty and a sham image. marriage. In 1968, when Farah, aged twenty-three, Reflecting on her life, Ebla sees that she was a second-year student at Panjab has simply swapped one form of servitude for University in India, the novel occupies a another and is as powerless and dependent on unique place in African fiction in its men as she was in her desert home. She and sympathetic portrayal of women. other women are merely chattels in the eyes of the men, theirs to be “sold like cattle.”

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Farah challenges many of the attention and to question long held beliefs in preconceived and traditional values of his the need for subjugation of women and society. It’s a powerful story told through a practices like arranged marriage and female character whose innocence and resilience circumcision. engage our sympathy. As a work of fiction it has a number of flaws. The writing style for Conclusion example often feels belabored and sometimes When a girl baby was born, she the narrative seems to leave out critical pieces dependents her father, brother, son of information so we’re not entirely sure what throughout her life from birth to death . is happening. But the importance of this work “The words of an intelligent woman do not lies more in the subject matter than the way lock all the doors, they leave the right doors”. the story is told. Farah dared to bring to

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HUMAN RELATIONSHIP IN ANITA NAIR’S LADIES COUPE

Dr.V.Kalaiselvan Associate Professor & Head, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai

G.Kayalvizhi Ph.D. Scholar & Assistant Professor in English, Ayya Nadar Janaki Ammal College, Sivakasi

Introduction with the protagonist, Akhila, the latter finds A novel is essentially bound up in a local, the answer to her quest for freedom. A brief real, the present and the day-to-day introduction of the five passengers follows experience of life, observes Eudora Welty. before an in-depth analysis of each character Place is an all inclusive framework; it is made. conditions a novelist's mode of Janaki is a pampered wife and a confused characterization, his sense of direction - in mother, Margaret Shanti is a Chemistry brief, his entire point of view. Like Eudora teacher who is married to a self-absorbed who created stories in multiple genres, insensitive tyrant. Prabhadevi is an ideal wife throughout Nair’s writing the recurring and daughter, who, too undergoes a major themes of the paradox of human relationship, transformation. The youngest character, the importance of place and mythological fourteen-year old Sheela is gifted with an influences help her shape the theme and exceptional ability to perceive matters that character. Welty’s interest in the conflicting are beyond the capacity of normal souls. relationships between individuals and their Marikolanthu falls prey to a rich and lustful communities, stems out of her natural man, who destroys her innocence. abilities as an observer. The complexity The stories revealed by all the five involved in the relation between mother- characters provide Akhila with an answer to daughter is highlighted in Nair’s Ladies her quest for freedom. Akhila's quest for Coupe. freedom is turned inward and aimed at the Ladies Coupe depicts the plight of goal of self-discovery. As in the novels of Akhila, a forty-five year old single woman Shashi Deshpande, in Ladies Coupe women employed as an income-tax clerk. She has occupy a central place. Nair presents both never been allowed to live life on her terms. restrained and apparent analysis of The novel takes off with her decision to conflicting phases, underlying reasons and discover her own life and in her pursuit of suggests a way out of it. It becomes more freedom she takes a train to Kanyakumari. interesting to analyze the image of women in Having got a berth in a second- class Ladies Coupe when it is portrayed by a compartment in the Ladies Coupe, she meets woman writer. Today, the woman plays five other women - Sheela Vasudevan, Prabha diverse roles both indoors and outdoors. She Devi, Janaki Prabhakar, Margaret Paulraj participates in all the hitherto male- and Marikolanthu. During the course of the dominated spheres. But a conflict persists in journey, Akhila gets to know her fellow her mind and makes her restless. Family, travelers. All the characters lead stereo-typed marriage and social norms bind her roles, into which women are moulded by completely. patriarchal society. They all hope and strive Akhila, who is the protagonist, has to break free from that mould. When all the multiple roles to perfonn - that of a daughter, five characters meet and share their woes sister, aunt and provider. Akhila represents

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the middle class values of a Tamil-Brahmin awareness of her needs and the self- family. She is cast almost entirely within the realization leads to her empowerment. She mould of her culture. N aif s depiction of wishes for companionship as well as Akhila in the beginning of the novel throws motherhood. This is evident in her light on the inner psyche of spinsters, who are conversations with her co-passengers when past the age of marriage and have to cope she reveals her innermost desire, which did with the demands of Indian society. not materialize, when she says. "I did not Forty-five years old. Sans rose-coloured choose to remain single." At the age of 45, she spectacles. Sans husband, children, home feels marriage is unimportant but she likes to and family. Dreaming of escape and have companionship. She wishes to lead her space. Hungry for life and experience. life on her terms but is constantly reminded Aching to connect... Akhila was not a by everyone that a woman can't live alone. creature of impulse. She took time over Her unfulfilled wish to mother a child is every decision. She pondered, deliberated, explicitly described, “...a boy. A teenage boy. slept over it and only when she examined An attractive man. Then she would remember every single nuance and point of view did that she was forty-five years old. Old enough she make up her mind (LC 2). to be the boy's mother.” At the beginning of the novel itself, Nair After she engages in a one-night stand has thrown light on the various facets of with a stranger, Akhila feels emancipated Akhila’s personality as someone who is in from the age-old customs. pursuit of her identity, strength and Once she had thought that she couldn’t independence. Akhila’s image reflects a love another man she like she realistic picture of a contemporary middle- had loved Hari. Giving him all her body class woman, who has a penchant for and soul. This morning she exposing the societal flaws prevalent in thinks anything is possible. That she will orthodox families in India. Akhila, a have the courage to pick up conservative Brahmin, is determined to break from where she left off and begin again. free from the shackles of age-old customs. That as much as she desired Marrying one’s uncle is an accepted nonn in Hari, she desires life more (LC 275). the Tamil-Brahmin community. The The need for self-fulfillment is so intense independent-minded Akhila at the age of that she is willing to let go off the burden of fourteen has no qualms expressing her the societal pressures that had clogged her displeasure and disapproval at her mother's mind all these years. decision to marry her uncle (Akhila's father). Akhila, the protagonist succeeds in her Further, she strongly opposes her mother's goal of self-discovery. She succeeds in theories on what a good wife ought to be. Her retaining her dignity even as she finds self- mother’s formula of a successful marriage is fulfilment. Like the male progeny, Akhila in subordination of women. Akhila refuses to takes over the reign from her father after his believe that a woman's need to prove her death. She rescues her mother from the equality creates strife and disharmony in the threat of poverty and degradation. She even house. enrolls in the Open University for a Bachelor Nair's portrayal of Akhila shows her of Arts degree at the age of thirty-five to determination to live life her way after a long prevent her mind from straying. Akhila finds suffering. Akhila's belief in the institution of herself a misfit in the society she lives in. marriage at the beginning of the novel Because of her unmarried status, she doesn't gradually changes and towards the end of the have many friends and fails to identify with novel she seduces a young man. Her the world of householders. Akhila’s journey in 11 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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search of her identity isn’t an easy one. It to realize her decision is influenced by the means breaking free from her conservative stories of the five co-passengers. background. She secretly feasts on hard- The other characters in the novel play an boiled eggs for a whole year and also picks up equally significant role. It is their revealing the art of boiling eggs. She tastes her first stories that lead Akhila to her final victory and establishes her individuality when destination in her search for strength and her orthodox mother accepts her taste for independence. Janki is a pampered wife but eggs. with a strong sense of insecurity. Her habit of Thus begins Akhila’s journey as a switching channels each time a life-insurance spinster, government employee, historian and commercial appeared on televisions shows her eater of eggs. In her moments of weakness, height of insecurity. Her urge to be pampered Akhila lets her heedless thoughts overrule definitely leads to her accepting a diminutive her. The woman in her seeks a sense of image which clashes with her self-image and gratification and allows a stranger to take results in marriage at the age of eighteen to a liberties with her. Akhila’s relationship with twenty-seven year old Prabhakharan and gets Hari fails to culminate in marriage as he was from him all the attention she desired. From younger to her and this relationship would her girlhood she was being groomed for not get social acceptance. After her mother's marriage. Marriage was her ultimate death Akhila's overwhelming desire to lead an destination. A perfectionist in the skills independent life of her own, recoils when her required for marriage - cooking and cleaning, over overbearing callous sister Padma moves sewing and pickling - she symbolizes the with her family to stay with Akhila. Akhila plight of most Indian women, who are always tolerates the invasion of space and privacy looked after - first by father and brother then but she resents being thrust into a life that husband. was dull without any highs or lows. She hated When her husband is gone, there will be herself for being an extension of someone her son. She says, “Women like me end up else's identity. When asked to define being fragile. Our men treat us like happiness, she parrots the New Year greeting princesses." (LC23). All her life she believed card message that Katherine sent her. It says. that a woman's duty was to get married, a “Happiness is being allowed to choose home was a woman's kingdom and she strived one's own life, to live it the way one hard to preserve it. Even playing a fragile wants. Happiness is to know one is loved little creature tired her. With all the affection and having someone to love. and attention she receives. Janaki is bored Happiness is being able to hope for with her monotonous life and craves for a tomorrow.’’ (LC 200). change and it hints at the dissatisfaction Karpagam, a widow who wears the experienced by women at a certain age. She KumKum and colourful clothes, remains a believes that women can achieve satisfaction source of strength and inspiration to Akhila, solely by being with her male counterpart. and also like a goddess leads Akhila out of the She says. “I am a woman who has always dismal hues of her world. Akhila confidently been looked after. First there was my father puts her brother Narayan’s doubts to rest and my brothers: then my husband; when my when he inquires how any woman can cope husband is gone, there will be my son waiting alone. Akhila has her answers ready, “I know to take off from where his father left off. 1 can. 1 did once before when you were Women like me end up being fragile; our men children. Now I can for me, for treat us like princesses.'” (LC 22/23). Akhilandeshwari. Nobody’s wife. Nobody’s A true image of the ideal Indian woman, mother." (LC 208). But her last and final act Janaki believed that a woman’s role was to 12 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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keep the family intact and reach out to every chemical elements. Margaret describes other member. She finds herself in a very agonizing characters by ascribing those names of state when forced to bear taunts and derisions chemicals akin to their nature. at her son’s house. Unable to bear the insults, Prabhadevi, married to Jagdish, a she decides to live with her husband. Janaki’s prosperous diamond merchant, is quiet and story hints at the dissatisfaction experienced timid to the extent that she has never tried at a certain age by every individual, though doing anything new. She does not like the what she believes is not true for the women of way she has evolved and therefore she makes today's times. attempts to change herself. Her birth made Sheela, a fourteen-year old girl, is the her father sigh. At 15 years of age, she was youngest of the lot. Nair thrust upon her an moved to a convent school to be groomed well unusual ability to perceive what adults by the nuns so as to get a good alliance. She around her could not. She is gifted with was permitted two hours of outing every week strong instincts that protect her from (i.e. Saturday morning) because boys prefer impending danger. When her friend Hasina's girls who are friendly and can hold their own father takes the first step to outrage her in a conversation. She becomes the woman modesty, she does a simple innocent act of her mother had envisioned. Her visit to New wiping the line of sweat from her upper-lip York brought back with her a whole set of and trying to knot the bows on the sleeves of possessions. She longed to be like the women her blouse when it had come undone. She in New York with swinging air and confident could easily sense the danger lurking behind stride. Her quest to acquire poise, confidence, these innocent acts. In Sheela, Nair has celebration of life and beauty metamorphoses created the image of a young girl, fiercely her into “a woman of the world sans the independent, who allows her instincts to rule slouch, the downcast eye and sari pallu rather than do what was expected of her — weighing down her youth." (LC178). ‘the sober dictates of good conduct.' Nair brings the last character in the form Margaret Shanti, a chemistry teacher, is of Marikolanthu, who is a victim of a man’s married to an insensitive tyrant called lust. She is poor, uneducated and represents Ebenezer Paulraj. With the sole desire of that class, which leads unsheltered lives. This taking revenge on her brutal husband she sixth passenger who narrated her tale has a feeds him and turns him into a fat man. She strong belief that women are strong and believes that being fat can erode his self- capable of doing much more than men but for esteem. If he survived, he would continue to that she has to seek that vein of strength in give her sorrow with a single-minded joy. herself There is no sense of rightness; no Among the five elements that constitute life, chronology about the roles in her life. She she classifies herself as water. Water has succeeds in taking control of her life for the several qualities. It moistens, heals, forgets, first time. A woman, content in her role of a accepts, flows tirelessly and also destroys. substitute lover, discovers herself and Like water, she has the power to dissolve and recognizes her desire to be the real mother to destroy. She wants to end her miseries by her son ‘Muthu’. bringing an end to her self-absorbed narcissist All the characters in the novel try to make husband. Her story reveals the some sense of their own existence by talking metamorphosis from a dutiful wife to a about it to anyone who is willing to listen. The revenge seeking one. Her greatest virtue is revelation of the five co passengers leads her immunity to what people think of her. Akhila towards the path of self-actualization, Nair has bestowed the chemistry teacher, self-realization and self-fulfillment. Like her Margaret Shanti, with a sound knowledge of fellow travelers, she too is determined to 13 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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break free from all that her conservative life customs, and feminine consciousness prevails has bound her to. The characters represent throughout the novel in the form o f all the the middle and upper middle class, educated, female characters, the protagonist encounters urban woman with the exception of and interacts. For them it is the revolt against Marikolanthu. By liberating oneself from the the family traditions in search o f freedom clutches of family a woman can survive only if and quest for their selves. she has inculcated in her the culture of self- The novel presents how human dependence — both physical and mental. The relationships are re-defined. Akhila’s extra- characters are representatives of the third marital adventure certainly indicates the phase of feminism of Elaine Showalter move towards sexual emancipation. The novel wherein self-discovery as a result of also highlights the theme of freedom from recognizing the value of woman’s experience bondage of culture; from the concepts o f becomes a fit subject for literary- expression. family, marriage and sex as defined by male- In Ladies Coupe, Akhila represents the chauvinism and are thrust upon women. The New Indian Woman who is dissatisfied with protagonist does urge to seek self fulfillment the roles assigned to her by the patriarchal through self- expression. She questions the society and manages to reject the two codes of morality existing in society based cultural/social background totally to on gender — one for men and other for transcend the horizons and thus depicting a women. revolutionary spirit. Her predecessors were caught between tradition and modernity. But References she represents the changing image o f woman 1. Mishra, Binod, and Sanjay Kumar, eds. in today’s time - a major theme o f the novel. Indian Writings in English. New Delhi: Her quest for freedom, self-discovery and self- Atlantic Publishers, 2006. Print. actualization runs through the novel. The 2. Nair, Anita. Ladies Coupe. New Delhi: slow, but firm assertive strides she takes in Penguin, 2001. Print. her pursuit o f freedom from the age-old 3. …, http://www.anitanair.net/faq.html.

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SOCIAL PRAGMATISM IN MULK RAJ ANAND’S UNTOUCHABLE

G.Kayalvizhi Assistant Professor in English (PG), Ayya Nadar Janaki Ammal College, Sivakasi

Abstract Problem of untouchabilty is still prevalent in the society and Mulk Raj Anand through his novel Untouchable brings to light the sorrows and sufferings that high caste Hindus inflicted on the untouchables. Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable, is more compact than his other novels. The novel Untouchable, published in 1935, centres around a sweeper boy, Bakha. The eighteen year boy Bakha, son of Lakha, the jamadar of sweepers is a child of the twentieth century, and the impact of new influences reverberates within him. Keywords: Untouchable; Cleanliness; Inhumanity; Sweetmeat; Polluted; Orthodox; Underdog; Plight; Outrage; Impudence

Introduction efficiency with which the boy does this Mulk Raj Anand's commitment to reveal essential service and callousness with which the deep-rooted social malice in the Indian the beneficiaries receive it. He clean three society made him to create Bakha. He wanted rows of latrines single handed and several to show the youth's unique sensitiveness as times too; to bring cleanliness in the place of against the people of the upper caste who filth and possible disease. Bakha a not only thought merely touching him is degradation. efficient in his work but also do it with full He meant symbolically to show that such dedication: small tenderness among people in private life For although he did not know it, to him or the catharsis of human existence. work was sort of E. M. Foster in the preface of Untouchable intoxication which gave him a glowing observes that: Bakha is a real individual, health and plenty of easy lovable, thwarted, sometimes grand, sleep. So he worked on continuously, sometime weak, and thoroughly Indian. Even incessantly, with out his physique is distinctive, we can recognize stopping for breadth, even though the broad intelligent face, graceful torso ... as he violent exertion of his limb does it nasty job or stumps out in artillery was making him gasp. boots, in the hope of a pleasant walk through Bakha had very strong desire to study. He the city with a paper of cheap sweets in his often sat in the spare time and tried to feel hands. how it felt to read. He even bought a first Anand with his remarkable skill portrays primer of English. But his self education did Bakha's helpless, frustration, anxiety and not goes beyond the alphabet. He was even agony to the degree that he has become ready to hire Babu's son in order to give him embodiment of his own creation or in other lessons in the evening. While going to sweep words the creator and the creator co-mingle at the market road and temple courtyard on the one point. Through the character Bakha in way, he buys four annas worth of cheap Untouchable, Anand highlight the condition sweetmeat after much speculation: 'Eight of inhumanity faced by them in the society. annas my pocket' he said to himself, 'dare I The untouchable covers the event of a single buy some sweets. If my father comes to know day in the life of the low caste boy Bakha, in that I spend all the m0!1ey on sweets', he the town of Bulashah. Anand describes thought and hesitated, 'but come, I have only Bakha's morning round duties with a pain one life to live', he said to himself, 'Let me staking particularity, bringing out both the 15 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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taste of the sweets;' who knows, tomorrow I mentioned that untouchable are not allowed may be no more’. to enter in the premises of temple. Bakha Mulk Raj Anand successfully shown how surveys the heap of dust and leaves which he untouchable are not accepted in society & had come to clear. He threw the bucket and illtreated by other people of other castes; the broom on the ground and was ready to Barkha being an untouchable, to avoid begin his job. He saw a miniature 'temple' pollution by touch the confectioner throws the with the beautiful polished image of a snake packet of jalebis, like a cricket ball for Bakha enclosed. He was slightly afraid of the snake to catch: Keep to the side of the road, ohe low- but his fear ceased when he saw the devotes caste vermin!' ... 'Why don't you call, you worshipping it. He shouted his call of caution swine, and announce your approach! Do you to avoid the repetition of the disaster of the know you have touched me and defiled me, morning. The orthodox crowd of worshippers cockeyed son of a bowlegged scorpion! Now I was conscious of his evil presence. He was in have to go and take a bath to purify myself, a fjx and did not know what the worshippers and it was a new dhoti and shirt I put on this were chanting "Ram, Ram, Sri, Hari, morning!' Bakha stood amazed, embrassed. Narayan, Sri Krishna, Hey Hanuman jodha, He was deaf and dumb. His senses were Kali Mai". He had faint idea about some of paralyzed. Only fear gripped his soul, fear of the and did not know anything about the rest. humility and servility. He was used to being He was obsessed with the desire I~f seeing spoken to roughly. But he had seldom been the images of gods and goddesses. But he had taken so unawares. The lalla who is 'polluted' not courage to go up. He knew that "an continues to bombard abuses on Bakha. Soon untouchable going into a temple polluted it he is encircled by men who had gathered to past purification." know what the uproar was all about. The As his curiosity become more and more crowd which presses round him, is without a acute, he dismissed his conflicting thoughts shadow of pity for him. When the lalla is tired and moved towards the stair's looking here of shouting at Bakha, he gives a sharp, clear and there. He climbed up a few stairs but slap at him as a punishment for his 'damned soon fear returned and he came back to the impudence', and he runs away, like a dog with place from which he had started: "he became the tail between his legs.' Bakha recoganises the humble oppressed underdog that he was with a shock his social position. It illuminates by birth, afraid of everything creeping slowly the inner walls of his mind. He realizes that up in a curiously hesitant, cringing though he possesses like any human being, movement…With his broom he began to head and heart, and flesh and blood, he is in collect the litter . the eyes of the world an untouchable. Again his curiosity propelled him to go up He realizes the wickedness of the society the stairs. He strengthened himself and in which he is placed, which considers climbed up a few more stairs and from a safe touching a human being like him as a male distance he saw the spectacle of the diction and touching a dirty bull like the one worshippers, priest and the sanctuary which he has seen just then had a benediction. After had so far been a secret, a hidden mystery to the excruciating experience of touching in the him. He was wonder struck at the sight of market, Bakha went to sweep the temple beautiful brass images. Bakha saw that the courtyard. He was filled with the fear of some morning service had begun. Devout unknown and mysterious effect on him as he worshippers stood singing Arti in a chorus. entered the courtyard of the temple. Bakha was profoundly moved by the song. He Anand has also highlighted in the faith of unconsciously joined his hand in the worship Indian People in God, through Bakha, also of the unknown god. 16 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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Anand also exposed the double standard in a hockey match and takes him to his home, of society where on one hand people are the child's mother instead of thanking him for polluted by the shadow of untouchable on the this admirable job, scolds him and says that it other hand they don’t hesitate to try to molest is he who must have been the root of the the untouchable girl. Through the character trouble. That is to say, fault or no fault, the of priest Anand described the incident where untouchables had to received the abuse and temple priest tries to molest Bakha’s sister rebuke of the caste men as. daily food. and when the revolved, she was blamed to In the end of the nove Mulk Raj Aanand is pollute him. ‘All of a sudden he heard a loud successful in showing that problem of cry "polluted, polluted, polluted." He was untouchable can be removed. When the dusk perplexed, He knew what is meant. He saw a approaches he find three solution's to his little man - a priest of the temple, stumbling, problems. He may become Christian with the falling and crying, "polluted, polluted, help of Hutchinson, the Salvation Army polluted." He also saw the figure of a woman Missionary. He has been happy to hear from Sohini, behind the polluting priest. The crowd Hutchinson that Christ receives all men and of devotees began to run helter-skelter. All of Jessuh Messih makes no difference between them were in a terrible orgy of excitement. the Brahmin and the Bhangi. But thy One of them angrily shouted at Bakha and missionary's talking of 'sin' and 'confession' charged him of defiling their whole service. and his failure to clearly tell who his Christ Bakha ran down the steps and went to his is, confuses the mind of Bakha. He has sister Sohini. The little priest was angrily respect for his person as well as for his nation. shrieking' "you people have only been polluted Perhaps he knows the difference between the from a distance. I have been defiled by two kinds of servitude, and prefers the native contact… The crowd felt that the priest had to the alien. The second solution is that he suffered terribly. All worshippers may take comfort in Gandhiji's chastisement sympathized to with him but they did not ask of the caste Hindus and wait till the social about the way he had been polluted. When conscience of people is roused. Hard upon this Bakha know from Sohini that the priest tried comes the third solution. He may put his faith to outrage her modesty, he felt a wild desire in the water- closet about which the positivist to retaliate. This made his blood boil.’ poet had talked: It is prosaic, straightforward, The real irony lies in Bakha's high resolve and considered in the light of what has gone to take revenge being thwarted by futility before in the book, it is convincing. No god is written on his face, because the caste men needed to rescue the untouchables no vows of had erected barriers of convention to protect self- sacrifice and a bugation on the part of their excesses from being questioned. The more fortunate Indians but simply and solely writer conceives of Bakha as a tiger, but a – the flush system. Introduce water-closets tiger at bay. Bakha's had much love and care and main drainage throughout India and all for his sister Sohini. When he knows that this wicked rubbish about untouchability will Pandit Kali Nath tried to modest her, he is disappear. worried about her. In the Sadhu incident, the housewife Conclusion attends dotingly near a sadhu. But when Anand concludes the novel with a note of Bakha asks for a piece of bread, she gives it to faith and idealism. As Bakha returns his him after long entreaty, and that too after mind is raised with the hope that soon the seasoning it with abuse and rebuke. At the flush system would come to the sweepers and Hockey match incident when Bakha saves a people like him:"Can be free from stigma of small boy from being crushed in a stampede untouchability and assume the dignity of 17 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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status that is their right as useful members of Indian society in which untouchability has no a casteless and classless society. Bakha place. fervently hopes for the dawn to his nature of work and his relevance in the society without References the label of an untouchable. Anand 1. Anand, Mulk Raj. Untouchable. London: meticulously brings out the inner life of Penguin, 1940. Bakha. It was growing concern for metaphori 2. Dhawan, R.K., ed. The Novels of Mulk Raj untouchable in all cultures and walks of life. Anand. New York: Prestige, 1992. Premila Paul remarks: The novel, indeed, 3. ---. Saros Cowasjee. "Anand's Literary presents Anand's attempt at distilling a social Creed." 13-18. metaphor which takes in its sweep a whole 4. ---. R.T. Roberston. "Untouchable as an range of postulates of Hindu culture. It is a Archetypal Novel." 98-104. kind of dialectical work centered on as 5. Narasimhaiah, C.D. The Swan and the exploration of the possibilities of achieving Eagle. Delhi: Motilal, 1987. systhesis or spiritual restoration. Thus in 6. Premila, Paul. The Novels of Mulk Raj Untouchable, Mulk Raj Anand's handling the Anand: A Thematic study. New problem of untouchability through Bakha York.1983. shows that he hopes to have a casteless 7. Walsh, William. Indian Literature in English. London: Longman, 1990.

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A WHITE LADY’S HUMANITY AND SYMPATHY TOWARDS THE BLACKS: A REFLECTION OF NON-RACIAL ATTITUDE IN NADINE GORDIMER’S COMRADES

Dr.S.Karnel PG Assistant in English, GHSS, Vadugapatti

Abstract This paper aims at providing a sustaining voice for removing racial inequality between the blacks and the whites. In Nadine Gordimer’s Comrades, the white lady has played a key role representing parent-child relationship with the blacks. According to the author, it is a strange attempt in which Gordimer tries to wash out the racial prejudice in Africa and the other European countries. Due to Apartheid system in South Africa, the blacks had a bitter feeling of isolation or separation and frustration from both their past and the present. Thus, people are being divided under different categories by their birth or by particular race or creed etc and the resultant hunger blending the two different categories into one. Keywords: apartheid system, boycotts, sympathy, sociability, hospitality.

Introduction apartheid movement. Her early interest in Nadine Gordimer was born in 1923 in racial and economic inequality in Africa was Springs, South Africa. She belonged to a shaped in part by her parents. The Lying privileged white family. She is one of the Days (1953) was the first novel for the Nobel famous writers in South Africa who intended Prize winning South African novelist, to explore the effect of apartheid on the Gordimer. It shows that the South Africa is a human lives in the society in her fictions. She land, not of a single problem, race, but of was a political activist and recipient of the many problems that one central issue seems 1991 Nobel Prize in literature. Her father was to magnify and intensify. The a Jewish immigrant watchmaker, and her Conversationalist (1974), describes as more mother was from London. Gordimer’s mother complex in design and technique than was from an assimilated family of Jewish Gordimer’s earlier novels. July’s People origins; she was raised in a secular household. (1981), set in a near future version of South As a young girl, Gordimer witnessed rampant Africa where Apartheid is ended through a acts of racism in her neighbourhood. She saw civil war. Gordimer wrote the book before the people fighting racism and campaigning for end of apartheid as her prediction of how it the basic rights of all human beings, would end. Burger’s Daughter (1979), was a irrespective of race, colour and creed. Nadine great political novel. It described a ‘coded Gordimer is a widely acknowledged writer of homage’ to the African lawyer. The novel was world literature. She glorifies a belief, now banned by the South African government. The apparently over and done in a literary society House Gun (1998), Gordimer’s second post- that a writer can be the spokesperson of a apartheid novel. It follows the story of a period of time , a talking head for a crusade, couple, treats the rising crime rate in South and an untiring assessor of ethical and Africa and the guns that virtually all psychosomatic fact. Nadine Gordimer has households have, as well as the legacy of been an ardent champion, touching racial South African apartheid and the couple's discrimination in South Africa and has concerns about their son's lawyer, who is extensively held a heroic status as a defender black. Finally, the short story Comrades too of acceptance, free speech and understanding. breaks the barriers upon actions of apartheid Her works dealt with moral and racial system. The narrator goes out of the way to do issues particularly apartheid system in South service to the black youngsters, to feed them Africa. She actively participated in the anti- 19 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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and also finally confesses the unity of all also they have missed the free lunch too. They mankind. asked Hattie whether she is going to the town. She has to go home, but she allowed A brief Outline of the Story- Comrades them to board. The youths are really happy on Liberal minded and good natured white hearing the cool and possible reply from the lady named Mrs. Hattie Telford attends the white lady. Dumile is sitting beside her. “She university conference and at the back to saw the nervous white of his eyes as he home, she meets and picks up four black men glanced at and away from her” (Comrades). in her car and takes them to her home. All are settled comfortably inside the car, They (black men) are hungry, so they are when Hattie is searching for talk to set them fed with good food by the white lady, which is at ease. “Older people always start with not the customary practice of the apartheid questioning young ones” (Comrades). As she society. started asking questions about to their The story ends up after the black people whereabouts. finish their lunch in the white lady’s house. It The black youngsters belong to the ends with a touching note that all are equal members of “Youth Congress in Phoneg. and true love will serve the humankind and Dumile, “The spokesman must have had some the same will solve the problems resulting silent communication with them…” from the apartheid system of racial (Comrades). In this situation he should speak discrimination. for them, and shared experience in the mysterious bonds of the youths. He started The Black Youngsters’ Unexpected Entry telling about their schooling. “They are not at Mrs. Hattie Telford, a white lady, came school; youngsters their age have not been at out of the University after the conference on school for several years, they are the children ‘People’s Education’. She was ready to go growing into young men and women for whom home by her car. Suddenly, “a group of school is a battle ground” (Comrades). The youngsters (Black) came up behind her. But black youths were not at school and they had no need to be afraid; this was not a city not been at school for many years. They street” (Comrades). This unexpected incident consider that school is a place for boycotts and begins to raise serious suspicions to Hattie at demonstrations. the moment. And she could not blame the The spokesperson, Dumile, says that the youths either. She knows, “This was non- black youths are very eager to study. But racial enclave of learning, a place where unfortunately they were detained from tended flowerbeds and trees bearing botanical studies. Here, according to the author, how identification plates civilized and dogs” the youth’s opportunity for getting educated (Comrades). Accordingly, the place is a non- was hindered in which they were forced to do racial enclave for learning only. On the other some other illegal activities. On hearing this, hand, the youngsters at the University who Hattie was really afraid that the black youths came for attending the conference were not might handle AK-47 instead of books. And provided their food. So, Hattie never also, they may operate explosive underneath misunderstands their sudden approach to her. the pubic vehicles. They dig small holes The representative of the conference through the bush to hide themselves. Dumile named Dumile, tells that the youths are said Hattie about a guy in their gang who really presented as hungry which suggest wanted to study by correspondence, and to get that they (Blacks) lack basic commodities in his matric that he was preparing for two contrast to the white rich lady’s house. The years ago; two years ago when he was still a Blacks came from Harrismith about two child. When he didn’t cut the hair that is now hundred kilometers distance away. They appearing on his face, making him a man, reached the University very late by bus. And taking away the childhood. 20 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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The Narrator’s Sympathy University campus. Different people The narrator, Hattie Telford, shows her happened to meet together in the common sympathetic attitude from the beginning place of education had only opened the gates itself. There is no doubt at all about it in of human love to bind as one. To the blacks, Comrades. The story illustrates the real love Hattie shows the true kind of friendship, love and affection to the Blacks. “As she was going and sympathy for the blacks, during the to feed the Blacks, she took them not into her Apartheid system, where the whites and living room with its sofa and flowers but into blacks are divided. Hattie becomes an her house, directly to the dining room, so they artificial lion by a Zimbabwean artist. But the could sit at table right away” (Comrades). She youths don’t express anything towards the assures them that she is harmless. On the deed of a Zimbabwean art or Hattie. For the other hand, the blacks also understand the blacks, the food just satisfied their hunger white lady and her friendly approach. She and that is real and practical. takes them to the dining room as they are very hungry. She realized that the blacks Conclusion were harmed by the white society. The blacks To sum up this paper, variations can’t create harm to whites, she presumes. prevalent among the Blacks and the Whites Hattie herself carried the heavy food tray in Europe and African countries, though they to the dining-room. The black youths are belong to one particular category called waiting round the table, seem to be like a ‘human being’ in Comrades by the narrator’s hungry tiger, silent, and there is no feeling role. The backs were overwhelmed by Hattie’s that they stopped an undertone exchange why hospitality in which she befriended a group of they heard Hattie approaching. “They stare at blacks and provided them food, hospitality the food but their eyes seem focused on love and kindness. Her sympathetic attitude something she can’t see; something that reveals real love and humanity irrespective of overwhelms” (Comrades). She herself offered color and complexion. sandwiches, cold meat, bread, and coffee to them. Whenever she tries to talk to them, but References there was only an exchange of eyes glance. 1. Gordimer, Nadine, and Norma West. The Because they were staring at the food only, as Lying Days. London: Royal National they were hungry. So, she provides them Institute of the Blind, 2006. Print. apples and bananas. At this moment, 2. Gordimer, Nadine. July’s People. London: according to the author, Hattie vividly shows Bloomsbury, 2006. Print. that love and concern could bridge the big gulf 3. Gordimer, Nadine. The House Gun. New made by racial prejudice. York: Picador, 2012. Print. When Hattie takes the blacks to her 4. “The Lying Days.” Encyclopedia dining room, seems to be an angel in the Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., disguise of a white woman who hates racial n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2018. conflicts in the society. Then she herself 5. “Burger’s Daughter by Nadine Gordimer.” served food to them by restraining the black PenguinRandomhouse.com. N.p., n.d. maid at her house without hurting the blacks’ Web. 22 Dec. 2017. feelings. The oppressed blacks can’t allow 6. “Nadine Gordimer.” Wikipedia. entering any white people’s house directly. Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Jan. 2018. Although the incident was happened to see in Web. 11 Jan. 2018. Comrades is unusual to find such friendship 7. “Category: Books by Nadine Gordimer.” in the apartheid system. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 07 In the beginning, Hattie, the conference Nov. 2017. Web. 13 Jan. 2018. representative and the Blacks met at the

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ETHNICITY AND IDENTITY IN MAHESH DATTANI’S THE TALE OF A MOTHER FEEDING A CHILD

Dr.K.Madhavarajan Assistant Professor of English, NMSS Vellaichamy Nadar College, Nagamalai Pudhukotai, Madurai

Introduction existence in the last decade of the twentieth Colonialism, the term and the genre, century. His plays deal with contemporary is the result of the imperialist expansion of issues. They are plays of today sometimes as Europe into the rest of the world during the actual as to cause controversy, but at the last four hundred years in which a dominant same time, they are plays, which embody center carried on a relationship of control and many of the classic concerns of world drama. influence over its colonies. This relationship Mahesh Dattani’s The Tale of a Mother tended to extend to social, pedagogical, Feeding a Child is a short play that was economic, political, and broadly cultural commissioned as a part of 2000 Tales, a series exchanges often with a hierarchical European marking the 600th anniversary of the death of settler class and local. Geoffrey Chaucer. The play was produced by Post-colonialism could be defined as a BBC Radio Drama and was broadcast across study of the effects of colonialism on cultures BBC Radio 3 and 4 in the last week of October and societies. It is concerned with how 2000. European nations conquered and controlled In The Tale of a Mother Feeding a Child, "Third World" cultures and how these groups Mahesh Dattani creates a character of an have since responded to and resisted those English woman, Anna Gosweb, who tells the encroachments. Post-colonialism, as both a story of her journey back to a village in India, body of theory and a study of political and where she had had an affair with a local man, cultural change, has gone and continues to go Jamman, twenty years earlier. Circumstances through three broad stages: harbor her in the drought stricken village,  An initial awareness of the social, where she resolves to save the man’s family. psychological, and cultural inferiority The play is in the form of monologue. It is enforced by being in a colonized state an extended narration of one single voice, the  The struggle for ethnic, cultural, and voice of Anna Gosweb. At the beginning of the political autonomy play, Anna receives a letter from Jamman  A growing awareness of cultural overlap Gopila from India. He asks for money. and hybridit Kapaswadi a village near Kapileshwar is his ‘Ethnicity’ a key term in postcolonial residence. The village is struck with draught studies is a fusion of traits that belong to a and famine. Jamman asks her money so that group–shared values, beliefs, norms, tastes, he could get some food and save himself and behaviors, experiences, memories, and his family. In his letter Jamman reasons that loyalties that are often deeply related to a God is partial. He does not have guts to abuse person’s identity. Mahesh Dattani’s dramas or blame Him. He says that God has favoured fit well into the genre and jargon of ethnicity. the rich and not the poor. His slavishness He uses his characters to expose the values makes him to faithfully say that God might and beliefs of certain sect of people, belonging give him better future. to different community or sometimes to The letter written in perfect English by different countries. Described as one of India's the postman reminds her of Jamman and her best and most serious contemporary first travel to India. Anna, as a foreigner, playwrights writing in English, Mahesh visited India when she was 19. She visits Goa Dattani is the first playwright in English to and she calls that as a ‘wild trip’ to paradise be awarded the Sahitya Akademi award. and ‘nirvana’. Something, to her, is exotic Mahesh Dattani and his plays came into fresh about the Indian culture and tradition. Either 22 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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everything about India, including Jamman, culture. She finds it a joke when Jamman excited her or she didn’t mind much about asks for her address. Her travel around the them. She does not care to understand country is been described as a ‘wild trip’. The Jamman, but she acknowledges that she culture of nirvana, an Indian way of attaining spent a wonderful time with him. She paradise, is been ridiculed by her in her undermines the Indian ethos. Jamman, the earlier trip. But for her second trip there is a Indian, protects her from hawkers and drugs. change in her attitude towards the culture of He takes utmost care of her during their Jamman. She not only respects it but travel. He acts as her local guide. He is said to empathizes with Jamman’s wife and more be handsome years before. Farming is his with his daughter, Shanti, than her own occupation. He often visits Goa to pay off his Jennifer. father’s debt. This act of Jamman thrills Anna Anna strips off her foreign identity and and she could not believe it. When they both becomes one with Jamman’s wife and aunt departed, Jamman asks for her address. She while mourning for him. She reconciles with thinks it as a joke but she writes her address her family. She identifies herself with in a napkin and parts with it. She does not Jamman’s family. She shows Jennifer’s care to ask his address in return. photograph to Shanti and Shanti calls her as After reading the letter Anna, without her sister. Everything about Anna is giving a second thought, prepares to visit intermingled with Jamman’s family with India and help Jamman’s family. She plans to Shanti’s act. Finally she helps Shanti by take Jennifer, a child born for her and taking her to the hospital for treatment, Jamman during their ‘just one night thing’, wherein she looses hold of Jennifer and her when she visited Goa. She draws 4000 pounds life. Anna considers Shanti as a part of her. from her bank and move to India alone Mahesh Dattani as a playwright with without Jennifer. limited scope in this monologue play explains She travels from Delhi to Gujarat in train. about the division within one’s own class of The air-conditioned coupe makes her feel people. He explains how Jamman’s wife walks comfortable from the outer world, which is about 3 miles to fetch a pot of water from a draught hit and hell like. She could literally well, which is not meant for low caste people see corpses thrown on the roads. The world like her. Anna fights with the bus driver and outside the train is like a burning furnace. a man from upper caste, when questioned She reaches Kapaswadi, Jamman’s village. about allocating a seat for Jamman’s wife. She parts with her water bottle to save a child She uses money as an answer to shut the suffering from dehydration. voices of discrimination. As a woman After her arrival at Jamman’s village, she Jamman’s wife at first disagrees and shuns at understands that Jamman is no more. He dies Anna. She thinks Anna as her rival who of draught. She feels helpless like any other shared her husband. Later Shanti unites Indian woman do after loosing her husband. them. When the play closes Anna leaves the Jamman’s aunt offers Anna some sugar family after playing with them and settling water, which strengthens her. Anna meets them in a good manner. Anna is said to be Jamman’s wife who accepts Anna after a speaking Hindi, which is ridiculed by stage of reluctance. Anna helps Shanti, Jamman’s wife and Shanti. Anna tries to Jamman’s daughter, to stay alive by carrying identify herself as an Indian during her her to the hospital in a bus. second visit. Jamman’s wife is not given a Ethnicity of different people are subtly name and this in fact announces the readers reflected by Mahesh Dattani in this that she is one with Anna. monologue. Anna comes from her country with her thoughts, which are superior to the Reference people’s thought and culture in India. She 1. Dattani, Mahesh. Collected Plays. New nonchalantly demeans the ethos of Indian Delhi: Penguin, 2000. Print.

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MARGINALIZED WOMEN CHARACTERS IN SELECT SHORT STORIES OF SHASHI DESHPANDE

Dr.J.Selva Malar Assistant Professor, Department of English, N.M.S.S. Vellaichamy Nadar College, Nagamalai Pudukotai, Madurai

Abstract It is a saga in itself to trace the empowerment of women writers and women writings in Indian literature and Indian literature in English. There had been a great struggle by them to achieve the current prominence and growth in Indian writing in English. Modern Indian women writers focus on the psyche of women from different strata of life and their never-ending existential struggle in their life. Woman’s struggle to find and preserve her identify as wife, mother and most important of all as a human being forms the major concern of Shashi Deshpande’s novels and short stories. Most of her short stories emphasize on the sufferings of marginalization of women, marginalized women in special. Every short story of hers has a menial women character in the form of a maid or passerby who teaches us, the readers, about the change that should take place in our society. This paper promises to analyse a few such women characters, who with their minimal and menial presence, exhibit the trauma of life in a powerful and succinct manner.

Introduction The present world has many hegemonic No man is an island and no writer can structures and behind these structures is write in a vacuum. Every human being needs some power. It may be family or caste or to interact with others in the process of religion or state. It also includes all realizing his or her potential. A writer also institutions that mediate the relation of needs a social background to realize his work people to people or people to their of art. Human beings have great potential and environment. The current Indian scenario for this abstract potentiality to become a presents a strange fusion of the traditional concrete reality, an environment is a must. and the modern. With new vistas or When a person is confronted with choices, it is experiences opening up, Indian writers have a in the act of making a particular choice that wide choice of subject matter for literary his or her character is revealed. Without an expressions. For some Indian writers, culture environment of people and places, there is no and society becomes the focal point and the choice to make, and as a result there is no protagonist’s life recedes to the background. development and revealing of one’s character. For others, society does not share the centre Literary presentation of this concrete stage with the characters. The latter type of realization of one’s potentiality therefore writers present man as a solitary being by necessitates a description of persons nature and who is unable to enter into any inhabiting a living and identifiable world. relationship with other human beings. He Human beings cannot be severed and may establish contact with other individuals distinguished from their social and historic but it is superficial first as the other environment. The significance and individuals are solitary and incapable of individuality of the characters created by the establishing significant human relationships. novelist cannot be separated from the context It has been a common phenomenon and in which they are created. Novels can also be feature among the Indian women writers in seen as sequence of events that are part of the English to lend a portion of their work of art social world, human life and historical to menial characters, especially maidservants. moments in which they are located and Shashi Deshpande is exception in depicting interpreted. such characters, paradoxically she does it

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exceptionally well that there is realism and maidservant says this with respectful expression of inability in almost all her admiration for her master. Saying so, she menial women characters. Her characters are moves to the bathroom with a pile of neither completely good nor evil but a crumpled clothes in her arms. The first lady combination of both kinds of qualities. In regrets for such a comment from a servant Deshpande’s literary world, there are maid and she utters the word “Toadies!” characters taken from almost all the sections “Can You Hear Silence?” is a short story of life. They are medical practitioners and that is been narrated in a child’s, Megha’s, writers, educated housewives, uneducated point of view. The story takes place in a rainy ones and maidservants. They form various day, wherein everyone around Megha’s house kinds of relationships among themselves. In enjoy holiday from official duties, but her her short stories, she attempts to reveal life father and mother goes out to earn. Their from different angles with an ultimate touch family is pushed to stay in a congested of realism. Besides poverty, bereavement and locality filled with clamorous sounds. Megha such other common adversities, there are is left with her siblings, two sisters, Rashmi some causes of suffering exclusively for and Chhaya. They regret being left alone at women. Deshpande renders with sympathetic home. They wait for their servant maid, understanding to the variety of suffering a Tarabai, who comes with an angry mood, woman has to undergo. Sometimes the cleans the utensils and washes the clothes suffering is attached to the social taboos and and goes off. These children play with their sometimes the women are silenced and are neighbours and gets home when their mother compelled to digest torture. returns. During night their mother shares “The First Lady” is a short story about a with them her past life, a life of silence, in her protagonist, who hails from a rich family, maternal house. The children are delighted falling in love with a young Gandhian patriot about the existence of such a house. The making extempore in public meetings. She mother longs for occupying such a house in marries him against her family’s wish, giving posterity. The children go to sleep. Megha up silk saris for simple khadhi wear. Later, faintly hears a quarrel between her mother she realizes the true colour of her husband, and father as she falls asleep. that he is not capable of loving another Tarabai, unlike many other menial human being. Being the first lady of a nation, women characters, comes to her master’s president’s wife, she could not have her love home late and at the time of their absence. and expectations fulfilled. The story begins She clangs the pots and pans with rage. She with the first lady being dolled up in silk sari is said to bang the clothes in a hurried for a function, which she very lately comes to fashion. She gives the kids the damp clothes know (through her assistant) as Independence and asks them put them in places they wish Day celebration. She is said to drape silk to. Her behavior is very rude. Even the because her husband is no more a Gandhian mother had warned her children not to patriot and showing his true colour and liking involve in any sort of verbal assault with for silk and posh life. Tarabai. Chhaya is said to be in good terms The first lady, at the beginning of this with Tarabai. She asks for the reason for her story, makes-up herself and walks out of the rude behavior. Tarabai blames the heavy room, ‘fit’ to present herself and her age in the downpour the previous night, which did not crowd, the gathering she is going to face. She let her sleep in peace. She also complains regrets to go to such parties. When she gets about her loathing son, drunken husband and out of a room, a maid-servant complements her daughter sneaking with boys. her saying “you look very nice”. The 25 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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“Anatomy of A Murder” is a story of its Shashi Deshpande that women are tutored to kind ever attempted by Shashi Deshpande. It feel happy as long as they agree to remain in opens with a climax. A dead body of woman is the periphery, satisfying the demands of men. found in a posh house and to our surprise, the The story closes with the reference to murderer is present along side the dead body. barbed wire fence that is being erected around He does not attempt to hide his crime or to Hema’s house for safety purposes. The maid’s evade from the spot. The police arrest him innocent remarks, “What is the use of barbed and they try to find the motive in that wire? They should have built a wall. It is murder. Shashi Deshpande gives a safer”, is pregnant with double meaning. The psychological insight of the murderer. This casual remark provokes Hema to reflect, story could be categorized into the school of “With a wall you can’t even see what’s on the absurd thoughts. The murderer kills her other side. But suppose the dangers are because she has once said sorry to him, from inside? What do you do then?” The closing the heart. She has given him due respect of a question compels the reader to ponder if it is human being, which nobody has done earlier safer for a woman to build a wall around in his life. He expects her to be a mother herself and be circumscribed or better to enjoy surrogate when he goes to her house to the untrammeled spirit of liberty without deliver provisions from the stationary shop in being restrictively anchored to familial which he works. The woman, who is responsibility. murdered, has a child and she occasionally In all the four short stories, under study, visits the shop to buy goods, where he works. there is a servant maid. One cannot reason He considers her as godly, who in turn, turns out their presence or their poignancy in the demonic to his affected psyche. stories. Most of Shashi Deshpande’s stories “The Wall is Safer”, an interesting story, have such women doing menial jobs in the juxtaposes a marginalized woman with proximity of the female lead. However, are another who is definitely in the center. Three they menial in their characterization or are women characters, Hema, wife of an they menial in the message they deliver? Agricultural Scientist, Sushma, an advocate Almost all the menial women characters and Sita the maid-servant are portrayed are subdued and morally diminished even by differently. Sushma is happy as a the lead women characters. Shashi professional, but Hema is self-exiled from her Deshpande’s lead women characters reveal work-world for the sake of her husband’s the marginalization of women. They portray career. Sometimes she is soothed by the quiet the uncertainties and doubts of women, who country life, but her sacrifice does not bring are not heroic themselves but want to make her satisfaction. Sushma tries to cull out her life possible. The menial women characters real feelings and obviously attempts to take are still treated in the style of Bhaka of Mulk Hema out of her self-inflicted inhibitions, but Raj Anand’s “The Untouchable”. she utterly fails. Sita, the maid’s plight is The maidservant in “The First Lady” is more serious. Her husband, Ramachandra, is been shunned by the protagonist with the nothing less than a scoundrel is. He has an word “toadies”. This is highly a derogatory extra-marital relationship with some other remark made on a woman who innocently and woman. positively remarks and admires about the A woman always has to adjust to the looks of her mistress, the first lady of the changing circumstances. Her triumphant nation. The first lady regrets throughout the assertion is consistently stifled; her identity is story for having chosen the wrong person as crushed or effaced by male-centric culture. An her life partner and she falls in love with eternal truth is being re-established by another man, whose thoughts and deeds are 26 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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seemingly convincing with her ideology of life. She raised her arm and scratched her Who is to recognize the feelings of this head. Perspiration had soaked her maidservant? Even a woman who is longing armpits and he could clearly see the dark and fighting against the odds of her life for a shadow inside. He looked away… ” better living is unable to recognize the The above quote is the Deshpande’s thought of another woman just because she is description of a woman from a lower stratum from lower strata of life.' of life. This description is unmindful of the Taking into consideration Tarabai from fact that the described is a woman and a “Can You Hear Silence?”, she is more a human. piteous character. Though her actions seems In “The Wall is Safer”, Hema makes fun of to be rude and eloquent her thoughts and Sita’s life with her freaky husband. She psyche is overwhelming with pang. She is not ridicules her life with her husband as a been considered as a human being, for that triangle rather than eternal. She feels sense, at all the walks of her life. Her comfortable in this story when she discusses drunkard husband, her loathing children (son Sita, otherwise she feels very awkward of her and daughter) and the feared mistress are not own existence. She strikes a comparison with ready to care for her pangs. The only person mythological Sita and Rama with her with whom she shares her distress is Chhaya, maidservant and her husband, Sita and the youngest daughter of the protagonist. Ramachandran. What is fun in this? A woman This adds to the pain. Is all her pain and feeling warm and comfortable in ridiculing angst worth a child’s response, for whom the another woman, just because she is menial whole world is a play thing. This is ridiculous. and inferior. In “Anatomy of a Murder”, the murderer Shashi Deshpande compares her women often strikes a comparison between the characters with women from an earlier angelic mother whom he kills with that of his generation as well as with the women from mother. He could never do that. The author the lower rungs in her stories. Through her herself fails in comparing them. The mother, representation of these women, she suggests from the posh area, is angelic when she comes that some of the older women and the lower with her kid. But the murderer’s mother, class women, although without freedom and when he goes home and sleeps without food in choice, are strong determined to make better spite of repeated emphasis from his mother, is their lives. The protagonists learn from these been portrayed in a derogatory way. Both are minor characters that it is they who have to mothers but there is partiality in their make life possible by standing up for portrayal. themselves and resisting oppression. By “When he entered their room, his mother portraying the minor characters and the was squatting in front of the kerosene protagonists together, especially in short stove…grunting like a pig, he thought stories, Shashi Deshpande seems to be dispassionately. Suddenly, he realized suggesting a reworking of the Indian idea of that that woman must have been as old as womanhood. Mostly her concern lies in his mother. He looked at her with a new human suffering. She does not give any awareness. She got up and walked to the readymade solutions in her novels. bed. Her large hips jiggled as she walked.

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THE FANGS OF CASTE SYSTEM IN ARUNDHATI ROY'S THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

Dr.K.Manju Kumari Assistant Professor of English, Nirmala College for Women, Coimbatore

Abstract Arundhati Roy portrays the complexities faced by these marginalised people and the fangs of caste system upon them in the Indian society. She strives to achieve a sense of identity for the suppressed by highlighting a major social evil, caste system through her work The God of Small Things. Velutha, a Paravan who grew up with Ammu, who belong to the high caste. Ammu married and divorced shoulders the responsibility to take care of her twin children. Ammu is neglected by her own family since she married a person of her choice and divorced which is against the culture and tradition. Gradually, she and her children gets fascinated towards Velutha, the untouchable who in return showers love and care, since he also felt the same passion. Inter-caste community love marriage was not accepted and so Ammu and Velutha were badly treated by all and Baby Kochamma in particular. She involves Velutha in a murder case and removes him forever and tortures Ammu for loving an untouchable. Many Dalits even today are victims for the fangs of caste system which claims their valuable lives. If humanity prevails in the heart of each individual and minds are put forth to bring change in our society treating the down trodden as equal then there won't be untouchables, Dalits and many more. The world will be a better place to live in. Keywords: down trodden, conflict, victims, community, identity.

Introduction The main aim and purpose of this movement The roots of the term 'Dalit' traces its was to fabricate a space for the Dalits who origin back to the Purusukta of Rig Veda with were suffering. Dalit literature began as a reference to the caste system. The hymn goes means to voice out the rights and equality of like, the Dalits in political, economic, religious and "Brahmnonasaya mukhamasit social concerns. Bahu rajanayah Yadvaishya The Dalit writers expressed their UruTadasayYadvaishya experiences in a realistic manner. They Padabhayam Sudro ajayat. (X90-12). explicit the discrimination that still prevails This gives a vivid view that Brahmna's today in certain parts of India. Writers like are born from the mouth of Lord Brahma, the Urmila Pawar, Sivakami.P, Bama Faustina Kshatriyas from his shoulders, the Vaisayas Susairaj and many more Dalit writers bring from his thighs and Sudras from his feet. the frustrations, humiliations, suppressions, Thus the Brahmna's were considered superior anguish of the marginalised sect of people . to the Sudras. They claimed that caste system There are another kind of writers who focus was God made and not manmade. Because of on a wide range of issues related to the levels such staunch beliefs the Sudras were of inequality, status among people, cultural considered as outcastes, down trodden, occupations, the economical, religious and polluted, untouchables, marginals and were psychological conditions of these suppressed exploited by the higher castes. society. These writers write from mere The Father of Dalit Movement, observation and creativity that prevails in the Dr.Babasaheh Ambedkar, rejected the beliefs society. One such writer is Arundhati Roy, of caste system being God made. Dr. best known for her novel The God of Small Ambedkar along with Mahatama Phule, Things (1997) which won the Man Booker initiated a political movement for the freedom Prize for Fiction. Roy brought the truth before and equality of Dalits which played a vital the world that untouchability is still existing role in shaping the spirit of Dalit literature. in the Twentieth century through her work 28 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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The God of Small Things which depicts the from England. Sophie's death which was cross- caste conflict. caused by the violent flow of the river was In the novel The God of Small Things, turned on to Velutha blaming him to be the Roy describes the intense cross -caste conflict cause of her death. This co-incident and that causes suffering and torturing, mashed framed story on Velutha was designed by between the divisions and sub-divisions of Baby Kochamma inorder to destroy Velutha. caste system especially through the character Thus Baby Kochamma's conspiracy to remove Velutha, a skilled carpenter, a person who can the untouchable was due to her absolute fix all machines in Pickle factory and above hatred towards him. all an untouchable. He is a Paravan who grew Velutha was totally innocent and ignorant up with Ammu, who belong to the high caste. over the things happens around him. Yet he Ammu ,a young girl neglected by her father was accused of the crime and all the touchable decides to select a man of her choice to marry in the village joined together to remove which was the first attempt to break the Velutha the untouchable forever. When the social barrier . Inter-caste community love Police was searching for him they found him marriage was not accepted and so Ammu was sleeping. Untouchables are treated badly treated by her own family members and inhumanly," They wake Velutha with their Baby Kochamma in particular. boots."(307) which shows they don't touch the Ammu could not enjoy the married life too untouchables directly but only by their boots. long as she realised her “marriage wrong Yet the crime was not proved only the charge man"(38) but it was too late because she gave but they brutally treated Velutha as a birth to twins Rachel and Estha. Yet, Ammu murderer. Velutha faces a lot of adversities in gets divorced and rejoins her parents in life. The way Velutha was beaten and Ayemenem situated in Kerala. She was tortured by the Police "Half an hour past looked down by all the members of her family midnight death come for him". (320) In such and the old lady, Baby Kochamma, an cross- caste association of love Velutha didn't Orthodox who hatefully says," A divorced force Ammu rather she willingly admitted it daughter had no position anywhere at to all. all"(45). So when Ammu and her twin Although hailing from a high caste children are not taken care of and looked Ammu's support and justification was not down by her own family, she and her children taken into consideration since she is now naturally gets fascinated towards Velutha, looked upon as an untouchable since loved an the untouchable who in return showers love untouchable. She has not done anything and care, since he also felt the same passion. wrong except to love a untouchable turns her Both Ammu and Him have forgotten the ban " to be an untouchable as well. Ammu and who should be loved, and how. And how Velutha had to pay high for their cross- caste much"(17). they have overthrown the imposed love, Velutha was killed and Ammu's family laws and followed their hearts desire. was scattered. Ammu and Velutha are victims Velutha's father was able to sense the of the callous caste system. Roy has rightly consequences and rushes to inform Baby put this issue by saying "Change is one thing. Kochamma where she spat on the elderly Acceptance is another" (279). The atrocities man's face in rage. She opposed the affair and difficulties Velutha faces reflects the mainly because it was with a paravan. Lady reality of the society the down trodden sect of Baby Kochamma decides to remove Velutha people undergo today. The disabilities faced forever. by Ammu shows how a high caste woman is Sophie, a young girl is the daughter of treated low just because her love is for a Ammu's brother Chako who has come to India Dalit. She loses her sense of identity and is 29 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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treated with hatred and scorn by all around culturally, they wouldn't remain her. Roy reflects the burning issues faced by untouchables. women and their own experiences like Ammu. The society Roy presents in the novel, The References God of Small Things is the domination of the 1. Chatterjee, Partha. "Caste and Subaltern high caste over the Dalits. Consciousness" Subaltern Studies VI: Writings on South Asian History and Summation Society. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Roy portrays the complexities faced by 1994. these marginalised people and the fangs of 2. Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things caste system upon them in the Indian society. New Delhi. India.1997. Arundhati Roy strives to achieve a sense of 3. Sharma, K.L. Caste and Class in India. identity for the suppressed by highlighting a New Delhi: Rewat Publications. 1994. major social evil, caste system through her 4. Zelliot, Eleanor. From Untouchable to work The God of Small Things. Yet, these Dalit: Essays on the Ambedkar Movement. fangs on the Dalits can be removed if the New Delhi: MAnohar.1992. Indian society accepts them socially and

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LOSE OF IDENTITY CRISIS IN JAISHREE MISRA’S A LOVE STORY OF MY SISTER

A.Muthu kali Assistant Professor of English, Sermathai Vasan College for women, Madurai

Abstract Jaishree Misra has joined the grouping number of women writers from India. A Love Story for my Sister (2015) is her eighth. Jaishree Misra is a prominent upcoming contemporary writer. Her debut novel A Love Story for my Sister was published in 2015. This novel deals with the problem of identity crisis in the protagonists of Margaret Wheeler and Tara Fernandez, lost their identity to their life. When they remind and recover to identity and both is death. Theme of identity crisis is discussed in this paper. Jaishree Misra used the new things Stockholm syndrome. She was the first writer on the Stockholm syndrome in Indian Writers.

Introduction Hariharan(195 Namita Gokhale(1956), Literature is the manifestation of human Arundhati Roy(1961), Bem Le Hunte (1964), emotions. Literature creates and recreates Amita Kanekar(1965), Anita Nair (1966), myths. Literature is nothing but a bundle of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Kiran memories. To put it simply, literature Desai(1971), Meena Alexander, Himani represents the culture and tradition of a Dalmia, Jhumpa Lahiri, etc. language or people. Literature is a record of Jaishree Misra is an Indian Women human life. M.K. Naik, in his book A History English novelist. She lives with her family in of Indian English Literature, defines “Indian Tiruvandrum, Kerala. JaishreeMisra is the English literature as literature written great-niece of the late Thakazhi Sivasnkara originally in English by authors Indian by Pillai, famous Malayalam writer and birth, ancestry or nationality” (M.K.Naik, Jnanpith award. An ancient promise is her p.12). The birth of Indian English Fiction first novel. Accidents like Love& Marriage begins with Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s (2001) is her second novel. Afterwards is her debut novel Rajmohan’s Wife. It was third novel. Rani (2007) is her fourth novel, published in book form only in 1935. From the Secrets and Lies (2009) is her fifth novel, sixties up to the end of the nineteenth Secrets and Sins (2010) is her sixth novel, century, stray novels by writers from the A Scandalous Secret (2011) is her seventh Bengal and Madras presidencies began to novel, A Love Story for my Sister (2015) is her appear interestingly there was an early eighth. appearance of women novelists. Jaishree Mishra focuses her attention on Indian women novelists have explored Stockholm syndrome in her latest novels A female subjectivity in order to establish an Love Story for My Sister. In 1857 rebellion identity that is not imposed by a patriarchate finds documentation aplenty in narrative a society. Some of the Indian Women novelists well as popular culture, especially the are Malati Vishram Bedekar (1905-2001), ‘Cawnpore Massacre’ survivors’ story. Amrita Pritam (1919-200 Mesheweta Devi Stockholm syndrome is a psychological term (1926-2016), Ajit Cour (1934), Anita Desai used to describe the paradoxical phenomenon (1937), Shashi Deshpande (1938) Bharati of the relationship that develops between a Mukherjee (1940), Chitra Mudgal (1944), captor and its hostage. In such a relationship, Manju Kapur (1948), Shobhaa De(1948), to the amazement of onlookers, the hostage Suchitra Bhattacharya(1950-2015), Gita expresses empathy and positive feelings

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towards their abusive captor, and often they wore the British soldiers under the leadership will display a desire to defend them. That is of General Wheeler, are not able to fight short defines of Stockholm syndrome. against the Indian rebels. As they are unable The novel is told from three perspectives- to withstand the rebel force, they remaining that of Pia, Margaret Wheeler and Tara. All survivors of the siege and desperately these three female characters contribute to a planning to escape from Kanpure to told narrative. A Love Story for My Sister in a Allahabad. Nana Sahib, the Maharaja of novel about Tara’s sister Pia Fernandez who Bithur wants to make is of this siege to is a young aspiring novelist. She investigates expand his territory beyond Bithur. He offers the curious story of Margaret who is one of them or safe passage from Kanpure to the first known ‘victims’ of Stockholm Allahabad. General Wheeler and other syndrome. Jaishree Misra attempts to write Britishers belief’s that Nana Sahib might up a binary narrative in A Love Story for My have instigated the mutiny in Cawnpore Sister. Margaret and Tara disappear at because have right- hand- man, an Muslim approximately the same age, only a hundred called- Azimullah has hated the British. and forty years apart in history. The most The novel is told from three perspectives- important to the story when is that both of that of Pia, Margaret Wheeler and Tara. All them suffer from the Stockholm syndrome. It these three female characters contribute to a is narrated by Pia, Tara Fernander’s younger told narrative. A Love Story for My Sister in a sister who is a writers fascinated very much novel about Tara’s sister Pia Fernandez who by the parallels the loves of Tara and is a young aspiring novelist. She investigates Margaret. Margaret Wheeler and Tara are the curious story of Margaret who is one of lost their identity by the Stockholm syndrome the first known ‘victims’ of Stockholm which is attached their psychology mind. syndrome. Jaishree Misra attempts to write Some psychological problems lost their up a binary narrative in A Love Story for My identity and struggled to recognition is Sister. Margaret and Tara disappear at ordinary life but in deep it creates greatest approximately the same age, only a hundred impact upon personality. and forty years apart in history. The most In this novel A love story for my Sister important to the story when is that both of gives a clear pictures about the protagonists them suffer from the Stockholm syndrome. It are Margaret Wheeler and Tara who is narrated by Pia, Tara Fernander’s younger struggles to recover their identity, their also sister who is a writers fascinated very much faces the psychological problems and survival by the parallels the loves of Tara and to their life. Margaret. Eighteen years old Margaret is the Eighteen years old Margaret is the daughter of General Wheeler. General daughter of General Wheeler. General Wheeler is very popular among his troops Wheeler is very popular among his troops because he has married a woman who is half because he has married a woman who is half Hindu. Hence, Margaret has mailed Hindu. Hence, Margaret has mailed parentage as she has a Eurasian mother and parentage as she has a Eurasian mother and an English father. There are troubles at an English father. There are troubles at Berhampore and Meerut. There are also Berhampore and Meerut. There are also incredible mass killings of Europeans. A fight incredible mass killings of Europeans. A fight between General Wheeler’s troops and the between General Wheeler’s troops and the rebels has been going for ten years. Thousand rebels has been going for ten years. Thousand people render homeland and have to stay in people render homeland and have to stay in the camp. The situation in kanpure is getting the camp. The situation in kanpure is getting 32 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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wore the British soldiers under the leadership travel with him. He makes her look like an of General Wheeler, are not able to fight Indian woman. He experiences his desire to against the Indian rebels. As they are unable marry her. He clears her doubt that he is not to withstand the rebel force, they remaining looking for a concubine but for a life partner. survivors of the siege and desperately Having cleared off all of her suspicion, planning to escape from Kanpure to Margaret puts her hand on Nizam’s arm. She Allahabad. Nana Sahib, the Maharaja of cannot bring herself to speak the word but the Bithur wants to make is of this siege to way in which she expirees her love he expand his territory beyond Bithur. He offers understand that she has agreed to become his them or safe passage from Kanpure to wife. Margaret has become mehrunissa Allahabad. General Wheeler and other Begum. After reaching Peshawar, She starts Britishers belief’s that Nana Sahib might living the life of a Muslim wife. She is an have instigated the mutiny in Cawnpore Englishwoman but refuses to go back to her because have right- hand- man, an Muslim people and coverts to Islam to many a called- Azimullah has hated the British. Muslim, her captor Nizam Ali khan. Hers’ is a In 1857- Eighteen year old Margaret story case for Stockholm syndrome. Also Wheeler, daughter of General Hugh Wheeler, Margaret lost her religious identity, is kidnapped during the uprising. Margaret languages identity and traditional identity, gradually, slowly but steadily falls a victim of when she was recalled her identity when she Stockholm syndrome. She cannot help died. starting to feel less fear of him and Len Like Margaret Wheeler, Tara, Pia’s elder abhorrence. Even through her anguish, she sister, also falls a prey to ‘Stockholm recognizes that Nazism’s traumatized traction Syndrome’ Pia is a young aspiring novelist. to the massacre of the captive Englishwomen Tara is eighteen year old to Delhi school girl. indicated that he has not been involved. He She is very beautiful. Tara is an independence cannot have been dissembling while so school going girl. She usually hates anything grievously lamenting the killing of innocents that corals she freedom. There has been one by these but hers. As she no longer hater him, positive effect of exam stress that is “her she never hesitates to ask him a favorer of fantastic weight drop from a positively finding her two oldest brothers-George chunky fifty eight miles to fifty-four. Most of wheeler and Patrick Wheeler- who are in her climates are complaining about the Bombay Presidency. Nazism promises her to reverse problem because of the increased do her best to find them if they are alive. amounts of inactivity so Tara feels very lucky Then she thinks about her two oldest brothers to have gone the other way. Then they drive who have both left home at sateen to join the on, joining the traffic on Hauz Rani Read as East India Company’s army. She does not they make their way to Delhi High school know they are alive or not she wonders’ at her where both Tara and Neel study. Tara a river willingness to lodge so much faith in Niam, in her class a few minutes late and seltzer her captor. herself met her best friend Bela Shah. The growing infrequence of Nizam’s Tara is realistic chough to know that she outings from the hut her made it clear that he is very unwieldy to get the requisite grades. is now disillusioned with the rebellion. When Tara leaves the school building for Perhaps he is also tiring of having to play some fresh air, she notices a Marativam jailer to her. Margaret is now more willing to parked by the wire fence surrounding the believes his earlier protestations chief of her basketball court. The van is in a universal been for her own safety. Nizam is very happy grey colour. It looks only similar to they have became Margaret has expended her desire to been bleaching their driveway back at home 33 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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that morning. Before stowing away Tara has school building herself that evening. Bela has had an uneasy feeling. After her math’s made up with Ride. Neel is staying back for excreta clam later that evening, Tara leaves band proactive. It is only five o’ clock. It is the school gate with her best friend Bela and ready getting dark. As there is nothing to do her brother kneel who, she cannot help and now here to go in dull old Malviy a wagar observing, stays backend accompanies her market, except for Lazeez Goffee shop & Ice home only when Bele is around. He should cream parlour, Tara is heading towards her really be ashamed at fancying a girl to much home alone. She starts to trudge down the older than himself and his older sister’s best road, avoiding eleven and scooter, all of whom friend too Tara vows to have a word with him are fettling for space at the edge of the busy once they are home. main road. It is still bitterly cold but at least The school souses have all left for the day it is not raining any more. She passes the big, and so the three makes their way to the bun now hotel and then God’s precision shore she stop down Geeknjali Roof, all swaddle in their is last in her thought. She walks to the bus jackets and mufflers to guard against the stop. Still entertaining of whether to walk freezing evening. Tara has again noticed that home or not. Like he stops, the bus stop too is the grey van is still outside the school and she crowded with thirteen- year’s odds pushing casts a quick gland into it pass by. She is very and shoving each other and generally close enough now to see through the front to behaving systemically. The noise will be windshield that it is empty and the vaguely unbearable once they are all abroad a bus. troubled sudation she has experienced earlier Beside, coal buses have the goo –awful stinky dissipates away. Eaam anxiety might mares air in the winter months. So Tara makes a sure does her a crazy of affecting the mind. snap desertion to walk home. Tara has lots of boys’ crazy about her, but Tara turns of malviya Magar Road at the for some reason she is not sure of, none of chuckwalla its coroner and approached the them seem too keen to pursue her seriously. open stretch flanged by and abandonee Bela tells her why they are after her. She construction site on one side and high walls sometimes wears that freighter all the boys on the other. The noise of the traffic recedes off. But Tara does not get convince by that she as she walks on, and everything starts to looks out of the window and notices the creepy become a lot more peaceful. She looks up the grey Maruti van is back, packed on the other empty road, whishing she has stayed and side of the colony wall and nearly hidden from taken the bus. Home is a long seen minutes view unlink one is looking out forint. It had down that road. The novelist vividly describes not been there when she and Neel had walked how Tara’s has been kidnapped. Also she has back home from the spry yesterday morning. kidnapped from in Delhi school. The kidnaper But now it is here, hear where it was parked name is Himal. She lost her religious, yesterday morning when her mother had first language and traditional identity and she spotted it. Tara peers at the vehicle more recalled her identity when she was died. closely but cannot fell if it is occupied. There The combination of Stockholm syndrome is surely some really simple explanation for and cognitive dissonance produces a victim why she beeps secure the same van Tara who firmly believes the relationship is not resolves to get her mother to check out where only acceptable, but also desperately needed van it was angry. for their survival. The victim feels they would As usual Tara’s school day is traumatic mentally collapse if the relationship ended. even drama, the only subject she has activity The relationship now decided their level of enjoyed of a school has look its glass today- self esteem, self worth, and emotional health. feeling rottenly downcast, Tara leaves the Importantly, both Stockholm syndrome and 34 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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cognitive dissonance develop on an work and can’t be fixed, they will need our involuntary basis. The victim does not support as we patiently await their decision to purposely invent this attitude. Both develop return to health and positive lifestyle. as an attempt to exist and survive in a threatening and controlling environment and References relationship. They are typing to survive. Their 1. Kali,Muthu. The Stockholm Syndrome in personality is developing the feeling and Jaishree Misra’s “A Love Story for my thoughts needs to survive the situation and Sister”. Virudhunagar:V.H.N.S.N.College. lower their emotional and physical risks. All 2017. Print.(Dissartation) of us have developed attitudes and feelings 2. Naik, M.K. Studies in Indian English that help us accept and our life. The victim is Literature. New Delhi: Sterling, engaged in an attempt to survive and make a 1987.Print. relationship work. Once they decide it doesn’t

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QUEST FOR IDENTITY IN THE NOVEL OF ARUN JOSHI: THE FOREIGNER

MS.P.Shanmugapreethi Assistant Professor of English, N.M.S. Sermathai Vasan College for Women, Madurai

Introduction It is the backdrop of the West where the Arun Joshi deals with various fictional formative part of the novel develops and the themes as alienation and involvement, east- latter phase in Indian background brings in west encounter and compromise, acculturation at the end.In his first novel, The existentialism and materialism, and quest Foreigner, Arun Joshi explores the and complacence. In his novels, he delineates individual's agonized consciousness of being the spiritual agony of his lonely questers. isolated from thewhole instruments of social They are absolutely puzzled fellows restlessly convention and ritual. It is Sindi's mixed searching for their roots and trying to know parentage and early life which made him the the purpose of their existence on this planet. ideal 'foreigner'. He is born in Kenya, of a A deep study of the novel of Arun Joshi that is Kenyan- Indian father and an English The Foreigner, reveal that the central mother. His parents died in an air crash near experience of his fiction is crisis and quest his Cairo when he was just four years old. He is leit motif. Dealing with Sindi's journey from brought up by his uncle in Kenya who, too, detachment from the world to his involvement dies soon, leaving Sindi unanchored. When in it in The Foreigner, the novelist depicts his uncle was alive, he felt some kind of Sindi's anguish resulting from his loneliness security, but the death of his uncle wastes and his so-called rootlessness. Sindi is a born away every sense.He is completely broken and foreigner who is trying to detach himself from anchorless. He is denied of parental love and the world. He makes relationship with a affection in his childhood. He cannot recall number of women but with June he is brought any idea of his parents and the warmth face to face with his hypocrisy, cowardice, received from them. When Mr. Khemka vanity and stupidity. The deaths of June and enquiring about his parents' death, he Babu deepen his sense of alienation, but they answers with a sting of irony: also act as a peripetia. He comes to India in "For the hundredth time I related the search of his identity. Throughout his quest story of those strangers whose only reality for self realization Sindi experiences pains was a couple of wrinkled andcracked and finally he feels his soul to be coming out photographs." renewed and purified. He comes to know the Sindi cannot receive any emotional purpose of his existence on this planet. He involvement with the milieu of his racial realizes the real meaning of the detachment origin.He is a born foreigner, grown up theory as depicted in The Gita that without a family ties and without a country detachment means not renunciation but and alienated from all humanity. selfless action. The novel, in its final Parentlessness has its manifold implications implication is a bitter indictment of both- in the different facets of his life, like his Sindi's alienation and his distorted concept of religion and his love for June Blyth. Sindi's detachment. case is a typical representation of this state of The Foreigner, the very first novel of anomie. He is an anomic man, responsible to Arun Joshi, is "one of the most compelling no one, having no morality, no ambitions, and existentialist works of Indian fiction.” It deals no purpose in life. He is completely separated with cross cultures and East-West encounter. from the whole set-up of society. Sindi's

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anguish is the manifestation of spiritual crisis him how to live. He is keen to know the faced by the sensitive people. The lack of root meaning of his life. Consequently, he gets an and morality system causes this spiritual evening job as a dishwasher in a nightclub in crisis. While discussing with June, in a very Soho. This job he accepts not for earning touching way, he expresses a peculiar sense of money, but, for the sake of getting an utterly parental void: new experience. He works there for three "I only know what it is not to have a months and after that, he is transferred to the father: I don't know howit would have been if bar where one night he meets Anna, a woman I had one.” of about thirty five with dark hair and finely Sindi feels himself unanchored and his chiseled features. She is a minor artist who life without any purpose. He has no settled had separated from her husband. He makes a aim in life. Every now and then, he gets brief affair, which lasts for six months and nervous and ill at ease. He admits: comes to know, in due course, that Anna was "Talking about myself always makes me not yearning for me or anybody, but for her ill at ease." lost youth. Sindi has no system of morality. For him, A new chapter is added in his life when he there is no difference between morality and meets June Blyth, a beautiful, benign, immorality. One day while discussing with sensual, loving American girl at a foreign him Sheila comments on June with an air of students' party. June is free, candid, natural stubborn finality that she was not virtuous as and benevolent, with a Christ in her heart she was not virgin. He gets surprised at her craving to be of help to someone. Sindi falls in use of the word "virgin" and very daringly, he love with her. She gives him everything she asks, "Is that all?” When she nods, he laughs has as "she wanted to be of use to someone". and asks, mocking at the sex-centred attitude Her feeling for Sindi is more than a mere of morality, "So you think one of these sexual indulgence. Time without number she Marwari girls is really superior merely requests him to marry her: "Let's get married. because of a silly membrane between her Sindi. For God's sake. Let’s get married."But legs?"A person as alienated and anomic as Sindi, an "anomic", emotionally sterile, Sindi Oberoi is certain to become cynical, responsible to no one. He says no to marriage thwarted, baffled and detached. Many of other because he does not believe in marriage and characters of the novel point out that Sindi is thinks it is another name for possession, a perfect cynic. Babu Rao Khemka, his friend which stops a person to attain detachment. and a student at Boston, writes to his sister Moreover, he considers himself detached from Sheila that Sindi is "terribly cynical". Sindi's world and that is why he does not find himself life takes him from Kenya to London, and the right person for marriage. He betrays thereafter to Boston, and ultimately to New himself with the idea that he has evolved the Delhi. The different experiences he undergoes spirit of "detachment". Sindi's cold exemplify his dilemma of sociological "detachment” alienates June and it paves the rootlessness and its further deepening into way for her to go to Babu Rao Khemka who "ontological insecurity” of "psychotic loves her with a doglike devotion. He offers engulfment”. When he was in Kenya, he felt her everything that she needs. Babu Rao is an restless and even contemplated suicide "since innocent, naive and childlike character. His I was tired of living."To try his luck roots lie in Indian soil. His values are middle somewhere else, he moves towards London. class values that are refrained in the There too he does not fit in and feels the same glistening life style of the West. To him, weariness and lassitude. In London, he is not America is a dreamland of free sex and there satisfied with his education as it fails to teach 37 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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is no good of coming to America if one is not to does not want to get "involved” in any play around with girls. relationship. He always tries "to remain June, different from Sindi and Babu, is a detached under the circumstances." Though complex character. She swings between Sindi he refuses her proposal of marriage, yet he Oberoi and Babu Rao Khemka. She loves does not want to lose her and thinks she will Sindi deeply and has sex with him. Time and never leave him for anyone, not at least for again she requests him to marry her but his Babu. Though he wants to possess her, yet he cold detachment estranges her and paves the does not wish to take her responsibility. It way for her to welcome Babu in her life. It is shows that his conception that he is detached apparent in the following lines from a is just an illusion. Here Sindi is wrong. It is dialogue between sindi and June that brings not surprising that after his refusal she is about her penetrating study of Sindi and attracted towards Babu. Sindi's philosophy of Babu and her crucial follow up action detachment estranges June and makes her supported by reasoning. June takes decision close to Babu who badly needs her. June gets out of her practical wisdom. She actually loves engaged to Babu. Sindi is envious of him and Sindi. Her love for Babu is simply a stopgap is equally envious of June for deserting him arrangement. It is only on contract basis. She for Babu. Though, he wishes to possess her feels herself in dilemma. She is truly devoted yet he does not do so because he does not find to Sindi, but he does not give her any himself strong enough to possess her. Now favorable response. On the other hand, Babu June starts to avoid him. depends so much upon her that it is really Thus, we find Sindi making love to excruciating for her to deny love to him. Her several women —Anna, Kathy, Judy, personality is torn from within. She tries to Christine, and June in the name of relax herself through lovemaking with Sindi. “detachment". His self-developed philosophy When June comes to know that she is of detachment alienates June from him and pregnant by Babu and he is no more alive, she paves the way for her to go to Babu and thus feels completely disappointed. She undergoes brings him face to face with his hypocrisy, an operation for abortion, which causes her cowardice, anxiety, envy and absurdity. death. Sindi feels himself responsible for the June's tragic death during the operation for death of both Babu and June. Both Babu and abortion makes him agitated, anomic and June are victims of Sindi's detachment. His anxious. Her death works as a tragic philosophy of detachment had led to the "peripeteia" and brings about a sudden tragedy of Babu and June. When Babu comes change of fortune making him understand the to know about the physical relation between real meaning of detachment: "Detachment at June and Sindi, he commits suicide. His that time had meant inaction. Now I had Indian morality is hurt. His death symbolizes begun to see the fallacy in it. The gods had set the devastation of oriental innocence in the a heavy price to teach me just that." Thus, eerie ways of the Western world. Sindi Sindi comes to learn by bitter experiences the involves physically with June in the name of true meaning of detachment that "detachment detachment. He makes love in a detached consisted of right action and not escape from manner. it.” Sindi's refusal of June's proposal of The protagonist Sindi is a person in marriage heightens the absurdity of human disguise. He has been undergoing situation and is proved absurd in line with reformation. He has been experiencing a the heroes of existentialist writers like Sartre, death like situation and a new man is coming Camus, Ionesco, Pinter and a few others. He out from him. He has in mind two places to refuses June's offer of marriage because he go, either India or Nigeria. He comes to India 38 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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hoping to find "a place to anchor in this lonely difficulties of life. He has the capability of planet”, but his desire is not fulfilled. He finds improving himself. He improves and saves India no better than America. His experiment himself from total destruction. Every incident with the self and existentialist quest does in the novel, whether it is breach of trust in nothing but add to his loneliness and love and friendship or downfall of Khemka's meaninglessness of life. A turning point business, contributes to his wisdom. In this comes in Sindi's life when Mr. Khemka is novel, Arun Joshi presents the conception of imprisoned on playing fraud with income tax "foreignness" before the reader. The accounts. Hedecides to seek the job in Bombay protagonist Sindi Oberoi suffers from but Muthu, a low paid worker of the Khemka insecurity, remoteness, alienation and Industries, persuades him, on the behalfof all rootlessness. It fills him with the sense of workers, to take over the management of metaphysical agony at the absurdity and Khemka Industries and save them from purposelessness of the human condition. Arun starvation. The social and cultural milieu of Joshi has handled these concepts of the East is different from that of the West. existentialism very tactfully. Nowhere one Though, Sindi makes love with several girls can find the overdose philosophy in the whole and gains "experience" of lovemaking but novel. There is a flow in the narrative which never gets involved with any one of them in arrests our attention throughout the novel. G. marriage. A. Ghanshyam UshaIyengar rightly Arun Joshi seems to contradict the remarks:“The Foreigner enshrines strong American way of life. June, representative of affirmations: right detachment and American culture and tradition, is habitual of meaningful action, confrontation with evil free sex life of America. She does not find any and corruption, humanitarianism and love of wrong in physical relationship before the people, faith in the operation of destiny marriage. But Babu, an Indian by heart, and quest for peace, fulfillment and salvation cannot accept it and when June tells him within one’s own cultural parameter…. The about her pre-marital relation with Sindi, he Foreigner demonstrates that the war against gets shocked and burst out in anger. He calls evil and inaction is never over and its fields her a "whore", hits her in the face, goes out never quiet. It records the spirited odyssey of and drives off blindly in his car to his tragic a confused individual from a withdrawal from end by committing suicide. She too dies later. life to a return to and participation in it.” When she comes to know herself pregnant by References Babu and he being no more alive, she gets 1. G.A. Ghanshyam & Usha Iyengar. Arun utterly frustrated and dies during the course Joshi's The Foreigner: A Spiritual of an operation for abortion. In this way, Arun Odyssey, Indian English Literature, Joshi deplores the American system of life Vol III, (ed) BasavarajNaikar (Atlantic represented by June and the unaware and Publishers & Distributors, 2002), p. 147. conservative Indian system of life represented 2. O.P. Bhatnagar. "Arun Joshi's The by Babu. Foreigner", The Journal of Indian Writing In a novel, the character of the in English, 1, No. 2 (July 1973), p. 13. protagonist undergoes changes with the 3. R.K. Dhawan (ed), The Novels of Arun proceeding of the novel. Robert Scholes Joshi (New Delhi, Prestige Books, 1992), opines: "Fiction is movement.”A moral p. 141. upliftment is clearly seen in Sindi. Previously Thakur Guruprasad. "The Lost Lonely he behaves like a lusty beast but eventually Questers of Arun Joshi's Fiction" (ed] R.K. he becomes a humble man who is essentially Dhawan, The Fictional World of Arun human and is eager to learn lessons from the Joshi, p.157. 39 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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THE ASPECTS OF INDIAN DIASPORIC WOMANISM IN THE SELECTED WORKS OF JHUMPA LAHIRI

Dr.N.Priyadarshini Associate Professor in English, Pollachi Institute of Engineering and Technology

Abstract The present paper aims at identifying the aspects of Indian diasporic womanism in the selected works of Jhumpa Lahiri, a Bengali-American woman writer. It borrows the term “womanism” from Alice Walker and focuses on the three key aspects of womanism: feminism, womanhood and motherhood. The study analyses the three major works of Jhumpa Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies, a collection of nine short stories, which got her the Pulitzer Prize,The Namesake, a novel, which was made into a film, and the Unaccustomed Earth, a collection of eight short stories, which won her the Frank O’ Conner Prize, and identifies an impressive number of contexts to illustrate each aspect of Indian diasporic womanism. The study defines Indian diasporic womanism as a composite of feminism, womanhood and motherhood of the immigrant Indian women. It highlights the shades of each key aspect such as double marginalization, patriarchal dominance, ideological pressures, gender inequality, gender discrimination, power relations, sexism, stereotyping, emancipation, sexuality, sacrifice, tolerance, acceptance, social and psychic pressures, forgiveness, courage, protection, possessiveness, love and care, understanding and tension, passive sufferings, displacement, discontinuity, migration, adaptation, transformation, reinvention, cultural resilience, and diasporic consumption, with reference to the selected works of Jhumpa Lahiri. The pattern of analysis followed is that the stories of The Interpreter of Maladies and The Unaccustomed Earth are presented first, and then the shades of the three key aspects which include double marginalization, patriarchal dominance, ideological pressures, gender inequality, gender discrimination, power relations, sexism, stereotyping, emancipation, sexuality, sacrifice, tolerance, acceptance, social and psychic pressures, forgiveness, courage, protection, possessiveness, love and care, understanding and tension, or passive sufferings, if any, are identified and explained. All the stories presents the common, recurring shades found in aspects of the Indian diasporic womanism, and proves how these three works bring out the gamut of immigrant experience, especially of Indian women.

Introduction womanism as a composite of feminism, The present paper aims at identifying the womanhood and motherhood of the immigrant aspects of Indian diasporic womanism in the Indian women. It highlights the shades of each selected works of Jhumpa Lahiri, a Bengali- key aspect such as double marginalization, American woman writer. It borrows the term patriarchal dominance, ideological pressures, “womanism” from Alice Walker and focuses on gender inequality, gender discrimination, power the three key aspects of womanism: feminism, relations, sexism, stereotyping, emancipation, womanhood and motherhood. The study sexuality, sacrifice, tolerance, acceptance, social analyses the three major works of Jhumpa and psychic pressures, forgiveness, courage, Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies, a protection, possessiveness, love and care, collection of nine short stories, which got her understanding and tension, passive sufferings, the Pulitzer Prize, The Namesake, a novel, displacement, discontinuity, migration, which was made into a film, and the adaptation, transformation, reinvention, Unaccustomed Earth, a collection of eight cultural resilience, and diasporic consumption, short stories, which won her the Frank O’ with reference to the selected works of Jhumpa Conner Prize, and identifies an impressive Lahiri. number of contexts to illustrate each aspect of Indian English literature has become one Indian diasporic womanism. of the most powerful and characteristic modes The study defines Indian diasporic of expression. The writers like Kamala

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Markandaya, Anita Desai, Ruth fragmentation, marginalization and discontinuity PrawerJhabwala, Bharati Mukherjee, Shobha in the cultural discourse. Diasporic De and Arundhati Roy capture the Indian Communities establish new and different experiences skillfully in their own but relations without losing their attachment to different styles. The English language has cultural roots, which is their major attained a refinement in their effortless usage. characteristic. These postcolonial women writers project the Jhumpa Lahiri fits neatly into the new age dreams and desires of Indian women who have of East Indian writers of fiction which includes acquired fame and become dominant in the Arundhathi Roy and Pankaj Mishra who postcolonial India through their literary feat. break free from Rushdie’s magical realism and The tradition of Indian writing has embrace truth. These diasporic writers give travelled a long way from the writers such as expression to their creative urge and express Rabindranath Tagore and Vijayalakshmi their longing for their motherland by Pandit to Shashi Deshpande, Sunetra Gupta, portraying an objective picture of Indian Jhumpa Lahiri and Rupa Bajwa. It has society. The works of these writers crossed many stages of evolution from consistently revolve around people who are nationalism, socialism, humanism, and caught in the act of juggling with multiple feminism to a totally new area called cultures. Jhumpa Lahiri is a significant writer “Diaspora Writing.” The word “diaspora” is of Indian diaspora who has enriched the corpus derived from the Greek term “disperian”. ‘Dia’ of international writing in English. Lahiri being means ‘across’ and ‘sperian’ means ‘to sow or an Indian by ancestry, British by birth and scatter seeds’. The term ‘diaspora’ now refers American by immigration has imbibed the to displaced communities who have been multi cultural life style and this life style plays dislocated from their homeland through a central theme in many of her stories. migration or immigration or exile. “Diaspora” is Lahiri’s debut collection, Interpreter of used as an umbrella term to refer to all such Maladies (1999) is a collection of nine short movements and dislocations from the native stories, reflecting different South Asian country or culture. Since being diasporic is a Communities. She received the Pulitzer for the matter of personal choice, the journey of life collection in April 2000. Her title story becomes an exploration of individuals’ sense of “Interpreter of Maladies” was selected for the ‘self’ and a quest for the liberations of the O’ Henry Award and for the Best American human spirit. Short Stories. Lahiri depicts Indianness in an Diaspora highlights the multiple unusual foreign setting stuffed with Indian standpoints born out of migration and exile. It characters, food, costumes and habits. Her illuminates an ambivalent politics of positioning fiction is more reality than fancy weaving her and being positioned, of identification and being characters admirably with a suppleness of a identified, and a politics antithetical to ethnic matured writer. This collection of short stories and cultural essentialism. Displacement compels addresses sensitive dilemmas in the lives of the unpredictable and imaginative occupation of Indians or Indian migrants, with the themes culture and identity and generates vibrant such as marital difficulties, miscarriages, and and creative ways of expressing these in the disconnection between the first and the cultural production. Diasporians live as a second U.S. immigrants. community together in the new country but Lahiri’s second collection of short stories acknowledge that the language, religion, and third book, The Unaccustomed Earth, custom and culture of the old country have a comprises of eight stories continuing her legitimate claim over their loyalty. These introspection of expatriate immigrant emotions make them experience displacement, Bengalis. Here she deals more with the second 41 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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generation immigrants where some of the the materialistic progress, it can also nurture characters break the rules while some other them mentally and they can find relationship returns to familiar grounds. She also clearly and beauty in unexpected places. All her explores the cultural issues and differences stories presents the common, recurring shades between the American born second generation found in aspects of the Indian diasporic Indians and their parents, who migrated to womanism, and proves how the works bring the U.S. in the 70's and 80's. Lahiri clearly out the gamut of immigrant experience, shows how feminism as an established especially of Indian women. movement focused on cultural inequalities, reproductive rights and social disparities. References However, she prefers the term “womanism” 1. Agarwal, Sunita. “Changing perspectives coined by Alice Walker to “feminism” since it of Diaspora: Jhumpa Lahiri’s is more inclusive of all aspects concerning the Unaccustomed Earth”. The Vedic Path. life of a woman. July-Dec 2009. Print. 13. Though the characters in her short stories 2. Alexander-Floyd and Simien 2006 are not entirely developed, the women she N.pag.web. 24 June 2014. writes about are relatable and realistic. Her . most authors cannot capture, but her writing 3. Anand, Pradeep. The Indian Diaspora and style allows for difficult topics of conversation an Indian in Cowboy Country. Harvard such as miscarriages, divorce, immigration University. 2007. and cultural identity crises. She examines Web. . actions of women. She is able to depict clashing 4. Boisnier. Womanism and Feminism. 2003: cultures and their fusion beautifully from a 212. Web. 25Aug 2014. womanist standpoint. The overarching themes http://Shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in:8080/jsp of motherhood and personal discovery in ui/bitstream/10603/51443/6/06/. Lahiri’s writing, combined with her 5. Hall, Stuart. Cultural identity and observations regarding the dichotomies diaspora. In: Rutherford J. (Ed.).Identity, between American and Bengali lifestyles shed community, culture, difference. London: light on the intersections of humanity and Lawrence and Wishart, 1993. Print. 222- womanhood across societies. 235 Lahiri takes up a broader perspective and 6. Lahiri, Jhumpa Interpreter of Maladies. exhorts diasporic people to make an effort to New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers locate themselves in an alien land and the India Pvt.1999. Print. results will certainly be favorable. Lahiri 7. --- Unaccustomed Earth. London: seems to suggest that human nature may Bloomsbury, 2008.Print. atrophy if people continue to toil in the same 8. McLeod, John. Beginning Post colonialism. worn out soil. There is a need for a change in New York: Manchester University Press. the perspective of diasporic community 2000. Print. 192-211. towards the host culture. The adoption and 9. Paranjape, M. Indian Diaspora: Theories, acculturation can solve many problems of Text, Histories. Ed. Delhi: Indian log these people. The alien soil is not only a way for Publication Pvt. Ltd. 2001. Print. 163.

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PRIMITIVISM VS MATERIALISM IN ARUN JOSHI’S THE STRANGE CASE OF BILLY BISWAS

Dr.N.Meenakshi Assistant Professor of English, M.V.Muthiah Government Arts College (W), Dindigul

Abstract The modern man has been under the vicious impact of industrialization. The advancement in the field of science and technology came as a boon to him so that he could lead a comfortable life. Due to the catastrophic impact of the technological revolutions, he finds his life void. In the modern society, he gets depressed and he undergoes deep personality crises. The hunan values prevalent in the ancient civilization like honesty, tolerance, patience and innocence have gradually degraded in the modern civilization. The selfish modern man is deprived of human values. Billy Biswas in Arun Joshi’s second novel, “ The Strange Case of Billy Biswas” is a pagan who has a tribal personality by taste and an urbanized individual in his outward appearance. Though he is married, he falls in love with Bilasia, an integral part of the primitive world. He feels free and happy to be there. But he is shot dead by a police constable which reflects the indifference of this materialistic society. The clash between primitivism and materialism is prevalent in the entire novel. Civilized world has created numerous problems like loneliness, purposelessness and drift. Nevertheless, Primitivism reaffirms a passionate struggle to recover the lost vitality.

Introduction is participation and in the passive method, It is the pervading sense of rootlessness there is apathy. The passive method is used and alienation that crushes human life from when the whole interpersonal situation is different sides. Man’s futile confrontation threatening..The materialistic approach of with absurdity and nothingness has become today has threatened modern man’s life and the paradigm of modern life. Man is all its joys and hopes and he is no longer the completely astounded to find himself quite master of his destiny. The plight of modern helpless and feels estranged when he realizes man has been under a set of five interrelated that he cannot be the master of his own operational conditions, viz. powerlessness, destiny and there are certain forces which are normlessness, isolation, self-estrangement definitely beyond his control. He is doomed to and meaninglessness which are different suffer the corrosive impact of alienation in the manifestations of alienation. 21st century which is called the age of Among the Indian writers, Arun Joshi is a alienation. In this context, Davidson reflects : novelist in whose works the protagonists are “The hiatus between what an individual “men engaged in the meaning of life”. (Jasbir aspires for and the harsh reality of what he 52) His novels represent a unique depiction of achieves, what he professes and what he the duel between the internal and the practices, what he really is and what he external, the intuitive and the imposed. His would like to be taken for, has crumpled his heroes delineate he human predicament. They life having a subtle effect on his inner being. make an effort to give expression for The scars left on his psyche make him realize individuality but lose their sense of his helplessness and hopelessness”.(Davidson individuality both national and personal. AS 19) they feel alienated , they make frantic efforts Jack Roy Strange feels that when a social to seek, organize and affirm this identity. situation arouses anxiety in a person, then Joshi’s ‘angst ridden protagonists are the person uses a defense mechanism to relentlessly in search of a way to face with combat the situation. This mechanism may be dignity a life which is uglt, inescapably active or passive. In the active method, there

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painful and always unsatisfying”. (O.P. turn into a kennel of dogs yawning (their Mathur 83) large teeth showing) or snuggling against Joshi’s second novel, The Strange case of each other or holding whisky glasses in their Billy Biseas (1971) explores the deep furred paws. I some times wonder whether significance of primitive life as a much better civilization is anything more than the making and healthier alternative to our civilized and spending of money. What else does the corrupt society. The futility and imperfection civilized man do?(92) of our materialistic society alienates Billy ,the The modern civilized society has made son of a judge of an Indian High Court and an Billy a victim. It is during the degeneration Ambassador of a European country. Having that he seduces Rima Kaul. He is aware of the educated in Britain and America and a fraudulent nature of this relationship on his lecturer of Delhi University, he remains a part and he feels horrified at his behavior. “ It nostalgic youth who is suffering from gradually dawned on me that a tremendous homesickness. He happens to meet Romi, the corrupting face was working on me. It was as witness narrator of the story in New York and though my soul were taking revenge on me”. he does not hesitate to share his place with (187) Romi. He chooses to live in Harlem, one of the Billy hates the sophisticated world that “ worst slums of New York nearer to the hung uo this peg of money “ in a place like negroes’ quarters. Though Romi does not Delhi. He feels as if he is “pinned down ….. understand Billy completely, he has a like a butterfly”. The meaningless, civilized sympathetic outlook for him.. People in world provokes his flight. His option to “ general and the members of his family in follow this call of the primitive” (190) forces particular are at a loss to understand Billy’s him into alienation. He is” a man of mind. extraordinary obsessions”. (3) He does not Tuula Liindgren, a young Swedish have smooth familial relationship with psychiatrist working in the United States Meena, his wife from the beginning. For understands Billy’s interest in the Meena, Billy becomes a stranger as days pass primitivism. Billy has brilliant discussion by. It marks the beginning of his alienation with Tuula and shows his interest in from her. The communication between them anthropology. He switches over to the study of breaks down. Though he is married, he could Anthropology, though his parents send him to not feel free to be mentally independent. Even the U.S. to study engineering. Tuula analyses his wife could not animate his tormented the powers that work inside him and she soul.. His quarrels with his wife and his confirms that he is exceptionally sensitive to a emotive instability threatening all his kind of primeval force, called Urkraft, relationships are signs of impending disaster. common to all human beings. Billy returns to From the very beginning, there is a schism in India to teach anthropology in the Delhi his soul. His suffering from a sense of University. The phoney world of Delhi does isolation is reflected in Romi’s impressions not seem to be much different from the that “ the Billy Biswas I had known was materialistic society of America. The ways of finished , snuffed out like a candle left in the the upper class life do not help him enjoy the rain”.(66) new environment. Like ‘a visitor from the During one of his anthropological wilderness to the marts of the big city’ (92). expeditions along with his students he goes to He reflects: the Maikala Hills near Bhubaneshwar. He “ I see a roomful of finely dressed men and realizes that his other self has grown stronger women seated on downy sofas and while I am and that he has been running after illusory looking at them under my very nose, they appearances. The dark, inscrutable faces of 44 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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the tribals , to him, contain the wisdom much he mysteriously vanishes to a hilly region of beyond the ken of the civilized. To Romi’s Madhya Pradesh, he begins to feel ‘the change question, “Don’t you think you had entering him’. (137) His departure into the responsibilities towares her, towares your jungle is not an escape from life and its son?”. Bily’s answer is.” I had greater realities but an escape into what he considers responsibilities towards my soul”. (133) to be ‘real’life from the materialistic world. Billy is interested in his own identity. The .Billy knows that he can find a world which is question of his identity “Who was I? Where related to him through love and not through had I come from? Where was I going?” (122) dominance. The tribes adore him as their king always plague him. Annalatha Devi and God. He becomes a ‘refugeefrom comments that he is unable to keep one foot civilization sat in the shadow of a saal tree a at the civilized society and another at his thousand miles away from house and mystic experience and that he “ decides to gradually underwent his final quit his home and society because he has felt metamorphosis”. (141) Romi meets Billy after that deep significance of primitive life as a a lapse of three years and finds him as “an much better alternative to the civilized obscure segment of himself”. though imperfect society”. (33) Ten years after his mysterious The Romantic poets sought the natural disappearance, his father takes efforts to and spontaneous not only in the inner reality bring Billy back to civilization by police force of the emotions but also in the outer world. and that leads to the final tragedy. Romi tries They developed a passionate interest in to save him from the tribal world which Nature and in ‘simple ‘ primitive society. In ultimately leads to utter destruction. For the the same way, Billy quits the world of representatives of modern world like Meena materialism and enters the world of tribal and Billy’s father. Billy is a person who does people where he could get solace. To Billy it is not enjoy any sort of comfort in the tribal a movement from darkness to light. world and he needs to be saved. The Bilasia, the tribal woman is not as pretty indifference of the civilized society is reflected as his wife, Meena. The primitive at the end of the novel where the protagonist constitutional elements force him to desert his is killed. His case is pathetically terrible wife. He sacrifices the value of the civilized indeed. Only his ashes reach the civilized world to the values of primitive life. On seeing world from which he fled earlier. The strange Bilasia, his frenzied search is calmed. Meena case of Billy Biswas is thus, “disposed of in presents the greedy civilization which does the only manner that a humdrum society everything for money whereas Bilasia knows of disposing its rebels, its seers, its represents real love. He finds his fulfillment true lovers”. Joshi‘s elemental concerns in this in the love of Bilasia “the essence of that world are alienation and community. Through primitive force that had called,” him, ,”night the character of Billy, Joshi satirizes the after night, year after year” (140) Bilasia is an suffocation caused by the modern integral part of nature and an embodiment of materialistic world. It is his observation that the primitive world. She helps Billy to replace “the most futile cry of man is his impossible his restlessness with ‘Divine Serenity’. Her wish to be understood”. presence also makes him lose all sense of Bannerji opines,” Billy/s death is bondage to the past. He feels that he could metaphorical. The modern Indian City is enjoy a glorious, joyous and complete disoriented that kills sincerity. This kind of liberation. killing goes on when the social organism does Billy ignores family responsibilities, filial not know its values. We only understand the and social expectations all of a sudden. When value of money and power”. (Bannerji 4) 45 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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Joshi’s broad humanistic outlook is individual self when he is in Bilasia’s world. demonstrated through his moral vision in all He stakes his life in order to test the validity his novels. “The message he patiently conveys of some of his intuitions into life. He is driven through his fiction is that man can draw great to death by the mad, absurd world when he sustenance from his spiritual and moral flees from the suffocating modern civilized womb even as he lies groaning on the debris society. He lives in a world where he could get of the shattered moral and spiritual values”. a feeling of rootedness and belongingness. He (Sharma 123) becomes as he himself thinks,”some sort of a Man is not a detached observer of the priest”. (189) world, but in the world. He exists in a special Billy’s embrace of primitive life shows the sense in which entities like stones and trees maturation of his being. He rejects the do not, he is open to the world and to objects modern world and refuses to have anything to in it. He is open to a future which he do with it. Anna Latha divides his life into determines by his choices and actions. Other two phases- a phase of spiritual disillusion entities – stones, trees, tigers – have a fixed and a phase of spiritual tranquility. In the nature that determines what they are and second phase of his life, Billy as a tribal is at what they do. peace with himself and with fellow tribals Identity crisis in general refers to also. His calm acceptance of death is a sign of psychological stress or anxiety about the his living in close proximity with Nature. sense of identity. It means the feeling of the People outside do not understand it. He loss of a sense of personal identity or becomes a tribal himself and he realizes that depersonalization. A person who does not it is only in this world he can understand the have or dissembles an identity often becomes ultimate motive of his life. T.k.Ghosh points neurotic, even schizophrenic. This feeling of out, “ It is not civilization as such that Billy split personality is both painful and rejects, but the upper-class Indian society troublesome. Having lost the sense of which is a replica of the depraved and personal identity, such a man feels alienated spiritually sterile society in the west with its and lonely. Gradually, he makes frantic straitening of human life”. (T.K.Ghosh 76) efforts to seek, organize and affirm his sense Billy is not sure whether he belongs to of identity. His commitment to definite values “the wilderness’ or to “the marts of the Big in life will produce feelings of belonging and City”. (96) He does not remain an isolated reaffirmation of his lost identity. fragment. He overcomes the agonizing The fictional world of Joshi presents the travails of his consciousness in its struggle for clash between alienated self and the socio- liberation from the corrupt society. The cultural forces. The recurrent themes – the civilized world from which Billy has opted out crisis of self, the problems of identity and the gets only his ashes since it has come to spell quest for fulfillment are found in The Strange for him all that is destructive of man’s moral Case of Billy Biswas. Billy, the hero acts as a fibre. Romi realizes that they have killed “not foreigner to society. He wanders over the face a man, not even the son of a Governor, but of the earth in search of the essence of the someone for whom our civilized world had no source of existence. He gets strength to equivalent, but some one that could be resolve the inner conflict through the process regarded as ‘one of the numerous man-gods of of emotional involvement. He reaches a stage the primitive pantheon”. (236) where he has an intuitive perception of a This novel is a brilliant satire on suprarational bonding with a certain mode of civilization. Like Thomas More’s Utopia, it existence in harmony with the very centre of beautifully depicts the old idealistic mode of man’s existence. He expresses his own life. That is why the hero is called “The 46 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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Primitive Pilgrim”. (Prasad 46) As in establish a rapport with the primitive forces Wordsworth’s sonnet,” The World is too much in the world of nature. with us “, he becomes ‘a pagan sucked in the In his interview with Sujatha Mathai, creed outworn’. (10) He feels that this Joshi admits that he gives priority to the civilization is a monster as well as values and attitudes of the younger degradation. generation today. He adds,” Billy’s death is A good writer’s works must have great metaphorical. The modern Indian city is promise for the future generation. The disoriented that kills sincerity…..This kind of twentieth century has been considered as an killing goes on when the social organism does age of spiritual stress and strain. In this not know its values. We understand the value context, Joshi’s contribution is significant to of money and power.” (Bannerjee) Indian English novels. Many well-known Like his fictional heroes, Joshi could not writers living in Post-colonial India have feel comfortable in the modern mechanized portrayed the bleak scenario in India that society. “ It irk’d him to be here. He could not shows the encounter between the native and rest” – is the epigraph to The Strange Case of the alien cultures. It is remarkable that Joshi Billy Biswas. It is this spirit that led him to has shown his moral vision in all his novels. find out ways and means of survival for The chaos of isolation is experienced by one mankind and to find out a better alternative. and all in the modern world. As an His search was cut by his untimely death. But outstanding novelist of the human he will be remembered as a novelist for ever predicament, Joshi has dealt with the inner as his novels are significant additions to the crisis of the modern man in all his novels. By literature of quest. They provide an Indian portraying the character of Billy Biswas who response to the challenges of our time. is opposed to the modern society which is ‘Rise from dreams and loiter not, unkind to him and by stressing his inner Open your mind to truth. conflicts, Joshi proves that he has social Practise righteousness and you will find consciousness. eternal bliss”. (Adhyak : 86) Values are eternal and they are absolutely essential for the survival and References health of an individual.. Indian society at Primary Source present is passing through a very critical 1. Joshi, Arun. The Strange Case of Billy phase. It is moving very fast towards Biswas. New Delhi: Hind, 1971. valuelessness and the present state of affairs is rather gruesome. If this is continued, the Secondary Sources day is close to us when we will witness 1. Adyaksha. Thus Spoke the Buddha. Sri intolerance, self-centredness, recklessness, Ramakrishna Math; Ed. Chennai: 2010. arrogance and terrorism as the very basic Print. fibre of society. For Billy, the selfish, civilized 2. Arnold, Matthew. A Selection of His modern society has been deprived of human Poems. Kenneth Allott, Ed. values, ideals and ethics.. Billy is shot dead Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1954. by a police constable at last. Through his Print. character, Joshi suggests that primitivism 3. Bhatnagar, O.P.” The Art and Vision of reaffirms a strong urge for reintegration and Arun Joshi. Response: Recent, revelations a passionate struggle to recover the lost of Indian Fiction in English,ed. Hari vitality of the being. It is implied that one can Mohan Prasad, Bareilly: Prakash : 1983. get rid of all problems of life if one is able to Print.

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4. Ghosh, T.K. Arum Joshi’s Fiction; The Commonwealth Quarterly 5.17 (1980): labyrinth of Life. New Delhi: Prestige 30-41 Books, 1966. Print 4. Sharma, D.R. “Arun Joshi and His Reflective Insiders”, Punjab University Journals Research Bulletin (Arts) 7.2 (1976): 123- 1. Davidson, L. Manjuls. “Alienation in 134. Rpt. in Literature East and West Indian Novels in English”. The Quest, 21.14 (1977): 100 – 11. 20.2 (Dec.2006), 19-28 2. Jain, Jasbir. “Foreigners and Strangers: Interviews Arun Joshi’s Heroes”. The Journal of 1. Bannerji, Purabi.”Winner’s Secrets”, The Indian Writing in English, 5.1(Jan1977), Sunday Statesman, 27 February, 1983, iv. 53. 2. Mathai, Sujatha.” I am a stranger to my 3. Mathur, O.P. and G. Rai. “The Existential books,” The Times of India, July 1, Note in Arun Joshi’s The Strange Case of 1983. 22 Billy Biswas and The Apprentice”.

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A STUDY OF SIMILARITIES BETWEEN DALIT LITERATURE AND AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

A.Buvaneswari Assistant Professor of English, N.M.S Sermathai Vasan College for Women, Madurai

Abstract Dalit literature is the literature which artistically portrays the sorrows, tribulations, slavery degradation, ridicule and poverty endured by Dalits. Dalit literature has a great historical significance. Its form and objective were different from those of the other post-independence literatures. The mobilization of the oppressed and exploited sections of the society- the peasants, Dalits, women and low caste occurred on a large scale in the 1920s and 1930s,under varying leaderships and with varying ideologies. Its presence was noted in India and abroad. On the other hand African American writing primarily focused on the issue of slavery, as indicated by the subgenre of slave narratives. The movement of the African Americans led by Martin Luther King and the activities of black panthers as also the “Little Magazine” movement as the voice of the marginalized proved to be a background trigger for resistance literature of Dalits in India. In this research paper the main objective is to draw similarities between the politics of Caste and Race in Indian Dalit literature and the Black American writing with reference to Bama’s Karukku and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Keywords: Dalit Literature, African American writings, marginalized, Slave narratives, Black panthers, Untouchable, Exploitation.

Introduction Brahmnoasaya mukamasti In the words of Arjun Dangle, “Dalit Bahu rajanayah kruta literature is one which acquaints people with Uru tadasay yadvaishya the caste system and untouchability in India. Padabhayam Sudro ajayat It matures with a sociological point of view According to this hymn, Brahmanas were and is related to the principles of negativity, born from the mouth of Brahma, the rebellion and loyalty to science, thus finally Kshtriyas from his shoulders, the vaisyas ending as revolutionary” from his thighs and Sudras from his feet. There are many different names proposed Hence Brahmanas are the most superior and for defining dailits in India like Asprushya- Sudras are the most inferior in the hierarchy. untouchable, Harijan- children of God, Dalit – In the subsequent ages Manu, an ardent broken people, etc. The word Dalit comes from supporter of the caste system made it a code the Sanskrit which means downtrodden, in his Manu-Smriti respectable identity by suppressed, crushed or broken to pieces. calling them Dalit. Dalit(shudra), was recognized as an inferior The definition of untouchables or Dalits part of the society. They were assigned given in the census report 1911 is very painful inferior activities like leather work,  Denied the supremacy of the Brahmins butchering, cleaning the streets, removing  Did not receive the mantras from animal carcasses and waste. The civilized Brahamna Hindu society has allotted works like manual  Denied the authority of Vedas labor, cleaning streets, latrines and sewers.  Did not worship the great Hindu gods They were banned from entering the temple,  Were not served by Good Brahmins not allowed to fetch water from the public  Have no Brahmin priest at all well of the village. Dalit can be traced back to  Have no access to the ordinary Hindu the Purusukta of Rig Veda where we find the temple first reference of the caste system. The hymn  Cause pollution describes; 49 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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 Bury their dead act? His questions are many. They issue forth  Eat beef and do not reverence law from what, who, why, and how. The questions This social hierarchy is also seen in he asks seems to be simple but the answers mythological figures as follows Shambuk who are amazingly complex. was a shudra killed by Rama for learning the Dalit literature represents a powerful Vedas, Karan, the step child of Pandu and emerging trend in the Indian literary scene. rejected by his own mother Kunti, Bali- whose Following are some of the most widely read kingdom was taken away by Lord Vishnu in writers of Dalit literature - Bama's Karukku his dwarf avatar and especially Eklavya- the and Sangati, Dr.Narendra Jadhav's greatest disciple of Guru Drona but who was Untouchables: My Family's Triumphant a tribal or a law caste boy and as he was Journey Out of the CasteSystem in Modern proving himself superior to Prince Arjuna. India, Sharankumar Limbale's The Outside: Drona asked him to cut his thumb and stop Akkarmashi, JosephMacwan's The Stepchild, learning archery from him. Om Prakash Valmiki's Joothan: A Dalit·s In his famous work Castes in India-Their Life, Urmila Pawar's The Weave of My Life. Mechanism, Genesis and Development. Some of the prominent Dalit writers are Daya Dr. B.R. Ambedkar has lighted up the Pawar, Arjun Dangle, Baburao Bagul, Rabi psychopath of upper class society. “The Singh, Namdeo Dhasal, Dutta Bhagat, Hindus wanted the Vedas and they sent for Lakshman Mane, Neerave Patel, Palamalai, Vyasa who was not a caste Hindu. The Sudhakar. Hindus wanted an Epic and they sent for There were many exchanges in the early Valmiki who was an Untouchable. The twentieth century between African American Hindus wanted a Constitution, and they sent and Indian leaders. Nico Slate, in his article for me.” Race, Caste, and Nation: Indian nationalists Dalit literature in pre-Ambedkar times and the American Negro (1893-1947) and after the rise of Dr. Ambedkar marks two examines similar exchanges between Indian different identities. Dr. Ambedkar’s famous leaders and African American leaders. Most of books The Buddha and His Dhamma, Who the marginalized groups all over the world Were the Shudras, Annihilation of caste, The have a similar system of oppression but the Problem of Rupee in British India, Thoughts titles are different as per the class and class on Pakistan and others make him not only the divide. In India it was under the pretext of Dalit crusader but an all-round intellectual the Cast and inequality but in exploitation who happens to be the God-father of Dalit the western World it was under the name of reforms in India. Dr. Ambedkar’s revolt was the Race. The racial problem is only one of the not of the sword and guns. It was a purely many problems that not only America but ideological revolt. This is the similar aim at many parts of the Western world face at the the heart of the Dalit literature to awaken an present time. On psychological level, ideological revolution in the Dalit community. whiteness is automatically equated with Today the Dalit writer asks: What is India beauty and culture and blackness with to me? An enigmatic land, a dream, or a ugliness and slavery. When the African slave nightmare? Or a puzzling riddle? He is in was torn from his homeland and brought to search of answers to these questions. What it the New World, they were prohibited to follow means to be an Untouchable or a pariah? He their native culture. Tribal organizations, knows very well that his forefathers sprang languages, family structure, religion all were out from the same womb as Brahmins. Why systematically extirpated. The slavery was then was he rejected by the Mother? Why and imposed upon the blacks in America for more How? Who is responsible for this inhuman than three centuries. Their racial problem 50 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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resulted into social, economic and cultural slavery, apartheid, racism, colonialism; dalit problems. Their identities have travelled from suffering from untouchability, humiliation, colored to Negro, from Negro to Black, from oppression, casteism. Dalits in India have Black to Afro-American and now from Afro- several times been compared to the condition American to African American. Their history of colonized African slaves. However, the is a story of an endless hallucination of agony. Dalits have led life under a far more sinister But this agony has given rise to a vast and culture, they mostly oppressed by upper rich heritage like their spirituals, Jazz, Blues, classes of India. Racism originated as an Poems, plays, short stories and novels like ideological support for slavery. Slavery was Ralph Ellison‘s Invisible Man, Richard not born of racism: rather racism was the Wright‘s Native Son to Alex Haley‘s Roots. consequence of slavery. In both these cases of The American Black writer faces the same Dalits and Blacks, God did not ordain the dilemma as Dalit literature. What is America slavery. Human beings created it. There was to me? They were brought to America in a direct influence of Blacks on dalits and chains and auctioned on the shores of Atlanta. Dalits on Blacks. It got reversed in the late The Black Americans have irrigated the 1960s and 1970s when the militant Black fertile land of liberty with their blood, tears Panthers and their claims of Black Power and sweat. During the American Civil Rights motivated a group of young dalit poets and movement, authors such as Richard Wright activists to compose outrageous art in order to and Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about issues of shatter the complacency of Brahminical racial segregation and Black Nationalism. ideologies. They proudly called themselves Today, African American literature has been Dalit Panthers. In 1972 a group of young accepted as an integral part of American Marathi Dalit artists in India called literature, with books such as Roots: The Saga themselves the Dalit Panthers and embraced of an American Family by Alex Haley, The violent politics and aesthetics to resist caste Color Purple by Alice Walker, and Beloved by supremacy. Through literature there are two Toni Morrison achieving both best-selling and special voices shouting in the wilderness for award-winning status. The arrival of liberation on Dalit women in India and the Faulkner brought about a revolutionary Black women in America who are under the change in the literary scenario. Faulkner triple subjugation of caste or race, gender and brought literary treatment of the social and class. There is double colonization for women psychological aspect of the racism to the as they are subjected both to general forefront through his acclaimed novels like discrimination as colonial subject and specific Sartoris, The Sound and The Fury, Absalom, discrimination as women. An important quest Absalom!, The Unvanquished and The theme in the works of both Dalit women Intruder in the Dust .He made them aware of writers and Black women writers have been the harsh realities of racial segregation and that of a character’s personal search for a racial exploitation. meaningful isolation, meaninglessness and Dalit is the protagonist of India‘s moral decay. The journey made by Dalit boycotted society, the African American is the women writers and many contemporary Black protagonist of Black America. One is robbed women writers – the journey into freedom has and degraded by the White society and the provided a means for defining the self. Such a other by Savarna society. One is brought and self-defining journey is visible in Bama’s sold from their home land and the other was autobiography Karukku and Alice Walker’s called untouchable by birth. These The Color Purple. marginalized people who suffer from many Bama, a leading Tamil Dalit woman disabilities such as Blacks suffering from writer, has been using her pen like “Karukku” 51 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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– a sharp edged weapon to cut the weeds of Although it is not easy to get rid of the untouchability and patriarchy which have patriarchal society, the protagonist manages thickly grown over the centuries in this to overcome these conditions. Black ancient land. Bama’s novels focus on caste community; itself have lots of obstacles that and gender discrimination. They portray prevent black women from realizing their caste-discrimination practiced in Christianity identity. Among these handicaps, there are and Hinduism. However Bama's works are rape and incest and color. Walker’s novel The embodied with Dalit feminism and the inner Color Purple begins with the scene of rape. strength of the subaltern woman. Karukku When the protagonist of the novel, Celie is traced a Dalit woman’s journey toward fourteen, her stepfather, whom she believes Roman Catholics and her eventual (because nobody talks about the lynched) is estrangement from a convent. It records the her father, begins to rape her. She cannot tell trials and tribulations of Bama as an this trauma anybody. The rape scene of the individual, as a woman and as a writer. Some novel is based on Walker’s great-great- of the incidents in Karukku depict the grandmother, who was raped and condition of dalit woman. When the impregnated at age 11 by her master Walker’s protagonist joins the college, she was great-great-grandfather. As seen, this abuse alienated by the fellow people due to her is related to a real event and it is written by clothes. She felt deeply humiliated by her the writer to demonstrate what a black classmates where she went around in the female live. This event reveals the portrayal same skirt, jacket and daavani for a whole of black family. The writer suggests that week. She endured all the shame and child-rape; incest is an undeniable fact of humiliation and stayed on. Then she decided most blacks’ lives. The reason of significance to become a nun and enter a convent and in of the Celie’s rape scene is that there is not a that she work hard for other children who race issue. Celia is black and her stepfather is struggle as she had done. The nuns from the black, as well. This incident displays that convent matched their attitude and behavior being a member of a black family is dangerous to the power and prestige of those families. for a female. These facts are the The convent does not know the meaning of representatives of a black female’s life. Celie poverty. The more she watched this more is oppressed even in black community, the frustrated she felt. Her mind was disturbed degree of blackness shapes the behaviors of and her conscience was bothered and bruised. people. And it was this conviction that made her Both Indian Dalits and African Americans leave the convent. In her second work Sangati are two distinctive groups that occupy a also Bama depicts the downtrodden and similar bottom position in their respective oppression of woman by their own men and by societies. Indian dalits as well as American the upper class men and women. Blacks were the sons and daughters of Similarly the oppression of women is seen darkness journeying through untold sorrows in Alice Walker’s The Color purple. The and sufferings. Both the literature aimed at colored women in Africa or America have to promoting ideas of social equality, justice and endure all the violence and racist behavior of resistance to suffering, discrimination and both white men and women; on the other economic exploitation. To conclude that hand she has to suffer from the hands of black societies and literature of African American men. The Color Purple is the story of Celie, a and dalits are very much alike. The reason for poor, barely literate Southern black woman this resemblance is that the emotional who struggles to escape the brutality and commitment of women of the two societies is degradation of her treatment by men. similar. There are commonalities in their 52 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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pain, their rebellion, their hopes and desires. 5. Bama, Faustina. Karukka. Trans. Though their languages are different, the Lakshmi Holmstorm. Chennai: Macmillan state of mind and the emotions expressed India, 2000. Print. through these literatures are parallel. 6. ---.Sangati. Trans. Lakshmi Holmstorm. New Delhi: OUP, 2005. Print. References 7. Bhongle, R. Dalit Literature and African- 1. Aston N.M, ed. Dalit Literature and American Literature: A Comparative African American Literature. New Delhi: Study. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2001. Prestige Books, 2001. Print. Print. 2. Anand, Mulk Raj, and Eleanor Zelliot. An 8. Dangle, Arjun. Poisoned Bread: Anthology of Dalit Literature. New Delhi: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Gyan Publishing, 1992. Print Literature New Delhi. Orient Blackswan, 3. Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji. Writings and 2009. Print. Speeches. Vol.3. Mumbai: Government of 9. Limbale, Sharan Kumar. Towards an Maharashtra Publication, 1987. Print. Aesthetic of Dalit Literture. Trans. Alok 4. Aston N.M, ed. Dalit Literature and African American Literature. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2001. Print.

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FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE IN SHASHI DESHPANDE’S THAT LONG SILENCE

R.Ananthalakshmi Assistant Professor of English, N.M.S Sermathai Vasan College for Women, Madurai

Abstract Woman’s struggle to find and preserve her identity as wife, mother and the most important of all as the human being forms the major concern of Shashi Deshpande’s novels. Deshpande doesn’t want her writing to be called feminist writing because she feels her novels are not a man versus woman issue at all. She portrayed the new Indian woman and her dilemma in the tradition-bound, male-dominated Indian society. Being a woman herself, she sympathizes with women and her main apprehension is for human relationships. That Long Silence depicts the women world in an authentic, realistic and credible manner. This article highlights the fact that it is not the circumstances that contribute to the negation of women’s rights; but the fact is that it is their women folk who polarize their dig at the emancipation of women.

Introduction Her novels highlight the image of middle class “No act is to be done according to (her) women squeezed in between tradition and own will by a young girl, a young woman, modernity. She portrays her heroines in a or even by an old woman, though in (their realistic manner. She deals with a woman’s own) houses.” (The laws of Manu 5.148) psyche which is made to feel inferior and a “In childhood a woman should be under burden on the family. Her heroines are her father’s control, in youth under her courageous enough to revolt against the husband’s and when her husband is dead, marginalization of women by men and society under her sons, she should not have as revealed in That Long Silence and The independence…” The position and status of Dark Holds No Terrors. woman is thus stated by the ancient Indian In That Long Silence, the protagonist sage Manu. From the beginning of the Indian Jaya journeys towards self-actualization. The civilization, Indian male psyche has such an novel embarks on with the receptive opinion on woman. They have had every appearance of the solitude of a woman and advantage in telling us their own stories. the poignant question of the eventual purpose They had education, a much higher degree, to of her life in the milieu of her familial bond. articulate and voice their dominance. But, The novel is an individual’s journey in search women had no education, nor were they of one’s true self who confronts the gender strong to voice. Phenomenal progress has oriented tradition. It depicts the plight of a been registered in economic, political, wife who suffers silently in the name of technological and industrial fields; but the family. Marriage is still a social necessity, social structure of the contemporary Indian where women seek security and men remains tattooed with certain taboos when it respectability. In her early married life, Jaya comes to the woman-question (Subash had yielded her decisions to her husband. The Chandra, p.147). This article contemplates on forced isolated stay in Dadar flat facilitates the protagonist’s dilemma in this typical her to reconsider her life built around the Indian milieu, which binds her like an octopus needs of a husband only. Jaya’s creativity and at the same time, expects her to provides her an outlet for her dissatisfaction. “perform” effectively and competitively in her The novel ends with a renewal of faith. Jaya’s allotted orbits. decision to wipe out the silence and have a Shashi Deshpande has presented in her balanced contented life is a decision in the novels modern Indian women’s search for the right direction. Self-actualization is possible if definition about the self and the society; and a woman decides to be herself, to reveal the the relationship that are central to women.

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genuine value of her free and inborn in reminiscence with the final chapter ending individuality in its entirety. in the present. The narrator in this novel is As Eva Figes (1986) says: Dominance is Jaya, the protagonist herself. While narrating …the keynote in an analysis of the man- her heartbreaking experiences, her mind woman relationship where the male wavers and she unfurls her whole life – from attributes are associated with mental thought her childhood days to her father’s death. She and positive activity, whilst the woman is is a typical modern woman who has her roots regarded as essentially passive, her role to be in tradition, while her husband Mohan, a the respectable of male sexual drive for the traditionalist has his roots in customs. Their subsequent reproduction of the species. The outlook is different and they fail to complexities of human relationships understand each other. Due to differences in fascinated Shashi Deshpande and she has their attitude, their marital life grows shaky confessed it in an interview with Geetha and gloomy. It becomes more of a compromise Gangadharan: “We know a lot about the than love based on social fear rather than physical and the organic world and the mutual need of each other. The choice may be Universe in general, but we still know very rooted in their choice of a partner. For little about human relationships. It is the example, from the very beginning, Mohan most mystifying thing as I am concerned. I wanted a wife who was well-educated and will continue to wonder about it, puzzle over cultured and never a loving one. it and write about it. And still it is To Mohan, a woman sitting before fire, tremendously intriguing, fascinating.” (Indian waiting for her husband to come home and eat communicator, 20 November 1994 P-11). her food is the real strength of a woman, but Deshpande’s major apprehension in That to Jaya it is nothing more than despair. “He Long Silence is to search deeply into the wanted his rice fresh and hot, from a vessel psyche of a woman who is made to face all that was untouched. She had just finished kinds of mental tortures. The question what a cooking this second cooking and was waiting, woman does is never asked, but “who she hoping, perhaps that he would not be too late, belongs to” is always considered important. for it wouldn’t do to allow and as for lighting She never has an identity of her own. Her the fire again, that was unthinkable” (P.15- name changes as per the wishes of others. In 16). “Her Ajji along with silence had taught That Long Silence, the writer has presented her to “wait” the waiting game” (30). For a this fact through the character Jaya, who is man waiting brings in restlessness but for recognized by two names: Jaya and Suhasini. woman the game of waiting starts quite early Jaya is the name given by her father when in her childhood “wait until you get married, she was born which has the meaning wait until your husband comes, wait until you “victory”; and Suhasini is the name given go to your in law‘s home, wait until you have after her marriage which means a “soft, kids. Yes, ever since I got married I had done smiling, placid, motherly woman”. Both the nothing but wait” (30) Women are blamed names stand for the persona of her unfeminine and unnatural if they break the individuality. The earlier one symbolizes social system and so they are enforced to revolt whereas the final one symbolizes adhere to be termed feminine. submission. Deshpande reveals the consciousness of To make the story a reliable one, Jaya through an account of her mind in the Deshpande has made use of first person process of thinking, feeling and reacting to narrative to represent the psyche of the the stimuli of the moment and situation. In modern middle-class learned woman. To doing so, she goes on to assert the feminine appeal to the readers, she uses flashback psyche of the protagonist, to break away from technique. The first chapter deals with the the strong hold of a social framework rooted present, but the remaining chapters are more in patriarchy which repels as it attracts. Jaya 55 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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is a modern predicament and the flood of husband, Draupadi stoically sharing her consciousness that ensure out of it is a silent husband’s travails…...” (11). She turns down stream of thoughts and feelings. She knows these role models because in modern life these pretty well that in order to get by in a characters are simply citation of the past with relationship one has to learn a lot of tricks no application to the present. These legendary and silence is one of them. Jaya surrenders women followed their husbands willingly but Mohan without revolting. She never refuses Jaya is accompanying Mohan everywhere or complains about anything. Her identity, because of compulsion. There is a frank, even personality is totally crushed which leads her brutal, realization of this evil necessity in her to total confusion along with loss of self marital life. “Two bullocks yoked identity. We get a glimpse of Hinduism in the together...... it is more comfortable for them to numerous fasts observed by women for the move in the same direction. To go in different well being of husbands, sons or brothers. directions would be painful: and what animal “Generally, a woman’s identity is defined in would voluntarily choose pain?” (12). terms of her relationship with man as a That Long Silence is very close to real life daughter, a wife and a mother It means experience and achieves its consistency from virtually a woman doesn’t have an identity of the actuality that the protagonist Jaya is a her own” says Indira Kulkshreshtha (3). well educated person with a literary The narrator Jaya, an upper-middle-class sensitivity equivalent with her fictional role. housewife with two teenage children, is forced Silence for her is a kind of Defense to take care of her life when her husband is Mechanism, which helps her to express suspected of fraud. They shift to a small flat herself more comprehensively. But the in a poorer locality of Bombay, leaving their repeated allegations and accusations of her luxurious house. The narrative reveals the husband compel her to react sharply. She futility of modern Indian life, where success is (Jaya) once tells kamat (her neighbour) considered only with the upwardly mobile “...... no women can be angry. Have you ever husband along with their children studying in heard of an angry young woman?.... A woman "good" schools. The daily chores of normal life can never be angry, she can only be neurotic, of a woman with material comforts is hysterical, frustrated” (147). Mohan wonders significantly represented in the following how Jaya, a woman could be so rebellious and lines, "the glassware that had to sparkle, the angry. To him, it is unwomanly to be angry. A furniture and curious that had to be kept woman can never be angry. There is no room spotless and dust-free, and those clothes, God, for misery, either. There is only order and all those never-ending piles of clothes that routine. Woman pays for their happiness at had to be washed and ironed, so that they the loss of their freedom. Marriage suppresses could be worn and washed and ironed once women and it leads her to "aimless days again" (57). Jaya's creativity is muted by indefinitely repeated, life that slips away strong social and family pressures and holds gently toward death without questioning its all creative activities in submission to her role purpose" (30). The role restricts women's self- as a homemaker. development. She feels that in life of a Though she is a writer, Jaya has not woman, there are many cross roads and many achieved true self expression. There is choices but a married woman has a few or something almost overpowering about the practically no choice left to her except what restriction of the narrator's life. The story is her husband wills and desires. She unburdens unfolded by Jaya, ironically again symbolizing herself to trigger out the creative impulses in victory, while in the actual life situation, she her artistic self. The novel deals with is supposed to lead a traditional, passive life feminism at its core. In the beginning, the like; “Sita following her husband into exile, imitation of role models has been crossed by Savithri, dogging death to reclaim her Jaya. Then it is followed by anger and protest. 56 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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Whenever she looks back on her life, she has protagonists exhibit great strength and no nostalgia or yearning for the past;but it is courage in evolving, as their own role models exhibited as a feeling of suppressed anger as per the prerequisite of their social mileau. which can burst out any time. Finally, Her characters go through a progression of articulation and assertion of the protagonist self - examination before they attain self are only hinted as one of the future potentials actualization as stated by Indira Gandhi for Jaya. (Eternal India), “Woman must be a bridge Shashi Deshpande told Joel Kuortti in an and a synthesizer. She shouldn’t allow herself interview: That Long Silence is a hysterical to be swept off her feet by superficial trends novel in the sense that inside of me I was kind nor yet be chained to the familiar. She must of screaming, but when it came out - as you ensure the continuity which strengthens roots said, one steps back from that screaming self and simultaneously engineer change and – and one says, look Jaya is very analytical. growth to keep society dynamic, abreast of There is no point at which she gives way to knowledge, sensitive to fast-moving events. her emotions or self pity or anything. The solution lies neither in fighting for equal Throughout she is analyzing herself, her life, position nor denying it, neither in retreat into her relationships, and I think that is how it home nor escape from it”. Thus, Jaya is one has been for me. I think it was really the among Shashi Deshpande’s victorious strong culmination of the anger and all the women protagonists who repudiates to get repression; everything came out in That Long trampled under the influence of her personal Silence (Sharma 55). She lays down a balance tragedy, and faces life with great courage and between tradition and modernity as a working strength. philosophy for the contemporary woman. To her, tradition symbolizes the Indian way of References life with the values of harmony and co- 1. Deshpande, Shashi. That Long Silence. existence, and modernity is the affirmation of Noida: Penguin Books India. Ltd., 1989. the self-regulating identity of an individual. 2. Chandra, Subash. “Silent No More: The Sahitya Academy Award winning novel is A Study of That Long Silence”. Indian about Jaya’s hopes, fears, aspirations, Women Novelists, Ed. R.K.Dhawan. New frustrations and later triumph in life. Critic Delhi: Prestige, 1991. Y.S. Sunita Reddy observes: “The narrative 3. Figes, Eva. Patriarchal Attitudes: Women with its slow unknotting of memories and in Society (London : Macmillan, 1986) unravelling of the soul is like an interior P.125 monologue quite similar to the stream of 4. Indira Kulkshreshtha, “That Long consciousness technique employed by Virginia Silence” Chapter 4 “Women in the novel of Woolf” (Sharma 81). Shashi Deshpande”, a Study. In That Long Silence, Jaya undergoes an 5. Sandhu, Sarabjit. “The Images of Woman ordeal because she has refused to go into in That Long Silence.” Indian Women hiding with her husband as an enquiry Novelists, Ed. R.K.Dhawan. New Delhi: against his financial irregularities is on. She Prestige, 1991. kept her eyes shut to her husband’s illegal 6. Sharma, Siddharth. Shashi Deshpande’s earning at office like the mythological Novels: A Feminist Study. New Delhi: character Gandhari. Even her journalistic Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, writings are hemmed in by her husband’s 2005. likes and dislikes. Eventually she is able to 7. R.S. Pathak (ed), The fictions of Shashi evaluate her prospects of life. After having Deshpande (Creative Books 1988) P.202. cast off traditional role models, Deshpande’s

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GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN THE COLOR PURPLE

Ms.G.Adhi Murugeswari Assistant Professor of English, N.M.S Sermathai Vasan College for Women, Madurai

Abstract In this article, the representation of black female sexuality in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple is examined, in relation to the political debate of feminism in the late 20th century. The Color Purple was subject to controversy when it came out in 1982. It shows the oppression that African- American women have faced, and how their oppression is different from African-American men. Additionally, it shows how this oppression has led to the black feminist movement. Gender and race are inextricably linked, and this thesis aims to shed light on this type of intersectionality. Keywords: Black feminism, intersectionality, black female sexuality, gender, race, Womanhood, sexism, literature.

Introduction the socially constructed gender roles to have a Oppression in terms of sexuality and relationship with opposite roles from what gender are certainly also evident in this novel. they are comfortable with. This can also be Scholar Bernard Bell argues that The Color seen in a less obvious way with Albert and Purple is “more concerned with the politics of Celie, as in the end of the book they are sex and self than with the politics of class and sitting on the porch while Albert is sewing, race… its unrelenting, severe attacks on male and Celie is wearing pants and smoking a hegemony, especially the violent abuse of pipe. Moreover, Shug Avery is often described black women by black men, is offered as a as being more masculine, despite her revolutionary leap forward into a new social feminine charm. Albert says about her: “Shug order based on sexual egalitarianism” (Bell, act more manly than most men. I mean her 263). Walker “plays” with stereotypical upright, honest. Speak her mind and the devil gender roles in her novel. For instance, one of take the hindmost” (244). However, Celie the characters, Sofia, Celie and Albert’s disagrees with him, telling him that she daughter in law, does not let her husband thinks the traits he mentioned are more Harpo dominate her, and it becomes clear feminine. “Mr ____ thinks all this is stuff men that she is also strong in a literal sense, do. But Harpo not like this, I tell him. You not because when he tries to beat her it becomes like this. What Shug got is womanly it seem clear that Sofia is stronger than Harpo. like to me. Specially since she and Sofia the Sofia and Harpo’s marriage actually ones got it” (244). contains reversed stereotypical gender roles, The novel challenges the socially as Sofia is more masculine and Harpo is more constructed stereotypes of men and women. feminine. Harpo likes to do ‘woman’s work’ Walker creates a number of strong female and doing the household, while Sofia likes to characters in this story. Shug Avery, Kate work outside of the house. Peculiar about this and Sofia are all strong, rebellious, and is the fact that both are comfortable with independent women, and they serve as a role these assigned roles in their marriage, but model for Celie. The relationships between Albert raised his son Harpo to be a dominant women are also a distinct part of the novel. man in the marriage. He feels pressure to be The sisterhood of black women is a more controlling over Sofia, and starts reoccurring theme with African-American beating her. This moment can be seen as female writers and filmmakers. Black women Walker criticizing the social construction of can support each other and help each Isik gender, as Harpo and Sofia feel pressured by s4342526 27 other grow (Collins, 104). Nettie

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and Celie have a strong bond, and they stand believe in education for girls, as their only up for each other. Also Shug and Celie goal in life is to be the mother of her connect on an emotional level in way that husband’s children. “The Olinka do not Celie does not have with any men in her life. believe girls should be educated. When I They become sexually intimate, and Celie asked a mother why she thought this, she gains more confidence because of this said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her relationship. There is a big contrast between husband can she become something. What Albert who beats and dominates her, and can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the Shug who accepts and adores her as a woman mother of his children” (140) When Nettie (Talif & Sedehi, 430). Shug helps Celie tells Olivia, who turns out to be Celie’s coming to terms with her own sexuality, by daughter, Olivia compares this to the helping her form the image of God that loves treatment of black women in America: everyone. She actually enjoys sleeping with “They’re like white people at home who don’t Shug; something she never did with Albert. want colored people to learn” (141). A little “God loves all those feelings. That’s some of later, Nettie writes Celie that this also the best stuff God did. And when you know reminds her of the way their stepfather has God loves ‘em you enjoys ‘em a lot more. You treated them: “There is a way that the men can just relax, go with everything that’s going, speak to women that reminds me much of Pa. and praise God by liking what you like” (113). They listen just long enough to issue A major difference between Shug and Celie is instructions. They don’t even Isik look at the fact that Shug has a sense of self that is women when women are speaking. They look not “male inscribed” (Winchell, 92). at the ground and bend their heads toward Throughout the story, Celie gains the same the ground. sense of self because of the reimagining of The women also do not ‘look in a man’s God, and stands up to Albert. For example, face’ as they say. To ‘look in a man’s face’ is a when Celie is leaving for Memphis with Shug, brazen thing to do. They look instead at his Albert says, “Look at you. You black, you feet or his knees. And what can I say to this? pore, you ugly, you a woman. Goddamn, he Again, it is our own behavior around Pa” (146- say, you nothing at all” to which Celie a little 147). It is clear that the men described in the later reacts, “I’m pore, I’m black, I may be novel are controlling their wives, which is an ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything example of the existing gender roles and male listening. But I’m here. (The Color Purple, dominancy in American society. Scholar 187). Albert’s comment is an example of the Lauren Berlant compares the violation of rape patriarchal culture within society, which to the lynching of Celie’s and Nettie’s Celie resists after gaining enough confidence biological father. “For Celie and Nettie’s to do so. As Celie is discovering a new biological father, race functions much as perspective on God, Nettie also gains a more gender functions for the sisters: not as a site fluid image of God while she is in Africa. “And of positive identification for the victim, but as not being tied to what God looks like, frees an excuse for the oppressor’s intricate style of us,” Nettie writes to Celie (264). Hearing how cultural persecution” (Gates&Appiah, 216). women are treated in Africa, and realizing Gender, the fact that Celie and Nettie are that it does not differ as much from American women, serves as an excuse for the men in society, also makes her feminist views grow. their lives to treat them in oppressive ways, She is appalled to hear that the Olinka just like the fact that their biological father women see her as a woman who is nothing, was African-American served as an excuse for because she has no husband. Nettie describes the white merchants to lynch their black to Celie how the Olinka women in Africa don’t competitor. Both oppressors, the men in Celie 59 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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and Nettie’s lives and the white merchants, sociology of gender. Berkeley: University feel superior over them and feel justified by of California Press. 1978. society to hurt them. Oppression in terms of 5. Collins, P. H. Black Feminist Thought gender and sexuality is evident here, (Knowledge, Consciousness, and the mirroring the society they lived in where men Politics of Empowerment). Routledge. were taught and expected to oppress their 2000. Print. female counterparts. 6. Collins, P. H. “What’s in a Name?” The Black Scholar, 26(1), 9–17. 1996. References 7. Collins, P. H. “Gender, Black Feminism, 1. Bell, Bernard W. “The Contemporary and Black Political Economy.” The Afro-American Novel, 1: Neorealism.” In ANNALS of the American Academy of The Afro-American Novel and Its Political and Social Science. Vol 568, Issue Tradition, 259-69. Amherst: University of 1, pp. 41 – 53 Massachusetts Press, 1987. 8. Gates, Henry Louis, and Anthony Appiah. 2. Betancourt, Hector, and Lo pez Steven R. Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives Past “The Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and and Present. New York, Amistad, Race in American Psychology.” American 1993. Psychologist, vol. 48, no. 6, 1993, pp. 629– 9. Hammonds, E. “Black (W)holes and the 637 Geometry of Black Female Sexuality.” A 3. Carby, H. Reconstructing Womanhood: Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, The Emergence of the Afro-American 6.2(3). 126-146. 1994. Woman Novelist: The Emergence of 10. Hernton, Calvin. “The Sexual Mountain the Afro-American Woman Novelist. and Black Women Writers.” Black Scholar Oxford University Press. 1987. Print. 16(4): 2- 11. 1985. 4. Chodorow, N. The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the

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FEMINIST TRACT IN DORIS LESSING’S THE CLEFT

R.Chinnamaruthayee Assistant Professor of English, Devanga Arts College, Aruppukottai

Feminism isn’t about making women feminism. She is deeply concerned with the stronger. Women are already stronger. It’s cultural inequities of her native land. Her about changing the way the world perceives novels and short stories are largely concerned that strength. G.D.Anderson. with people involved in the social and political In the twentieth century, Women’s upheavals of the twentieth century. writings are considered as a powerful medium As a writer, from Colonial Africa to of modernism and feminist statements. modern London, Lessing scrutinized Women are not supposed to raise voices for relationships between men and women, social their rights. They are not able to protest inequities and racial divisions. As a woman, against injustice or question the already she pursued her own interests and desires, existing beliefs, customs and rituals. Women professional, political and sexual. Seeking have to be obedient, quiet, passive and what she considered a free life, she submissive not claiming any of their rights abandoned two young children. Salon, in an neither as women nor as human being.” interview with Lessing in 1997, said that Women are still caught between feudal values “with her centre -parted hair that’s pulled and style of life and the fast approaching’ new back into a bun and her steely eyes, she life’, caught between the burden of the home seems like a tightly wound earth mother”. and the workplace, mothering, struggling Doris Lessing is an active opponent of with conventions, women have to first apartheid. She is also a prolific writer in non- survive”.(Dr. Yashodara Bhut: Changing fiction. She made her strongest statements in image of woman – An Introduction 13). her fiction. Her writing borders on the The present paper approaches Doris autobiographical. Her fictional accounts of Lessing’s novel The Cleft, from a feminist Africa and England bear a strong point of view to foreground Lessing’s resemblance to her own life. Most of her understanding of women in both past and novels dealt with the same theme. The present societies. Women are subjugated and problem of racism in British Colonial Africa oppressed by patriarchal systems and and the place of women in a male-dominated ideologies. Lessing portrays that women’s world and an escape from the social and intellectual power can be their weapon in sexual repression of the world. Her most of fighting against patriarchal society. As a the work deals with the gross injustices of woman, she has written the novel in the racial inequality, the clash of cultures, the feminist view. struggle among opposing elements within an Doris May Lessing is one of the most individual’s personality , the conflict between famous novelists of the twentieth century. the individual conscience and the collective She was born in Kermanshah, Persia, on good and exposed the sterility of the white October 22, 1919. Her original name is Doris culture in Southern Africa. She produced May Tayler. She is a short story writer, dozens of novels, short stories, essays and novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, non- poems, drawing on a childhood in the Central fiction writer, auto biographer and a travel African bash, the teachings of Eastern writer. She is also a South African expatriate mystics and involvement with grass- roots writer. She is known for her strong sense of

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communist groups. She embarked on dizzying men and women through the story of Marcus and at times, stultifying literary experiments. and Lolla. Before the novel begins, she gives Lessing’s novel The Cleft is the story of hints about Monsters, Clefts and Eagles and our earliest ancestors, a slow-moving, semi- their way of life. aquatic race of females. She claims that the The Cleft is the story of our earliest book was inspired by a scientific article in ancestors. It is narrated by a Roman which it was asserted that the basic and Historian. In the last years of his life, a primal human stock was probably females. Roman Senator embarks on one final epic She wrote the novel The Cleft because she felt endeavour, a retelling of the history of human some of those ancient long ago emotions. The creation. The story he relates neither is the novel contains the story of the Clefts and the little known Saga of the Clefts, an ancient Monsters. Probably, she found that females community of women with no knowledge of are worshipped as goddesses, while in any need for men. Childbirth was controlled ordinary life; they are kept secondary and through the cycles of the moon, and only thought to be inferior. Perhaps this tendency female off spring were born - until the of herself to scepticism has made her to take unanticipated event that jeopardized the on the task of telling the tale of our real harmony of their close-knit society: the origins. The Cleft is narrated by a Roman strange, unheralded birth of a boy. Historian, during the time of the Emperor In The Cleft, Lessings depicts that Nero. He tells the story as a secret history of humanity was made up in the beginning of humanity’s beginning, as pieced together from solely females who reproduced asexually. scraps of documents and oral histories, passed These females are a calm race and had few down through the ages. problems. They lived by the sea. They are In this novel, she gives a new kind of partially aquatic. They called themselves as version about human origin. She tries to “Clefts”. The Clefts lived on the shore of a create a subverted form of the creation story warm sea in an Island. One day, a Cleft gave in the novel. After reading a scientific article birth to a male child. The Clefts dubbed the and it remarked that the basic and primal male child as a ‘Monster’. This caused such a human stock was probably female and males fright that the boy was killed by the Clefts. came along later. Lessing has picked up her But more ‘Monsters’ are born, and the Clefts subversion story of human origin in a left them on a rock to die. The Eagles which different way from this article. It is entirely lived in a nearby valley saw the dying babies an imaginative work of Lessing. and swooped down and carried them off, to Lessing’s ‘re-vision’ of the creations deposit them in their valley. Then they get myths available in all cultures, gets into trouble. That is babies are always in need visualised in the novel. The Cleft is an of milk. They put the baby Monsters on the exploration of what a primitive, all female grass. At that time, a deer comes out of the worlds might have been inhabited by lazy, forest and sees the crying baby. The crying communal, porpoise like creatures and of the baby is suckled by the beneficent deer. Their chaos that ensues when they start, life goes on like that. Then the children grow unaccountably, giving birth to boys. The novel older and are able to fend for themselves. contains the story of the Clefts and the Most of the boys are brought by the Eagles Monsters. She presents the novel as the secret and a tribe emerges. At the time, a female history of humanity beginning through the wanders over the valley. She is raped by the story of the Clefts and the Monsters. Before new adult man. She flees and gives birth to a the novel begins, she conveys some new, mixed child nine months later. When she information about the relationship between tells her story to the rest of the Clefts, the two 62 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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tribes soon come into contact with each other. ancient long ago emotions. Her name for this The matriarch of the Clefts, however, feared book is ‘Transit’. Her real name in the book is the “Monsters” and decided to try to kill them kept dark. She is a Scribe and Researcher, off. The rest of the novel relates the slow known for her interest in the unusual, the out coming together of these two communities of the way. According to the Roman Historian and their growing need for one another and who lived during the time of the Emperor despair at their mutual dependence. The Nero humanity began with females. In the women discover babies alone, and their beginning, humanity was made up of solely growing exasperation with the men reflects females who reproduced asexually. These their incompleteness. The men want to go off females were a calm race. They lived by the exploring, risking the lives of their children sea and were partially aquatic. on expeditions that seem to be largely about Lessing begins the novel with the word escaping the responsibility of fatherhood. ‘They’. It indicates a lot of female or a group of The premise of the book is based on Clefts. “They lived on the shore of a warm sea scientific research found by Lessing that as a on an island” (30). They used the caves for species, women existed before men. There is a their shelter. They don’t think about quote from Robert Graves at the beginning of anything. They are not prone to ask the book that really sums it up: “Man does questions. It came only after a long time. Woman is”. The Cleft is based around a Their minds are not set for questions. They scientific premise that the first humans were believed that, female and then males appeared later They believed – but it was not a belief .Lessing gives stereotypical ‘male’ and ‘female’ they would defend or contest – that a fish traits to her Clefts and Squirts, the males brought them from the moon. When was shrugging off any fatherly responsibility, that? Long, slow, puzzled stares. They recklessly endangering the offspring they take were hatched from the moon’s eggs The for granted, the females violently protective moon laid eggs into the sea, it lost a part when roused to fury but largely more passive, of itself, and that was why it was in tune with the natural world, nagging and sometimes large and glowing and nurturing by turn. The character names and sometimes pale and thin. As for their own incidents are all only her imagination. She capacity to give birth, they had never portrays the both characters, the male and questioned it. (31) the female. She gives more importance to the The rest of the novel is less powerfully female rather than the male. She presents the imagined than the central. She presents that female as strong, wise, powerful, brave and the females are given more importance to caring ones. their children than the males. The male In the novel, she explores three female doesn’t care about their children. The females characters- Maire, Astre and Maronna. The find that the males lack of conscious and lack beginning of the novel is moved by Maire and understanding. Now, most females live in Astre. She presents Maire as the ruler of their their caves because they don’t like the valley. community. The rest of the novel is moved by But there is a interaction between them. Maronna. She is the leader of the community. Sometimes the males spend their time in the She is the mother of Horsa. He is the male cave. Now, the caves are filled with little character in the novel .She describes Horsa as children. The women don’t like the children to an irresponsible man. He doesn’t care about be in the valley. They complain to the men. his children and community. The Old Shes They try to keep the children with them on takes an important part Lessing writes the the shore. There is a kind of custom among novel The Cleft because she felt some of those the males. The little boys must leave their 63 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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mothers at the age of seven. The women make presents her own opinion through this novel. complaints about the great river. The little In the novel The Cleft Lessing declares that, boys should not be allowed to go near the “We all know that in the telling and river. Most of the females hated the river. It is retelling of an event, or series of events, there very dangerous to them, not only to the will be as many accounts as there are tellers. infants but also to small children. Many of An event should be recorded. Then it must be them drown in the river. agreed by whoever’s task it is that this Oh, how the females hated that version rather than that must be committed river valley. That comes clear and to memory”. (136) Lessing retelling becomes insistent from the chronicles and a ‘re-vision’ (to adapt Adrienne Rich’s terms) songs of the time. Most of all they and in becoming a ‘re-vision’ it also commits hated the river itself, which was itself to memory through the engendering of dangerous to them, not only to it in a narrative form. Though Doris Lessing the infants and small children. is a feminist, her stories portray the The theme ‘How few we are, how sensibilities of women, how a women looks at easily we die’ – the words of a herself and her problems. song – is reiterated. Many had died in that river. (155) References For the time, the Clefts believe that the 1. Lessing, Doris. The Cleft. Harper boys are imperfect. They don’t have normal Perennial. Great Britan.2007. print. memories. They are born normal but later 2. Narasimhaiah, C.D Foreword, The they don’t think anything. “They are born Images of women. Ed. Yashodara Bhat. normal but then later they don’t seem to New Delhi: D.K. Publishers and think of anything but their Squirts” (156). Distributers (P) Ltd., 1993. Print. Lessing tries to document it through her powerful narrative. As a feminist, she

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SUBALTERN VOICES IN SOCIAL EVIL – CORRUPTION IN EDUCATION SYSTEM WITH REFERENCE TO CHETAN BHAGAT’S REVOLUTION 2020

S.Puvaneswari Assistant Professor of English, Devanga Arts College, Aruppukottai

Abstract Literature should serve people and help them in their struggle for a better life, by arousing emotions against oppression and injustice. It inspires them to strive against their plight and improve their conditions. ‘Art for social purpose’ may be expressed not always in a direct way, but also in indirect for example, through satire. Today, India thirsts for good literature. If someone writes about the people’s real problems it will spread like wildfire. Each writer expresses this thought with a motif. Chetan Bhagat is a significant write, who has been known as the role model of the youth in India. His every novel has not only highlighted his deep concern about the youth today i.e. what are the problems, hopes and aspirations of the youth, but also love, sex and marriage, modern culture, corruption, riots and women emancipation. This research is a small attempt to study the theme of corruption in his novel Revolution 2020.

Introduction young techno crafts working with The term subaltern is also used to multinational companies living in the culture describe someone who has no political or of malls and multiplexes in the IT Hub like economic power such as a poor person living Bangalore, Delhi and Ahmadabad. Chetan under a dictatorship. Numerous writers Bhagat has a realization that education plays started exposing the social evil in their works. a vital role in the formation of the psyche of The literature of social protest is a branch of the youths of India. Lacking of balance and the literature of social criticism. In twentieth- aim oriented education system is the sign of Century most of the writers attempt to the sickness of society. Chetan Bhagat’s vision protest against various manifestations of was encouraged by the various dimensions of social evil-corruption riots and religious riots, the education patterns firmly holding the racial discrimination and gender social constructs. He is a super observer of discrimination and so on. Chetan Bhagat, a national weakness. He exposes his harmonious writer's novel expresses the indignation against the idea of narrow reality of contemporary society. He is an nationalism and evaluates the social changes Indian author, columnist, screenwriter, in the whole national perspective. television personality and motivational Chetan Bhagat latest novel Revolution speaker, known for his English language 2020 is hailed as the saga of ‘Love, Corruption dramedy novels about young urban middle- and Ambition’. It has got the credit of being class Indians. So, his novels got the credit of the ‘biggest selling novel’. It is again a being the ‘best sellers’ since their release. The criticism of the creeping of the virus of New York times called him “ the biggest corruption destructing the holiness of the selling English language novelist in India’s education system. The worthless craving history”. For Chetan Bhagat the art of fiction among youths, for the admission in IIT and is a safer way out of his restrained emotions AIEEE institution is soiling the crops of and the realization of imbalance existing in coaching classes. The narrative is focused society. around the struggle of life of three friends- Chetan Bhagat with his five celebrated Raghav , Gopal and Aarthi. Raghav is a novels changed the current of Indian English brilliant scholar who got his education from fiction. His five novels initiated a new era of an NIT. Gopal belongs to a family of very Indian fiction evoke the realities of life of limited sources. But, his baba manages at all. 65 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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He sends him to Kota in the hope of realization that it has all been made by admission in a good technical institution. He Raghav. It becomes a question of the security got admission in a renowned coaching. and existence of Gopal. However, all his efforts end in smoke. In Revolution 2020, the narrative moves Aarti, the daughter of District Magistrate, at the levels-one in context of own is an emblem of female beauty and female consciousness and other the progress of the grace. She is a sources of pleasure and college, minting of money and increase the consolation for both of them. Aarti inspires number of students. How Chetan Bhagat Gopal to get a new definition of life. For him, makes a mockery of the fact that these money becomes the source of honour and colleges are emerging on the ignorance and power. It is an association of an MLA that he hard earned money of the poor labourers and plans to open a technical institute. Chetan farmers. They are unaware of the reality of Bhagat presents an elaborate account of the these institutions. But, they have an aim t annals of corruptions and the handles with provide god education to their children. The skill involved in the process of opening the irony is remarkable in the observation. colleges. It reveals a favourite sector for the “Farmers’ kids, in particular, brought money investors and manipulators. However, the in gunny bags, with bundles of notes concern for the personal relationship and the accumulated over the years”(2020-188). It is quest for the reformation of the existing remarkable that Gopal’s mind remain corrupt system dominate the central texture unaffected with the commercial handling. of the novel Revolution 2020. Raghav and Chetan Bhagat introduces another issue Gopal in Revolution 2020, denotes the two of corruption that is the illegal constructions dimensions of the corrupt education system. that are ruining the beauty of the city. As At every stage Raghav is worried about soon as Gopal looks at the headline “Varanasi Gopal’s ambitious plan of Ganga Tech. He Nagar Nigam eats, builder cheats” (2020-190) raises questions, “What will be the faculty is shocked. It was another attack on the ratio?” and at the same time admits, “I can’t relationship of Gopal and Shukalaji. This be a part of a corrupt enterprise.” (2020-164) exposure of the picture of corruption marks on Shukalji, the MLA has a clear plan in his the relationship of Shuklaji and Gopal. He mind how to use his art for managing the has distinctive vision that the reformation is directors of the college. needed in the small cities where people are In Revolution 2020, Raghav acts a engrossed in ignorance. They are the easy mouthpiece of the author. He exposes the target for the so called custodians of evils furious in the education system. Shuklaji educational reforms like Sukhlaji. Gopal is is busy in publicity in the media and doubtful about Raghav’s action to change the newspaper to secure more and more world. There are long dialogues in the novel recognition for his institution. As a baffle to expressing the need of Revolution 2020 to his ambition Raghav in the newspaper save this world from demons approaching publishes an article with the headline. “New from all sides. engineering college opens in city with Chetan Bhagat’s reputation has been corruption, money?” (2020-175). The corrption rising in the contemporary Indian English news publishes in the newspaper of Daily fiction. His all novels and arguments against Dainik, that’s why CM cancels his visit to the deterioration and fragmentation of the appear on the occasion of inauguration. The values wide spread in the social conditions. single article becomes a challenge to the He is not only a writer but also a reputation of Ganga Tech to Gopal and representative of a specific class of young Shuklaji. Gopal is shocked and has a readers. His perception of these conditions 66 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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has deep special significance in the era of place. Power will always be with the youth. globalization and cybernatics. The novel Raghav has various visions that the Revolution 2020 has a rich integrated social reformation is required in the small cities, vision of Chetan Bhagat. The entire focus where people are covered with ignorance. remains on the deterioration and corruption Chetan Bhagat’s Revolution 2020 is not a ruining the basic foundation of national fantasy but a foretelling vision of life free security and national solidarity. from the horrible shadows of corruption and In Revolution 2020, Gopal joining kota filthy passion. Writing has the power to institution, only to fulfill his father’s dream. change the society. Chetan Bhagat selects But he fails in the NIT examination. His this non-violent weapon in order to prevent father is a school teacher who has not having the society from germs such as corruption, enough money to get a seat for his son in religious riots, communal riots and politician’s private engineering college. Gopal also tries to unconscience act. He gives a warning to the study in an arts college. The education system entire human society to destroy these of India does not give preference to the real diseases. If the people do not change this talents of the youth. This makes frustration to political system, however, they are going to the younger generation. He denotes the move towards disaster. The young generation disease of corruption in the education system. has to find out the correct solution otherwise Many brilliant youngsters missed out that they will lose quality education and job opportunity to get their higher education. It opportunities. Education can only be repulsed makes them angry. the disease of exploitation from our mother Conclusion land. Chetan Bhagat wants to dismantle the old corrupt system and put new one in the same

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INTERNALISED RACISM IN TONI MORRISON’S THE BLUEST EYE

Dr.P.Vanitha Assistant Professor of English, Arulmigu Palaniandavar Arts College for Women, Palani

Introduction care African Americans, begin to believe the Toni Morrison belongs to Harlam’s period stereotypes about themselves and imaging and helped to promote Black Literature and that European Americans are superior in authors when she worked as on editor for poetry, morality and intelligence. Morrison Random House in 1960s and 70s. Morrision focuses in on this problem of internalized herself would later emerge as one of the most racism as it affects children. important African – American writers of the The psychological mechanism of 20th century. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye internalized racism hinges on the cycle of was published in 1970 and it was written oppression. It is a complex phenomenon that during the years of some of the most dynamic affects all people who are touched by and tribulent transformations of Afro- oppressive systems, whether they are American life. Among her most famous novels assigned the role of oppressor or oppressed. is ‘Beloved’ which won the Pulitzer prize for The child is oppressed and because she / he is fiction in 1988.Morrisoni is the first African a child, she / he is unable to combat or resist American to win the Nobel Prize for her / his oppression. She / he is taught to react Literature. to injustice and hurts with different kinds of Internalized racism is loosely defined as disempothey’ red responses – silence, self- the internalization by people of racist abuse, depression, rage. When the child grows attitudes towards members of their own up in this oppressive system, her / his position ethnic group, including themselves. This can often shifts and she / he assumes the role of include the belief in ethnic stereotypes the oppressor. This cycle is especially clear relating to their own group. In the study of when seen in the oppression of children, but it the Psychology of Racism, Robin Nicole is also visible in the oppression of groups of Johnson writes that this definition does not people based on their ethinic identity. provide a sense of the complexities or In The Bluest Eye, the oppressors of dynamics of racism and proposes the Pecola have themselves been hurt by definition be ‘an individual’s conscious and oppressive adults and /or racist ideology. unconscious acceptance of a racial hierarchy Morrison is very careful to point out that in which whites are consistently ranked above people are not born with the tendency to hurt People of Colour’. This definition is notable in other people; instead, they are taught to do so that it does not take a ‘colourblind’ approach when they themselves are hurt. A perfect to racism, and articulates an uneven potheyr example of this phenomenon is Pauline, dynamic between white and non-white people. Mrs.Breedlove. She is rejected by the women Toni Morrison interwines the concerns of in the Lorain community because she bears two main themes in her novel The Bluest Eye. the marks of her colour and class too overtly She explores the tragedy of the oppression or she theyars her hair natural, she theyars the violation of children, especially poor children clothing of country people, she speaks with a and she explores a problem specific to groups southern accent. Pauline responds by targeted by racism, that of internalized adopting the oppressor’s discourse, racism. This is a kind of thinking produced particularly the discourse on physical beauty. when members of the targeted group, in this Measured against it, Pauline is ugly and her

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white employers are beautiful and deserving of what the appearance that she was treated of all her care and love. Pauline thereby poorly and that if she had a more refined accepts her assigned role on the hierarchy of beauty, she would be adored. If she looked colour, beauty and privilege. This role leaves different, beautiful, may be Cholly would be his incapable of caring for her daughter or different, and Mrs.Breedlove too. Pecola’s anyone in her family. misconception led her to believe that because Pecola is born into this ideology of she was dark and unattractibve, she deserved racialized beauty. She doesn’t have a chance to be mistreated and abused. She thought she from the beginning. Her mother has placed all deserved to witness animalistic activity her care in her job and she has internalized because she did not have delicate Caucasian the message that black is ugly and white is feature. beautiful to such an extent that she sees In this novel, Morrison seems to focus on Pecola as an ugly ball of black hair when she the feelings of self hatred that are not limited is born. She and Cholly seem to have given to black girls alone. Boys receive just as much Pecola no love and no nurturance. They are so negative feedback from the white community, preoccupied by their own war on each other but they are far more likely to direct their that they never seem to notice the damage it emotions and relation outward, inflicting pain is causing their daughter. on others before the pain turns inward and Morrison also exposes the problem of the destroys them. Cholly and Junior are prime oppression of children. In her novel, The examples. The Bluest Eyes provides an Bluest Eye, she depicts the world from a extended deception of the ways in which child’s point of view. The child is regarded as internalized white beauty standards deform less than human. She is not spoken to directly the lives of black girls and women. Implict by an adult. She is accorded to physical messages that whiteness us superior are integrity; instead she is hit and pushed everywhere, including the white baby doll around at the whim of the physically superior given to Claudia, the idealization of Shirley adult. She is not listened to or believed. In Temple, the consensus that light – skinned fact, she has no voice. She is regarded as an Maureen is cuter than the other black girls, inconvenience. Children act out their the idealization of white girl she works over oppression by adults on their children. her daughter . Adult women, having learned Morrison shows this cycle of oppression in the to hate the blackness of their children- treatment of Pecola by other children in her Mrs.Breed Love shares the conviction that community. They also grow up to act out their Pecola is ugly, and lighter-skinned own hurts on their children. They see this Geraldinecurses Pecola’s blackness. especially in the abandoned child, Cholly Pecola’s desire for blue eyes, is based on Breedlove, who grows up to become a one correct insight into her world; she dysfunctional father, who tragically rapes his believes that the cruelty she witnesses and daughter, Pecola. The rape of a child is experiences is connected to how she is seen. If thereby given to the reader in two forms, she had beautiful blue eyes, Pecola images, psychological and physical. Morrison this people would not want to do ugly things in combines a vivid critique of internalized front of her or to her. The accuracy of this racism with a critique of what might be called insight is affirmed by her experience of being adultism. teased by the boys- when Maureen comes to Internal Racism is another cause and her rescue, it seems that they no longer want result of sexual abuse. Pecola had an to behave badly under Maureen’s attractive undeniable self contempt because she gaze. In a more basic sense, Pecola and her understood the concept of beauty was opposite family are mistreated in part because they 69 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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happen to have black skin. By wishing for remainder of human cruelty and an emblem blue eyes rather than lighter skin, Pecola of human suffering. In this particular novel, indicates that she wishes to see things Morrison has attempted to examine the differently as much as she wishes to be seen societal and situational forces working differently. She can only receive this wish, in against an extremely vulnerable little girl and effect, by blinding herself. Pecola is then able hoped to get at a truth about those societal to see herself and the world around her. The forces. connection between how one is seen and the what one sees has a uniquely tragic outcome References for her. 1. A Warkward Micheal, Inspiriting Thus Pecola stands as a symbol of the Influences; Tradition, Revision & Afro – black community’s self-hatred and belief in its American Women’s Novels, Colombia own ugliness. Others in the community, University – Press. (NewYork NY), 1999 including her mother, father and Geraldine, 2. Bell, Roseann P.editor, Sturdy Black act out their own self-hatred towards her. At Bridges; Visions of Black Women in the end of the novel, it is told that Pecola has Literature, Doubleday (Newyork, NY been a scapegoat for the entire community. 1999) Her ugliness has made them feel beautiful, 3. Christian, Barbara, Black Women her suffering has made them feel Novelists; The Development of Traditions, comparatively lucky, and her silence has 1898- 1976 Green wood press (Columbia, given them the opportunity for speaking. But SC), 1996 because she continues to live after she has 4. Holloway, Karla and Dematrakopoulos, lost her mind, Pecola’s aimless wandering at Stephanina New Dimensions of the edge of town haunts the community, spirituality: A Birarcial and Bicultural remaining them of the ugliness and hatred reading of the Novels of Toni Morrison, that they have tried to repress. She becomes a Greenwood press (West Port, CT) 1987.

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THE THEME OF MARITAL DISHARMONY IN ANITA DESAI’S WHERE SHALL WE GO THIS SUMMER?

R.Rajalakshmi Assistant Professor, Devanga Arts College, Aruppukottai

Abstract The Purpose of this paper is to project the suffering of women in Anita Desai’s Where Shall We Go This Summer? Anita Desai has introduced marital disharmony as a central theme. Anita Desai portrays a woman who suffers from isolation and marginalized physically, socially and emotionally. Anita Desai presented her female characters in search of their identity in the male dominated world. Anita Desai in her present novel explores the marital disharmony of a common woman. Keywords: Marital disharmony, identity, quest, marginalization

Introduction society. Marriage is a union of two different The present study studies marital minds, some adjustment is bound to be there, disharmony in the novels of Anita Desai. and this adjustment should naturally come Desai’s heroines are occupied with the from both the sides- the husband and the difficulties of fulfillment and self definition in wife. In Indian social situation, if a marriage man’s world, the conflicting claims of self- is successful then credit is rarely given to a hood, wife-hood and mother-hood. Desai focus woman for her contribution to make it on the psychological exploration of inner mind successful. In fact, it becomes successful of Indian women in the Indian novels in because of her grace, love, wisdom and a English. Desai explored deep into the inner sense of understanding, tolerance and mind of the depressed women. Desai has a sacrifice. If a marriage becomes unsuccessful definite idea of a happy conjugal life. Some of then the woman is sometimes held her young immature, romantic heroines seem responsible for the same. All the marriages in to have only a rainbow dream. The concept of Anita Desai’s novels are more or less business marriage which is related to a delicate union transactions. A marriageable daughter is of two different minds has not been properly handed over to the male-partner without realized in most of the Indian male-dominated considering the delicacy of her mind and families. Woman’s individual identity has not feelings. been positively and open-mindedly realized in She has to fulfill either the parent’s Indian social life. Woman has never been responsibilities or the relative’s demands with accepted as a full-human being. She is taken different intentions. But sometimes this for granted on number of fronts. This casual peaceful order is caused violently, the shadow attitude causes her consistent suffering and batters its head against the iron fists of its miserable life. owner and manages to leave a few blood Indian women have to keep their mouth stains, a wife revolts, runs away, commits shut and remain silent because of unfavorable suicide, becomes murderer, finds a great deal circumstances imposed on her through their of freedom in blessed widowhood. Anita Desai husbands. It is always expected from Indian humbly admits that she is allergic to writing women to be ideal wives like Sita and Savitri. social novels; however, she is involved in the Desai’s women are the victims of exploitation, problems of marital discord and the separation, negligence. It is always reminded hypocrisy, the faithlessness and the soul- to them that woman has no significance and destroying, grinding process of compromise dignity without her husband in Indian which accompany it.

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In each of her novels, we encounter attitude to life. He ignored Sita. He had some traumatic experiences of married lives. She business-minded friends. They used to visit fearlessly puts forward the fact that in Raman’s house and talk about business only. society, marriages generally follow the jungle Sita did not like their business mindedness. law of the survival of the fittest. Being Raman never tried to understand Sita. They physically stronger, man survives. Anita lived together; he did not even know this basic Desai’s novel ‘Where Shall We Go This fact of her existence that she was bored, dull, Summer?’ provides a passionate commentary unhappy and frantic. During the first few upon the maladjustment that spiritually years of their married life, they lived with his renders Raman and Sita totally homeless. parents and other relatives in there are-rotted Disaster inclines from the very beginning. flat of Queens Road. Sita never got used to Sita’s marriage to Raman was unsteadily anyone. She revolted against their subhuman moving to the point of collapse. placidity, calmness and sluggishness. The It actually collapse when sita goes away sense of alienation as an existential problem to Manori Island, hoping that she would be is greater in this novel that in the others. saved through miracle from giving birth to a Sita’s condition is symbolic of the unrelied fifth child in this violent and greatly loneliness of a modern woman, in the garb of destructive world around her. Anita Desai has a wife, a mother and a daughter. This explicitly presented a sense of alienation in loneliness is conditioned by her family and Where Shall we Go This Summer? Sita’s society in general. condition is representative of the loneliness of Her neurosis is the direct result of clash a woman, a wife, a mother- a loneliness between the hypocritical outer world of her conditioned by family and society. Sita’s marriage and her inherent honest that resists mental disturbances are the direct result of a any opportunistic compromise. The clash between the hypocritical world and her maladjustment between Raman and Sita is inherent honesty that resists any such based on the clash of values, of principles, of compromise. Marital disharmony clearly faith even, or between normal, double social strikes us in Where Shall we Go This standards and the iconoclastic attitude of Summer? Sita is changed from an ordinary uncompromising honesty. The marital discord wife and mother into a creature who lost all between Raman and Sita is based on the feminine, all maternal belief in childbirth. conflict of values, of principles, of faith even Sita’s marriage to Raman was not settled or between normal, double social standards through proper understanding and love and the iconoclastic temperament of between them. Her marriage was settled “and uncompromising honesty. finally- out of pity, out of lust, out of a sudden It is a clash between the compromises will for adventure and because it was with disappointment, as Raman puts it and inevitable, he married”. Sita is highly the capacity to say the Great No if and when sensitive, emotional and touchy; carelessness needed, as believed by Sita this is not simply on Maneks’s part in breaking all the buds a case of an emancipated woman revolting unconsciously disturbs her mental peace. against the slavish bonds of marriage. It is Her sons used to play roughly. They used much more than that, it is a question of the to throw their bodies at each other playfully. basic truth that is bitter and naked and can It is an act of violence and destruction to Sita. neither be hidden, nor be is halved to suit She is so sensitive and unbearable to her. She individuals. The layers of experience, finds it extremely difficult to adjust with melancholy and boredom make Sita wait for Raman and his relatives. Raman was a something: “Sita was always waiting. businessman. He had a purely business Physically so resigned, she could not inwardly 72 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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accept that this was all there was to life, that again as of release”. If reality were not to be life would continue thus, inside this small, borne, then illusion was the only alternative”. enclosed are, with these few characters Sita’s revolt is representative of an intelligent churning around and then past her, leaving sensitive woman’s revolt against the male her always in this grey, dull-lit empty shell. I smugness and philistinism trampling all finer am waiting, she agreed- although for what, values in marital life. she could not tell.” Sita never thought of the life she was required to live after her References marriage- a life of dullness, hopelessness, 1. Desai Anita, Where Shall We Go This boredom and disappointments: Summer? New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, “It was as though he had been expressly 1995. sent by providence to close the theatrical era 2. Jasbir, Jain, ‘Anita Desai’ an essay of her life, her strange career and lead her out published in Indian English Novelists: An of the ruined theatre into the thin sunlight of Anthology of Critical Essays, Ed, the ordinary, the everyday, the empty and the Madhusudan Prasad, New Delshi: Sterlin meaningless.” “Knowing that, accepting that, Publishers, 1982. she knew it was because ordinary life, the 3. Gopal N.R. A Critical Study Of The everyday world had grown so insufferable to Novels Of Anita Desai, Atlantic her that she could think of the magic Island Publishers: New Delhi, 1995.

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DIASPORA WRITING IN CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI’S “ARRANGED MARRIAGE”

Mrs.M.Akila Assistant Professor, Department of English(PG.), Ayya Nadar Janaki Ammal College, Sivakasi

A.Mary Glory II MA English, Department of English, ANJA College, Sivakasi

Abstract The story “Cloths” is from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s short story collection “Arranged Marriage”. It portrays the link between the clothes of a person and their identity. The story is about an Indian young woman, Sumita and her cultural transition to America. Saree is a unique and an important part of Indian identity and culture. Saree is not just a cloth but it is her feeling, hope and life. The color of Saree reflects her life style. Chitra Banerjee gives detail about the color of Saree and what it implies. The different colors of Saree depict a different meaning for her. Keywords: color, Saree, reflection of Indian culture, Identity of woman, skirt and blouse, western and independent woman.

Introduction while struggling with a failed marriage. Chitra Banerjee’s short story collection Sumita in “Clothes” is an Indian girl who “Arranged Marriage” attempts to explore the accepts the westernized cultural. When her complexities of such cross- cultural identities husband dies, she is able to come out of it. In faced by the main character. The stories order to fulfill her husband's dream she examine the inner and outer journey of decides to stay in America as a alone woman. women in a foreign land. Most of people in her She adapts westernized culture and becomes stories migrate from India and settle in a rejuvenated woman. In all the works of America. She tries to describe the experiences Chitra Banerjee women emerge as strong of those people who have migrated from their women and ultimately fulfill their longing to homelands to foreign shores due to various lead lives. reasons. The relationships in the Eastern cultures Migration not only means crossing are family centric. Everyone needs some borders but it also involves the barriers of familial approval before taking a step towards language, culture and tradition in addition to something as personal and important as inner barriers. In the book, she mainly 'marriage'. This is also one of the reasons why focuses on the migration of people. The main arranged marriages are still relevant to the characters in her stories are brought up in Eastern societies. In the western civilization, India and settled in America in the name of the 'self' is given preference over family. The marriage, job and studies. All the women idea of independence exists only in the characters in the stories, struggle with inner western culture. In the East, independence conflicts. But they are all found to be very comes only with several conditions. No bold to take off their new journey. individual can be truly independent in the Amidst the new surroundings the East, where the bond with family precedes characters encounter racial, language, anything related to self. cultural and personal problems. For example: In “Clothes” Sumita's father does not ask Pratima in “silver pavements, Golden roofs” any permission to arrange her marriage. He fights with the feelings of estrangement and doesn’t even mind about her desire. He just emotional confinement in a foreign land. Abha shows the photo to her before the day of bride in “Affair” attempts to create an identity viewing. He counsels her that Somesh is a

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good man and he will be kind to her. She America is a materialistic world. In thinks about her life which is going to move western culture, they do not give importance without her parents. She has to move far to natural things. In East, women are still away from her parents. She wants to express regarded as those who would sacrifice their her feelings but she believes that it is the professional life and career in the favor of destiny of every women: rearing children and taking care of family. “Mother was always telling me, to leave This is not prevalent in the West. A female in the known for the unknown. She had done it the West is free to decide her priorities and and her mother before her. A married woman something as basic as when to marry or even belongs to her husband and her in – laws” bear children. The same luxury or right is not (pg.18) granted to the women of the East. She doesn’t want to reject the groom According to Indian culture, clothing that because her father worked hard to find this is appropriate to women includes saree, match for her. Eastern culture has limited salwar- kameez and chudidhar that are not freedom of speech and made women quietly too revealing or right in fitting. India is still a accept whatever the family members thrust male driven society and gender equality is don them in the name of marriage. Sometimes being fought for by woman in many rural may women express their emotions but only places in India, where women are still in a subtlest way. In India, especially considered lesser to men. In western side, a daughters don't have courage to go beyond person can wear clothing according to their their parents’ decisions. wish. Eastern culture focuses more on In ‘’Clothes’’ Sumita appears in Sareein “collectivism” which means they have large front of her in-laws and in bedroom she feels supportive families. Western culture focuses comfortable in her Jean and T-shirt. In on “individualism” which means every person western culture, even a dress indicates one's has to earn for his/ her livelihood. They also independent identity. Sumita does not have have freedom of speech. They give more freedom to wear jeans in front of her in-laws. priority to marriages that are made in the In India, the color of clothes indicates has its name of love. In the story “Door”, Preeti is own meaning. 'Yellow' signifies an raised in U.S. and she adapts to the culture of approaching new experience or peace, 'Pale America. When she comes to the age of pink’ signifies the Color of transition, 'Red' is marriage, she selects her life partner. Her the Color of luck to married woman, 'Blue' is mother does not like Deepak as he is from the Color of possibility. India. She feels that Deepak is not a suitable Society plays an active part in a person's man for her daughter. But Preeti pushes life. Every decision that a person takes, aside her mother's caution. Here, reflects what the society thinks about it. In individuality plays a vital role. India, people kill their own needs and desires In “clothes”, Chitra Banerjee beautifully because they live to others' desires. In West, portrays even the minute details of the nature people take decisions depending on what they and the childhood days of Mita: want and not what the society thinks. They “I will always love them and all the things are open-minded and give priority to the we did together through my growing-up years- things that make them truly happy. visiting the Charak fair where we always ate In “clothes”, Sumita dreams that she will too many sweets ,raiding the neighbor’s guava count green dollars and silver quarters in her tree summer afternoons while the grown-ups shop where smiling young men raise their slept, telling fairy tales while we braided each beer mugs and she will charm the customer other's hair in elaborate patterns we'd with her smile, so that they will return again invented”(pg:15) and again just to her telling them to have a

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nice day. These are all the dreams that she shoulders and stand taller, take a deep has. Somesh is an American man, and he breath…The thought I’d like an unexpected respects her dream. If it is in India, a father intimate gift..In the mirror a woman holds my or a husband will not allow women to stand in gaze, her eyes apprehensive yet steady”(pg:23) analeshop. They consider it to be immoral and Chitra Banerjee describes the cross naturally they demolish their dreams. After cultural experience of womanhood. The her husband's death, she has undergone some author herself lived in India for nineteen difficulties. Old Mrs.Ghosh is an orthodox years before immigrating to the USA. Her woman. She performs the rituals to Sumita works shows the effect of globalization on the that has to be done to a woman after the lives of people. The protagonists in her stories expiry of her husband. find themselves torn between the traditional “Old Mrs.Ghosh performed the ritual, values that have been embedded in their since she's a widow, too. She took my hands in minds and the new perspective they have hers and brought them down hard on the gained with time. bedpost, so that the glass bangles I was Both the cultures have their own wearing shattered and multi-colored shards significance and we can’t say that one is flew out in every direction. Some landed on the better than the other. We should respect both body that was on the bed, covered with a sheet. and follow our own culture. Every culture has I can’t call is aimed. He was gone already. She its own pros and cons. Each culture has a set took an edge of the sheet and rubbed the red of negative and positive points. They are marriage mark off my forehead” (pg: 20) similar to the two sides of the same coin. Her in-laws are good people and when Many people these days opt to take positive someone asked if her head hair should be points from both cultures and live as it suits tonsured they said no. These are the rituals them. that are followed in India. When a woman lost Both Indian culture and western culture her husband it gives immense pain to a are right at their places. There is a lot a learn woman that cannot be understood by anyone. from both the cultures. Indian culture has These types of rituals are not present in the been influenced by the western culture and West. The Saree marks a big change in Easterners also adopting the merits of the Sumita's life. She is supposed to wear white western culture like cleanliness, equal rights, Saree. She is expected to go back to India and frankness etc. Similarly western culture is live as a lonely and dependent woman. But also getting an Indian touch regarding Indian Sumita decides to stay back in America. cuisine and yoga. “Because all over India, at this very moment, widows in white Sarees are Boeing References their veiled heads, serving tea to in-laws 1. www.shortstoryinsights.com/home.arrang .Doves with Cut- off wings”(pg:22) ed-marriage-by-chitra-banerjee- As a daughter in law , one must cover her divakaruni head with her Saree, serve tea to her in law's, 2. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/944 hide over sexual desires and never address 68.Arranged-Marriage her husband by his name these are all the 3. Pande, R. (2014). Geographies of marriage signs of respect in India. Instead Sumita and migration: Arranged marriages and wears a blouse and skirt of almonds. She South Asians in Britain. Geography prepares herself to face the arguments Compass, 8(2), 75-86 against her decision. She is ready to take off a 4. Abraham, M. (2005) Domestic violence new journey. and the Indian diaspora in the United “I am standing infront of the mirror how, States. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, gathering up the Saree …I straighten my 12(2-3),pp. 427-451.

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LITERATURE AS SOCIAL DISCOURSE LIFE OF AGONY: A STUDY OF PHILIP ROTH’S NOVEL NEMESIS

T.Malarvalli Assistant Professor of English (SF), Devanag Arts College (Autonomous), Aruppukottai

Abstract Nemesis is a 2010 complex and contemporary novel by American author Philip Roth portrays the summer of 1944, when a terrible epidemic raged Newark, New Jersey. This novel Nemesis reveals the suffering, struggle, love, panic, tenderness of Newark people because of outbreak of polio. This paper deals with the anguish, defense, and mediocrity of Newark people.

Introduction space, social relations and what was not Philip Milton Roth is an American depicted” (Cobley 91). Arnie Mesnikoff is the novelist. Roth was born in Newark, New narrator of this novel. He is one among the Jersey on March 19, 1933, and he grew up in boy of Chanceller Avenue School in Newark. its Weequahic neighborhood. Most of his The novel begins with the outbreak of novels explore the theme of soreness of polio and its impact and how it affects the Jewish people in America. This novel Nemesis American city of Newark, New Jersey: also represents the undue level of anguish of In 1916 polio spread in the Northeastern Newark people. Roth explains excessive United States with 27,000 cases, and suffering of people in Newark from his work. 6,000 deaths. Newark was also affected by Nemesis is a thirty first book of Philip polio with 1,360 cases and 263 deaths “the Roth. It highlights the life of agony in 1916 polio epidemic in the northeastern Newark, New Jersey in America. The United states, when there had been more protagonist of the novel Mr. Bucky Cantor is a than 27,000 cases, with 6,000 deaths. In twenty-three year old, a grade school gym Newark there had been 1,360 cases and teacher and playground director at Chanceller 363 deaths”. (2) Avenue School in Newark, New Jersey 1944. These numbers of cases create panic to This novel brings out the polio epidemic and Newark people’s life. They want to protect its causes in the city of Newark. This furious their children’s future because polio mainly disease terribly attacks the Newark children. affected young children without any Cantor takes the responsibility for the prominent reason: protection of the children under his care. In Polio—or infantile paralysis, as it was Newark, people are all believe that Cantor as called when the disease was thought to a redeemer. infect mainly toddlers—could befall This paper is an analysis of the people anyone, for no apparent reason. Though fierce discussion of polio epidemic in Newark. children up to sixteen were usually the Their talk is based on the people’s different sufferers, adults too could become outlook of agony, panic, furious and severely infected, as had the current mediocrity. Roth expresses Newark people’s president of the United States. (3) sufferings through his different storytelling Polio outbreak mainly affected an adults techniques. In the book Narrative the New and children. In that time Franklin Delano Critical Idiom “Narrative mode, then, was Roosevelt who is the president of the United once again demonstrably more than just a States, thirty-nine year old, also infected with matter of accurately depicting the actions of polio. individual characters: it was a matter of time, 77 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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The people of Newark, New Jersey The polio bulletin, which was also consider that how to recues their children broadcast every day on the local radio from the polio infection? They don’t know how station, kept Newarkers up to date on the it was come and spread to healthy children. number and location of every new case in They become suspicious of everything due to the city. So far this summer, what people their lack of awareness: heard or read there was never what they Since nobody then knew the source of the hoped to find there—that the epidemic contagion, it was possible to grow was on the wane—but rather that tally of suspicious of almost anything, including new cases had increased yet again from the bony alley cats that invaded our the day before. (131) backyard garbage cans and the haggard People collect the news about polio attack stray dogs that slinked hungrily around in Newark through the Medias. Day by day the houses and defecated all over the people start serious talk of polio infection sidewalk and street and the pigeons that because of their panic and mediocrity. They cooed in the gables of the houses and don’t know what to do? And how will prevent dirtied front stoops with their chalky their life from outbreak of polio. Bus drivers droppings. (5-6) are not entering the Weequahic section and A lot of rumor spread with in the air post man also refuse to deliver the mail at all: about the polio. Polio outbreak spread all over The bus drivers on the eight and fourteen the city of Newark, especially reach into the lines say they won’t drive into the Weequahic section. In July 1944 a few Weequahic section unless they have Italians come from the East Side High to the protection masks. Some say they won’t playground at Chancellor Avenue School in drive in there at all. The mailmen don’t Newark. They threat Cantor with their words, want to deliver mail there. The truck “We’re spreadin’ polio,” (13). Again they say drivers who transport supplies to the “We got it and you don’t, so we thought we’d stores, to the groceries, to the gas drive up and spread a little around” (14). stations, and so on don’t want to go in After their words Cantor calls the police, so either. (192-193) that Italians run away from the playground. They don’t have any awareness about After this incident within two days a polio attack. A few public places are also number of new case of polio attack in Newark. restricted for children: The people of Newark think that is the reason Movie theaters are shutting down for of Italians who had threatened Cantor. children under sixteen. The city pool is Likewise people want to talk of polio attack in shutting down. The public library with all a different manner. Through their discourse its branches is shutting down. Pastors are they wanted to save their children’s life from shutting down Sunday schools. It’s all in the polio. Their first thing is that they were the paper. Schools might not open on prohibited their children from the using few schedule if things continue like this. (193- common things. Parents also instruct their 194) children don’t get books from the public So, parents are all sent off their children library and then don’t eat food without clean to summer camp in the Poconos Mountains their hands. for protection. This summer camp located at Not only people but also newspapers take the some sixty miles away from the Jersey it to the front page. Furthermore radio shore in Newark. Parents of the children give telecast increase people’s fear. The media some fee to the summer camp for their gives up to date details of polio to people: children’s defense. In that Poconos Mountains children are get fresh air, circumstance is 78 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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very clean so they were led their life as Philip Milton Roth’s novel Nemesis healthy “There the mother and the children depicts the agony of Newark people. Roth also would go to the beach to breathe in the fresh, represents the social discourse through fortifying ocean air all week long and be people’s panic, mediocrity, lack of knowledge joined on weekends and vacations by the and undue sufferings. father” (7). At Poconos Mountains children always gets pure water, fresh air, and References hygienic food. Summer camp directors also 1. Roth, Philip. Nemesis. London: Vintage contact physical games. This circumstance Books, 2011.Print. makes children as healthy and protect from 2. Cobley, Paul. Narrative the New Critical the polio infection. Idiom. London: New Petter Lane, 2001. Print.

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HYPERSENSITIVITY IN ANITA DESAI’S CRY, THE PEACOCK

B.Lavanya Assistant Professor, A.P.A.C.W, Palani

Introduction relation to the world. Even in male Feminism is a range of political dominated, tradtion oriented society such movements, ideologies, and social movements women charactersadjust well are able to that share a common goal to define establish establish their own value system and inner and achieve political, economic personal and potentiality enbles them to resist unjust social social equality of sexes. This includes seeking pressre. to establish educational and professional Anita desai is a one of the most powerful opportunities for women that equal to those contemporary Indian novelist in English . she for men. was born in mussorie. She begin to write in Post- colonial history of Indian English English at the age of seven and published her fiction ,a wide variety of novelist have first story at the age of nine. Her father was emerged focusing attention on a multitude of Bengali business man mother was a German social, economical, political religious and origin. spiritual issues. Desai is considered the writer who The second generations of Indian English introduced the psychological novel in the women novelist have favorably responded to tradition of Virginia Woolf to India included the changed psychological realties of Indian in this, is her pioneer status of writing of life especially after independence. To this feminist issues. Anita is a guide star for many group belong writers like Bharathi bright younger writers. Desai has got a Mukherjee, Anita desai, Jhabvla, These distinguished place as her workers are women writers intellectual standards have different from other women writers like sharpened their observation of life and Nayanthra sahagal, Kamala Markandaya imparted a psychological depth in their because Desai’s novels unravels beautifully writings. Most post- modern Indian women the mystery of the inner life of her characters. novelist indulge exploring the feminine Anita Desai is a well-structured plot writer. consciousness of the women characters , their Cry, the Peacock, Desai’s first novel, is evolution towards an awakened concise and divided into three sections: a short how eventually this leads to enriching of their introduction and conclusion in objective, inner self in a male dominated society. third-person narrative, and a long subjective In the novels of second generation women middle section narrated by the neurotic writers usually three different types of heroine, Maya. In Maya’s narrative, Desai consequence are seen. In first group are such employs stream of consciousness to fill in females who are hyper- sensitive and after details of Maya’s past and to chronicle the self introspection they plunge further into progressive deterioration of both Maya’s dark dismal depths of neurosis. In the second relationship with her husband, Gautama, and group women portrays women characters who her own mental poise and sanity. In the silently suffer strain of life and become climax, Maya, a slave to the fate she has idealists. The third group women who feared, kills Gautama in accordance with the discover new and important discoveries about prophecy of an astrologer. The novel ends themselves resulting in a sobering effect on with her total mental collapse. them and find a sense a fulfillment in their

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Maya is the sensitive, poetic, intuitive, her loneliness, non-reciprocation of feeling and unstable type of personality that appears between the husband and wife. Her consistently in Desai’s fiction. She is childreness and her hypersensitivity. Maya on extremely sensitive to the beauty around the extreme is fragile with deep cultural roots her—the flowers and fruits in the garden, the and refined sensibilities. trees and plants, the sky and the seasons, her Anita Desai is not only explores and pets and other animals—in brief, the whole portrays the feminine psyche of a common gamut of nature. Gautama, her husband, is woman but also of the sub normal bordering her opposite: He is insensitive to transient on abnormal women. Maya character that beauty; a pure rationalist, he is concerned comes to our mind is that of hyper sensitive only with absolutes. The characters’ names character because of her loneliness. She is themselves epitomize their irreconcilability: almost a mental wreck. She dreads that she Maya means “illusion,” and Gautama is the would lose her mental balance Gautama says name of the Buddha, who was able to rend the “still sitting there? You haven’t stirred veil of maya. Thus, while Maya revels in the out? world of the senses, Gautama rejects it Haven’t litted up a book, your sewing? entirely. According to the astrologer’s Nothing at all? But this is madness,maya prophecy, one of them must die. Maya decides Madness? I screamed, leaping up at him, to kill Gautama because, in her view, he has to strike him , to stab him. And began to rejected all that makes life worth living; Cry hysterically (CP- 178) hence, to her, he is already “dead.” Unable to This mental retrogression suggests that resolve her conflict with Gautama, Maya Maya has not been able to adjust herself in pushes him from a terrace, thereby the world of reality and after killing her terminating her struggle. husband. She mentally goes back of her Anita Desai has dealt with sterile woman protected and pampered childhood, the best highly sensitive and emotional who is married part of the life. The character of Maya is to Gautama, a promising, prosperous and over Anita Desai has presented the feminine busy practitioner of law. She lives to use her psyche of both girl and woman. own words, like “a toy prince in a toy world” The novel give us an impression of the References marital in capability and unhappy conjugal 1. Desai, Anita “Cry, the peacock”, orient life. This novel begins with the death of paperpacks, 1980. Print. Maya’s pet dog Toto. This makes matter 2. Myle, Anita,” Feminism and the post- verse. This event upsets Maya so terribly that modern Indian women novelist in she is off her mental balance. English”, saruup & sons, New Delhi, Anita Desai is art of reading women’s 2006.print. psychic self, which reveals maya’s inner 3. N.R.Gopal, “A critical study of the novels thoughts. Maya is a hyper sensitive woman of Anitha Desai”, Atlantic publishers, introvere maya’s tragedy is mainly caused by New Delhi1999. Print.

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AN INSIGHT INTO SUBALTERN STUDIES

Dr.J.Sripadmadevi Assistant Professor, Department of English (SF), Nirmala College for Women, Coimbatore Tamilnadu

Abstract Subaltern studies is a persuasive academic stream, which focusses on the critique of the role of the marginalised people in all walks of their lives. The term ‘Subaltern’ came from the writings of Antonio Gramsci and broadly can be referred to the subordination in terms of class, caste, gender, race, language and culture. It has started its impressive journey in England at the end of 1970s, when discourses on subaltern themes amidst a group of Indian and English historians ensued with a launch of new journal in India titled “Subaltern Studies”. Published by Oxford University Press in New Delhi, it appeared annually from 1982, edited by Ranajit Guha. The inception of this journal stemmed mainly from the nationalist historians of India and of orthodox Marxists and gradually ended with diverse themes on subalternity. The present study focusses on this stance of subaltern and its varied forms in the expedition of subaltern historiography. Keywords: Subaltern, post-colonial theory, subalternity.

Introduction entered postcolonial studies through the In the general context, the term venture of Subaltern Studies Group – a group ‘Subaltern’ describes the lower classes and the of south Asian scholars who are involved in social groups who are marginalised in the the post-colonial and post imperial societies society. In the analytical arenas of Post- with a specific focus on South Asia. As it has colonialism, it recognizes and designates the started its expedition in the beginning of person who is socially, politically and 1980s, its prime focus on to promote the study geographically outside of the hegemonic and discussion of the marginalised themes. power structure of the colony of colonial Subsequently, the principle aim is to resolve mother country. Meanwhile, according to the ‘elitist bias’, which is very dominant in Marxist tenet, the civil sense of the term most of the academic works in South Asian ‘subaltern’ was first coined by the Italian Studies. Being the reflection of colonial communist intellectual Antonio Gramsci. He experiences of the colonised Indian used this term in his discussion of the subcontinent, subaltern studies transformed hegemony of the ruling classes over the by itself from an intellectual discourse into a subordinate classes, such as the workers and post-colonial critique. From its inception it peasants in the late ninetieth and early ensued into a major progression in South twentieth century. Gradually, the word Asian historiography and posed a robust ‘subaltern’ collectively addresses any group challenge to existing historic scholarship. that is wholly left out of the elite. Subaltern studies sharply stamp its foot In the 1970s,on the other hand, the term in 1982, when a collective of South Asian ‘Subaltern’ begun to denote the colonized scholars trained in the West wanted to people of the Indian subcontinent and reclaim their history. Their prime intention is described a new perspective of the history of to recapture the history of the marginalised an imperial colony as portrayed from the classes and to amplify their muted perspective of the colonised rather than experiences. Deeply influenced by Eric Stokes colonisers. Nearly after decade, around 1980s, and Ranajit Guha, the scholars ventured to it has gradually stepped up as an frame a new approach to the history of India ‘intervention in South Asian historiography’. and South Asia. They began a publication of a While this term gained prominence in the journal titled “Subaltern Studies”; the content intellectual discourse, ‘subaltern studies’ of which is apparently explicated byAmrita

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Biswas in “Research Note on Subaltern diverse themes within the domain of Studies”: subaltern. Historians have perceived that the Much of the collective’s early work dealt later volumes of the journal “Subaltern with the politics of peasants who had been Studies” are dominated by the craving to involved in the mass movements that study the depiction of subalternity by the ultimately led to India’s independence. leading discourses. Apart from these volumes The journal’s inauguration stemmed from a number of books appeared in the decades of a critique both of nationalist historians of 80s and 90s. Historians like Partha India, who tended to focus on the local Chatterjee made notable contributions in this elites, and of orthodox Marxists, whose respect. His works proved crucial at this restriction of the concept of the working juncture to understand that engagement with classes to industrial workers alone was, as elite themes is not altogether new to the the members of the subaltern studies subalterns. collective argued, Eurocentric and badly Undoubtedly, Subaltern school has made suited to the varied economy of the Indian a great impact in the realm of post- subcontinent.(1) colonialism as well as Indian historiography. Although the Subaltern Studies journal Eventually, it has enormously contributed to was inscribed and advanced chiefly by analyse the historical and societal milieu of Indians reviewing Indian history, the the Third world countries towards the end of originators of the project were extant across the Twentieth century. As B.K. Das claims, the Commonwealth, and the influences on the “Literature is not a branch of Social sciences project were global. and therefore cannot be evaluated according Largely influenced by its persistent to the methods adopted by Subaltern Studies” postcolonial critique, Indian history procured (147). Thus, it has become a predominant a different perception. The Nationalist and area in the field of postcolonial theory in the Cambridge Schools became the focal point literature and its application is indeed very of their criticism as these schools have elite effective to analyse varied literary texts in the based analysis of history. They also context of subalternity. challenged the Marxist School, as Amrita As the theme of subaltern and its varied Biswas vehemently avers in “Research Note forms occupy the vital focus of the subaltern on Subaltern Studies”: studies, eventually, the notion of subalternity … due to the fact that their mode of has underwent a notable shift in the production based narratives have a succeeding years, by having shown divergence tendency of merging inevitably into the in interest, motives and theories. Despite of nationalist ideology of modernity and these changes, the dominant root of the progress. Moreover, the Subalterns Subaltern Studies has not affected. It persists rightly pointed out that the Marxist found to portray the history from the stance of the it really difficult to accept the ideology of subalterns. caste and religion as crucial factors in Indian History, which to them was References somewhat backward and degrading. They 1. Biswas, Amirta. “Research Note on were thus, according to the Subalterns, Subaltern Studies”. Open Journal totally unable to gather vital historical Academic System. 1.2 (2009): 1-4. Print. data from lived experiences of various 2. Das, B.K. Twentieth century Literacy oppressed classes, which were submerged Criticisms. Delhi : Atlantic, 2005. Print. in religious and social customs. (3) 3. Gandhi Leela. Post Colonial Theory: The last two decades of the twentieth A Critical Introduction. Delhi: OUP, 1995. century have witnessed the emergence of Print.

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BLANCHE DUBOIS: A POIGNANT VICTIM IN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’ A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

Dr.C.Priya Assistant Professor of English, PG & Research Department of English Arulmigu Palaniandavar Arts College for Women, Palani

Tennessee Williams is one of the famous reproachful way, but all the burden writers of American Literature. He is the descended on my shoulders… (SND 126) playwright and author of many stage classics. Mitch is the close friend of Stanley. Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill and Blanche wants to get the affections from Arthur Miller are considered the three Mitch. After a long attempt, she gets the foremost playwrights in 20th-century expected love and care. When Mitch speaking American drama. After the first success of with Blanche in the bedroom, Stanley erupts, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams storms into the bedroom, and throws the heralds a string of successes, including A radio out of the window. When Stella yells at Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Stanley and defends Blanche, Stanley beats Roof , and Sweet Bird of Youth. His drama A her. Blanche and Stella escape to their Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on upstairs neighbour Eunice’s apartment. After the short list of the finest American plays of that incident, Stanley is remorseful and cries the 20th century. A Streetcar Named Desire up to Stella to forgive him. To Blanche’s is a 1947 play which received the Pulitzer alarm, Stella returns to Stanley and embraces Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on him passionately. Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on Mitch meets Blanche outside of the December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Kowalski flat and comforts her from her Theatre. The paper focuses on Blanche distress. Blanche tries to convince Stella to DuBois, a poignant victim’s struggles and leave Stanley for a better man whose social sufferings in the male chauvinist society. status is equal to Stella. Blanche suggests Blanche DuBois is a schoolteacher from that she and Stella contact a millionaire Laurel, Mississippi who arrives at the New named, Shep Huntleigh for help escaping Orleans apartment of her sister, Stella from New Orleans. Stanley secretly overhears Kowalski. Even though Blanche seems to Blanche and Stella’s conversation. Later, he have fallen out of close contact with Stella, cunningly threatens Blanche with hints that she intends to stay at her sister, Stella’s he has heard rumours of her disreputable apartment. Because of the lost of their past. Blanche is visibly shocked. ancestral home, Belle Reve, she stays with Blanche waits for the arrival of Mitch. Stella Kowalski. They have a chance to open their hearts. Blanche expresses extreme contempt in Blanche reveals her young husband’s suicide the quarters of the Kowalskis’ two-room after the discovery of his homosexual act. apartment. She is disturbed by the noisy and Mitch describes his own loss of a former love, diverse location of the neighbourhood. Stanley and he tells Blanche that they need each Kowalski, an auto-parts supply man of Polish other. The understanding between Mitch and descent is the husband of Stella. He dislikes Blanche develops well. Stella wants to Blanche. But Blanche says, celebrate Blanche’s birthday. So Stella is I stayed at Belle Reve and tried to hold it preparing a dinner for Blanche, Mitch, together! I’m not meaning this in any

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Stanley, and herself. Stanley wants to harm a bottle on the table and faces him, Blanche. clutching the broken top.] (SND 130) Stanley openly criticises Blanche’s Blanche resists, but Stanley uses his numerous sexual liaisons especially with a physical strength to overcome her, and he teenage student. After hearing the past life of carries her to bed. The pulsing music Blanche, Mitch doesn’t arrive to the birthday indicates that Stanley rapes Blanche. After party. Stanley gives her one-way bus ticket to the worst incident, Blanche worries a lot. She go back to Laurel. Stanley’s cruelty very much wants to get rid from the incident. She takes disturbs Stella. Stella gets the labour pain. So bath again and again. Stella cannot allow the hot topic which was discussed by the herself to believe Blanche’s assertion that people gets interval. Stanley raped her. When Blanche emerges Blanche takes drinks alone in the from the bathroom, her deluded talk makes it apartment. In the meanwhile, Mitch arrives clear that she has lost her grip on reality. and repeats all he’s learned from Stanley. Stanley calls doctor to take Blanche to an Blanche accepts and also tries to convince insane asylum. The doctor arrives with a Mitch. She explains her pathetic condition nurse and Blanche initially panics and after the death of her husband. She needs the struggles against them when they try to take affection from men for her comfort. But Mitch her away. Stanley and his friends fight to is not convinced. He says that she isn’t fit to subdue Blanche, while Eunice holds Stella live in his house with his mother. When Mitch back to keep her from interfering. Finally, the develops the bad opinion about Blanche, he doctor approaches Blanche in a gentle manner tries to have sex with Blanche in a brutal and convinces her to leave with him. She way. But she forces him to leave by yelling allows him to lead her away and does not look “Fire!” to attract the attention of passersby back or say goodbye as she goes. outside. Whoever you are-I have always depended Go away, then. [He stares at her] Get out on the kindness of strangers. (SND 142) of here quick be- fore I start screaming fire! Stella sobs with her child in her arms, and [Her throat is tightening with hysteria] Stanley comforts her with loving words and Get out of here quick before I start screaming caresses. Apart from all the cruel mistakes fire. [He still remains staring. She done by men, Blanche, a female is a poignant suddenly rushes to the big win- dow with its Victim. She faces mental as well as physical pale blue square of the soft summer light harm from the male chauvinist society. and cries wildly.] Fire! Fire! Fire! (SND 121) But she is not able to escape from the Reference cheap mentality of Stanley. 1. Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named BLANCHE: I warn you, don't, I'm in Desire and Other Plays. London: Penguin danger! [He takes another step. She smashes Books.2000. Print.

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CULTURE AND SEXUALITY IN SHYAM SELVADURAI’S HUNGRY GHOST

M.Leeladevi Assistant Professor of English, N.M.S. Sermathai Vasan College for Women, Madurai

Introduction education of issues around sexual Shyam Selvadurai was born on 12 identification. February 1965, is a Sri Lankan This paper explores the ways in which Canadian novelist. He wrote Funny Shyam Selvadurai’s The Hungry Ghosts Boy (1994), which won the Books in Canada (2013) conforms to the national First Novel Award, and Cinnamon underpinnings of the Sri Lankan and by Gardens (1998). He currently lives extension South Asian diaspora while in Toronto with his partner Andrew simultaneously choosing mourning over rage Champion. His works based on conflicting as a way of living together. In his overt ethnic groups. Ethnic riots in 1983 drove the reliance on a mythical structure and Buddhist family dot to emigrate to Canada when philosophy, the author betrays the entry of Selvadurai was nineteen. He studied creative the homonational body as an ideal citizen and professional writing as part of a Bachelor within the complex geopolitical aspirations of of Fine Arts program at York University. South Asia where family and ethnicity are Selvadurai recounted an account of the integral to the formation of self. Race and discomfort he and his partner experienced region therefore reign supreme over questions during a period spent in Sri Lanka in 1997 in of desire and companionate bonding. his essay "Coming Out" in Time Asia's special In Buddhist myth, the dead may be issue on the Asian diaspora in 2003.In 2004, reborn as "hungry ghosts" spirits with Selvadurai edited a collection of short stomach so large they can never be full, if stories: Story-Wallah: Short Fiction from they have desired too much during their lives. South Asian Writers, which includes works It is the duty of the living relatives to free by Salman Rushdie, Monica Ali, and Hanif those doomed to this fate by doing kind deeds Kureishi, among others. He published a and creating good karma. In Shyam young adult novel, Swimming in the Monsoon Selvadurai’s sweeping new novel, his first in Sea, in 2005. Swimming won the Lambda more than a decade, he creates an Literary Award in the Children's and Youth unforgettable ghost, a powerful Sri Lankan Literature category in 2006. In 2013, he matriarch whose wily ways, insatiable longing released a fourth novel, The Hungry Ghosts. for land, houses, money and control, and In 2013 Shyam's Funny Boy was included in tragic blindness to the human needs of those the syllabus under marginalized study and around her parallels the volatile political gay literature of the under graduate English situation of her war-torn country. The novel Department of The American College in centers around Shivan Rassiah, the beloved Madurai. grandson, who is of mixed Tamil and In 2014, Shyam was presented the Sinhalese lineage, and who also to his Bonham Centre Award from The Mark S. grandmother’s dismay grows from beautiful Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity boy to striking gay man. As the novel opens in Studies, University of Toronto, for his the present day, Shivan, now living in contributions to the advancement and Canada, is preparing to travel back to Colombo, Sri Lanka, to rescue his elderly and

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ailing grandmother, to remove her from the Conclusion home now fallen into disrepair—that is her The Hungry Ghosts deals with dazzling pride, and bring her to Toronto to live our her story of family, wealth and the long reach of final days. But throughout the night and into the past. It shows how racial, political and the early morning hours of his departure, sexual differences can tear apart both a Shivan grapples with his own insatiable country and the human heart not just once, hunger and is haunted by unrelenting ghosts but many times, until the ghosts are fed and of his own creation. freed.

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DIASPORIC PREDICAMENTS AS PROJECTED IN BAPSI SIDWA’S NOVELS; A STUDY

P.Sulochana Head of the Department of English (PG), PKN Arts and Science College, Thirumangalam

Abstract The term diaspora comes to us from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Diaspora is a significant concept of literature and is a strong outcome of post colonialism. Diaspora underlines the feeling of rootlessness. The word ‘Diaspora’ means of dispersion or displacement of people from their homeland. There are two possible bases for one to move away from their native place; voluntary or involuntary /forced. These bases may further have contributing reasons such as war, recession, cultural beliefs, social stress, personal reasons or lifestyle differences among the people in the society. Bapsi Sidhwa an ambassador of Pakistani literature. Bapsi sidhwa established herself as pakistan’s leading English-language novelist. Pakistan is the location of sidhwa’s first three novels, and in each there is a strong sense of place and community which she uses to examine the post-colonial Pakistani identity. In her novel “THE AMERICAN BRAT” she shifts the predominant local of her fiction from Lahore and Pakistan to various cities across America as she explores the parsi /Pakistani diaspora.

Introduction outspoken 40-something mother, it is a Sidhwa novel richly comic novel “AN chilling moment. The parsees a small sect in AMERICAN BRAT’ sidhwa chronicles the Pakistan, take great pride in their liberal departure of FEROZA Ginwalla – a member values, business acumen and most of the Junglewalla can first encountered in importantly-the education of their children. “The Crow Eaters “from an increasingly An American Brat is an exceptional novel, fundamentalist Pakistan of the late 1970s and one of such interest that the reader’s her subsequent exposure to American culture, reservations, while significant, are ultimately more then simply the tale of a young girl of little consequence. Bapsi sidhwa, author of coming og age, it shows Feroza coming to what is it about the Indian class mind that is terms with her identity in the increasingly has to react to anything Pakistani in just one diaspora climate of the late twentieth century. mode: who is the fairer of us both? Whether it Sidhwa convincingly handles the personal is the arms race, our speech and growth of her central character and the manners,books and looks, our Imrans and difficulties that arise when two culture come kapils our Rajiv and their Benazir –our into contact. This novel with its on diaspora, collective subconscious is still tied by an is a logical extension of the interest in umbilical card that no F16 shall tear displacement and the clashes between ascender. communities which is present in all her Bapsi sidhwa deals with tribal women’s previous three novels. In An American Brat, problem expatriate experience communal Pakistani-born novelist Bapsi sidhwa reveals riots partition inter community marriage and with a humorous yet incisive eye the cultural conflicts sidhwa’s credit rests on her exhilarating freedom and profound sense of novel namely ‘The Crow Eaters’ The loss that make up the immigrant experience Pakistani Bride, ice candy man an in America. Sidhwa begins her novel in American Brat and water Bapsi sidhwa is the Lahore, Pakistan, Feroza Gunwalla, a 16- voile of marginalized women and Parsi year-old parsi, is mortified by the sight of her community, Her fourth novel An American mother appearing at her school with her arms Brat is an account of a Pakistani immigrant uncovered. For Zareen Gunwalla, Feroza’s to the United States struggling to blend dual

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cultures and there by discovering herself. So with Feroza.. Zareen realizes that by denying the mature Feroza despite an estranged love her daughter freedom of choice in marriage. affair and general feeling of despair prefers She has experienced that she has changed too the struggle for freedom and survival. The much to ever go back to Pakistan. She does story line moves in simple lucid and parsi not agree to an arranged marriage with one of manner. The first chapter opens with a the three nice boys chosen for her and decides description about the social condition in to stay on in the U.S.A. Sidhwa here Lahore and the civil war inside the country. highllights the sensitive issue of inter- Feroza’s joy knows no bounds as the plans for community marriages amongst the Parsis. her trip to the U S A .are finalized. She fined Sidhwa further focuses on the Patriarchal it difficult to believe. She repeats to herself “I society of thr Parsis with a strong masculine am going to America. I’m going to America! bias.The Parsi rules permit parsimen to Until her double slowly ebbed and her marry outside the community whereas they certainty too, caught the rhythm of her do not permit women to do the same. happiness, she is eager and excited to go to Sidhwa’s preoccupation with the future of the America Through her journey Feroza behaves Parsi religion is obviours in this novel. as instructed by the elders but as soon as she reaches America, She is a changed person. As Conclusion the plane lands at Kennedy Airport Feroza The scope her concern is ultimately become triumphant and glowing. Uncle humanity – Its existential dilemmas, Manek wants Feroza to become self – weakness and strength in the terms of crisis, sufficient and independent. So he enrolls her inter human relation and women’s problems. in a college at Twin Falls in Southern Idaho. Existentialism is historically and culturally Another aspect of Feroza’s expatriate European origin. It was recognized as the experience is highlighted here her friendship dominating philosophy of the west in the mid- with the two American girls in the apartment twentieth century. Existentialism does not enables her to shed her social institutions. offer a set of doctrines or a single philosophy. Feroza’s announcement of her marriage with It has been diversely defined and interpreted David makes her family in Pakistan both by various thinkers over the years. agitated and shell-shocked. Feroza’s mother Existentialists emphasize the importance of Zareen comes to Denver to dissuade Feroza the individual possession of freedom and from her decision to marry a man from responsibility towards the meaning of life. another religion for she will be ex- communicated and expelled from parsi faith, References Moreover, the marriage would bring shame 1. Sidhwa, Bapsi .An American Brat. New and dishonor to her family. After seeing Delhi: Penguin 1993. Print. David, Zareen finds him a suitable match to 2. Adami : Esterino .Rushdie Kureishi Syal: Feroza. Essays in Diaspora, New Delhi: prestige David, being a jew, realizes the practical 2006. Print. but serious problems involving his marriage

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NATION AS AN IMAGINARY ENTITY IN ROHINTON MISTRY’S A FINE BALANCE

A.Gowsalya Devi Assistant Professor in English, N.M.S.Sermathai Vasan College for Women, Madurai

Abstract A National Integrity System assessment examines both the formal framework of each pillar and the actual institutional practice. The analysis highlights discrepancies between the formal provisions and reality on the ground, making it clear where there is room for improvement. The analysis is undertaken via a consultative approach, involving the key anti-corruption agents in government, civil society, the business community and other sectors. Conclusions are drawn together in a comprehensive national report to build momentum, political will and civic pressure for relevant reform initiatives. Ultimately, strengthening the National Integrity System promotes better governance across all aspects of a society and contributes to a more just society overall.

Introduction quality of being honest and having strong Nation As An Imaginary Entity In moral principles; moral uprightness. It is Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. Nation as generally a personal choice to uphold oneself an imaginary entity is at the personal level, it to consistent moral and ethical standards. i.e. refers to the quality of being honest and "a gentleman of complete integrity" having strong moral principles. But when we Rohinton Mistry is considered to be one of go to the larger scale of society and nation, the foremost authors of Indian Heritage integrity means the state of being whole and writing in English. Residing in Brampton, undivided. Even though these meanings Ontario, Canada, Mistry belongs to the Parsi appear to be quite different, they have a deep Zoroastrian religious minority. Mistry’s first inter connection. The feeling of being novel, Such a long Journey brought him undivided comes from being honest to one national and International recognition. another. Integrity is the feeling that we are a Mistry’s subsequent novels have achieved the part of a large nation rather than being a part same level of recognition as his first. His of a religious group, regional community or second novel, A Fine Balance (1995), concerns some sect. This wonderful feeling provides an four people from Bombay who struggle with environment for mutual tolerance and respect family and work against the backdrop of the among different individuals of the nation. political unrest in India during the mid -1970. The Difference between Unity and The book won Canada’s Giller Prize, the Integrity is that Unity is (uncountable) commonwealth writers award, and the Los oneness; the state or fact of being one Angeles Times Book award. It was nominated undivided entity while Integrity on the other for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and hand, is more to do with the a moral or ethical was a finalist for the Booker Prize. code. It can refer to a person being complete A Fine Balance is the second novel by or pure. It usually refers to soundness of one's Rohinton Mistry. Set in "an unidentified city" character. Unity in the end isn't democratic, it in India, initially in 1975 and later in 1984 is fascist, especially if it requires uniting during the turmoil of The Emergency. The around oppressive or inequitable or unjust book concerns four characters from varied positions. When a group of people or countries backgrounds – Dina Dalal, Ishvar Darji, his agree or are joined together: Let us say nephew Omprakash Darji and the young economic unity — European Unity.. The state student Maneck Kohlah – who come together of being wholesome: unimpaired. It is the and develop a bond. 90 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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In Mistry’s “A Fine Balance”, Indira rockets to space, there are still in the deeper Gandhi’s emergency era is the backdrop of pockets of its colorful garment, people who tragic events befalling the four protagonists, can commit such brazen crimes without fear who, despite the utter hopelessness and of justice. And why just in the hell holes of anxiety surrounding them, find comfort in deep rural India? I’m sure there are many each other’s company. The story starts in the Wolves in sheep’s clothing roaming the urban same year the emergency was declare, 1975. jungles with as much vindication in their In these troubled times, two low caste hearts and minds. How can we call ourselves chamaars (leather workers) turned darzis civilized knowing such an barbaric prejudices (tailors), feeling the oppression of their native in the hearts of so many of our people. But the village, go to the “city” for their share of researcher digress her intent was merely to fortunes, or misfortunes. The city by the sea, talk about the fate befalling Ishwar and although never referred to by name, is Omprakash the two tailors. But can one inevitably Bombay. The tailors did not choose conscientious human possibly talk about them to abandon their Village of their own free will. without first venting oneself against the They were victims of the caste system, by system the very real system which is no which upper castes have driven the lives of fiction for countless unfortunate souls even the so called inferior castes to horrible today. ignominy. Mistry brings out, with devastating A system that can be only eradicate with effect, the unbelievable levels of cruelty more people like Dina and Maneck, who humans can impart up on their fellow. Hands befriend Ishvar and Om in Bombay. chopped off, molten bead poured into ears, Disparate backgrounds not with -standing, murder at the drop of a hat- are all the four cement a bond. Driven by commonplace, the mere hint of a diversion circumstances, they even share a common from meaningless customs bearing extremely roof, connect with each other by kindness and violent consequences for the mute, conforming love that which make us human. lower caste communities, in the hands of the Mistry’s A Fine Balance is performed the goondas bred by upper castes. ideal balance between the individual and the The problem exists to this day and will common man. He evoked the realistically the continue to plague India unless dealt with in lifestyle of the chammers and their experience the United States or any other developed about Nation Integrations. He uses the country of the free world, needs literacy. Only History in A Fine Balance needs to examine the light of knowledge will dispel the hideous in some details. Realism in addition has been shadow of the caste system tormenting the the major preoccupation of the recent Indian nation for centuries. Only through complete Novelists in English. The contribution of such literacy will the citizens be able to choose a real bonding between the four of the forthright leaders, drive out spineless Rohinton Mistry’s fictional rendering makes bastards raping the country for power, us believe to life which is consist of such playing one millions against another in their events. He highlights the distinct possibility shameless show of selfishness. of the extraordinary happenings in life. It is No more caste system in India, that evil brilliantly expounded in the coming together which makes many of its teeming stoops of the four protagonists of the novel. In below animals. No more divisions on religions. Rohinton Mistry’s fictional discourse the No more shackles on the masses. Unite, not narrative voice achieves a fine balance divide. It’s hard to believe, but true, that in between involvement and detachment. It is the India of the twenty first century, with providing a reliable witness to an event full smart engineers and scientists spending era in the nation’s history. 91 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

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SELF IMMOLATION AND DISEMBOWELMENT IN THE PURSUIT OF BEAUTY IN TONI MORRISON’S THE BLUEST EYE

Dr.R.C.Sheila Royappa Professor of English, Seethalakshmi Achi College for Women, Karaikudi

K.P.Bakhya Seema Research Scholar, Seethalakshmi Achi College for Women, Karaikudi & Associate Professor, Department of English, NMS Sermathai Vasan College for Women

Introduction class oppression. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Toni Morrison a famous African American Eye not only reflects the issues of race, class woman writer portrays the plight of black and gender, but also presents her cultural women in her works. The status of African concern in American society. American women was pathetic, and also Pecola in The Bluest Eye had a pressure oppressed by the patriarchal society. In the on the dominant cultural society. She had contemporary world still they are not able to been fascinated for a pair of Bluest eye, which come up with their own identity, because of was the symbol of beauty and essentially the male and whites domination. The African different from that of the traditional black American woman themselves were enmeshed beauty. Within her community Pecola dreamt by desires and despairs, loves and hates, about her future, and she had a little regards marital discord and male chauvinism. Toni for the past, and gave less importance for the Morrison is the first African American present. She did not take up either the role as novelist to win the Nobel Prize for literature a mother or that of a wife, but her inner in 1993 for her novel The Bluest Eye. She has fantasy world pushed her to build a castle in written ten novels and the best known novels the air which leads her into the self- are, ‘The Bluest Eye’ (1970), ‘Sula’ (1974), destruction. By presenting Pecola as a pasty, ‘Song Of Solomon’ (1977), and ‘Beloved’ Morrison directly accused the whole society, (1987). and brought out consciousness among the The Bluest Eye deals with the issues of African American people in the U.S.A. Pecola, racism and sexism, and impact on the young being powerless, was unable to accept the black girls growing up in poor Ohio. values exposed around her and finally Morrison’s chief thematic concern is with descended into insanity. Even woman’s struggle in the African American In the second chapter, Claudia narrates: society and also believes that it is important “Quiet as it’s kept there were no marigolds in for the people in black culture to know their the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that values and get identity by them in the society. it was because Pecola was having her father’s Toni Morrison, in her novel The Bluest baby that the marigolds did not grow: Eye, has presented the story of Pecola nobody’s did … It never occurred to either of Breedlove who internalized white standard of us that the earth itself might have been beauty to such an extent, that she became unyielding” (5-6). Through these words, we crazy about her wish to have blue eyes. can understand that the chapter sets the Morrison clearly depicts the suffering of the stage for the story of Pecola’s abjection, as ninetieth century classical racism in the well as the abjection of blackness in general. United States. The black female identity is The novel emphasizes the ideal of whiteness inseparably linked with racism, sexism, and that is, when these girls Pecola, Claudia, and

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Frieda grow up with through constant the black female artist must take, and so she allusion to William Elson and William Gray’s can construct an environment in which she “Dick and Janes”(19) stories, as well as can create. . . . Although Pecola’s rape is “Shirley Temple” (3), ridicule their adoration, linked to her parents’ departure from the but recognize in retrospect that “I had not yet South, Morrison harshly indicts the larger arrived at the turning point in the developing white society and the immediate family and of my psyche which would allow me to love neighbors that have let Pecola slip self- her”(19). This project the domination of the protectively into madness, for it is in Pecola’s white ideal denies the possibility of finding destruction that historical and personal loss beauty in blackness, and it can be viewed as a comes together. literary equivalent of Fanon’s Black Skin, When Pauline Breedlove is so enchanted White Masks, in which he gives a by the beauty, cleanliness, and order that psychoanalytic account of inferior complex followed in the Fisher home where she works, suffered by the colonized societies. makes her to feel more comfortable than her The standard of white beauty destroyed own home that she “kept his order, this Pauline Breedlove more than her daughter. beauty for herself, a private world” (100-101). Pauline, who liked to spend her time in the She feels that Fisher house is the secured Fisher house, made herself to fascinate her place and she denied her own home. She does and longed for such stereotype life. Pauline not realize that the Fisher house is a prison felt uncomfortable after her marriage because when Fisher themselves say of Pauline, of different attitudes in fascinating the “never let her go” (101). When Pecola goes to American culture; her marital life grew shaky Fisher house to see her mother and help her, and gloomy. For example, when she met a few she drops blueberry on the floor, her mother black women, they “were amused by her curse her but on the other hand comforts because she did not straighten her hair, when Fisher’s daughter, by yelling “pickup that she tried to makeup her face as they did, it wash and get on out of here”(87). So, Pecola came off rather badly” (116). has thrown out here for the second time, not This type of glance and gossiping made only the mother but also the community as Pauline to develop her desire for Western whole. In this outdoor and rejected state, Culture. When she asked Cholly, he began to Pecola likes to have pair of blue eyes which, quarrel which led their marriage life to shred she feels, will give her guarantee and comfort, with tears and quarrels. As money was their instead, she undergoes her own father’s problem Pauline decided to go to work and delirium, induced rape. She has a harrowing spend lavishly, “if one of her friends cut her experience that is “a wild and forbidden short on the telephone she’d go to crying, she thing” (128). The male violent aspect is should of being of glad she had a telephone” isolated here. The character Geraldine is (117). In this way she enjoyed and fulfilled more affectionate towards her cat than for her her wishes and helped Cholly with money to son, and the three prostitutes use sex to profit drink. Morrison brings out the pressure and humiliate men, but no one loves Pecola created by the white-defined values which and her black baby. Hence, the male reflects in the African American culture. dominated social system is exposed through Through the character of Pecola, Morrison this violent, to which Pecola is victimized, warns the black female artist of the obscurity separated or colonized by her own community. and madness that will befall her if she It is similar to Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall internalizes the racism that is infecting her Apart” where Okonko was not supported by surroundings, while through the character of his own community. Claudia, Morrison demonstrates the actions Morrison reconstructs the black images 93 Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science

Vol.2 Special Issue 3 April 2018 E-ISSN: 2456-5571

through her writing and illustrates the medicine, conjure, and midwifery into the richness of black culture. As Barbara Smith fabric of (her) stories’’ (174). Her writing says that Morrison includes, “the traditional states how black people are denied from the Black female activities of root working, herbal equality and treated as animals in their own medicine, conjure, and midwifery into the society. She feels that the black had received fabric of (her) stories’’ (174). Her writing only a little in the literary field and finds a states how black people are denied from the vacuum in American literary discourse. As equality and treated as animals in their own McKay says, ‘’Black have a story, and that society. She feels that the black had received story has to be heard” (152). Therefore, only a little in the literary field and finds a Morrison places the narrative techniques of vacuum in American literary discourse. As stories which are abundant in information McKay says, ‘’Black have a story, and that about black culture, and tries to fill the gap story has to be heard” (152). Therefore, that has developed between those who have Morrison places the narrative techniques of profited educationally and economically stories which are abundant in information through her feministic writings. The voice of about black culture, and tries to fill the gap the oppressed black females in the African that has developed between those who have American society is silenced; therefore The profited educationally and economically Bluest Eye articulates the victim’s voices. through her feministic writings. The voice of the oppressed black females in the African References American society is silenced; therefore The 1. Smith, Barbara. “Toward a Black Bluest Eye articulates the victim’s voices. Feminist Criticism, in the New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature Conclusion and Theory”, Ed. Elaine Showalter Morrison reconstructs the black images London: Virago, 1986. Print. through her writing and illustrates the 2. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks, richness of black culture. As Barbara Smith Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New says that Morrison includes, “the traditional York: Grove Press, 1967. Print. Black female activities of root working, herbal

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