Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2009 Ananda Devi's Narrative Strategies and Subversions. Ritu Tyagi Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Tyagi, Ritu, "Ananda Devi's Narrative Strategies and Subversions." (2009). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3561. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3561 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. ANANDA DEVI’S NARRATIVE STRATEGIES AND SUBVERSIONS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of French Studies by Ritu Tyagi B.A., Jawaharlal Nehru University, 1999 M.A., University of California Irvine, 2003 May 2009 ©Copyright 2009 Ritu Tyagi All rights reserved ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this dissertation and doctoral degree would not have been possible without the help and support of many individuals. I would like to express my profound gratitude to my dissertation director, Dr. Jack Yeager, for his stimulating suggestions and encouragement. His pleasant smile, optimism, and positivity helped me sail through the most frustrating and depressing moments. My thanks also go to the members of my committee for their support: Dr. Adelaide Russo, Dr. Pius Ngandu Nkashama, and Dr. Kate Jensen. Their comments and suggestions during the process of writing have enormously enriched my work. I am also indebted to all the French Studies faculty and graduates with whom I discussed extensively about literature. My regards also go to Ms Connie Simpson for her enormous help. Last, but definitely not the least, I would like to thank my family. My parents, sister, brother-in-law, and cousins, Mudit and Himanshu, have been supportive and encouraging as I pursued this degree. My friends in the USA, India, and France who were always there when I needed them during these last five years. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………. iii ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………. vi INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………1 CHAPTER 1. PLOT AND PLOTLESSNESS: TOWARD FEMININE DESIRE/QUEST ………………………………………………………….16 1.1 Subverting Marriage and the Romance Plot: Redefining Love ….………..18 1.1.1 Marriage and Love in Devi’s Works………………………………....22 1.1.2 Love Between Sad and Ève ………………………………………....44 1.1.3 Love in La vie de Joséphin le fou………………………………….....47 1.1.4 Alternate Ties………………………………………………………....51 1.1.5. Alternate Ties: Feminine Solidarity/Maternal Love………………....54 1.2 Plotlessness ………………………………………………………………....61 1.2.1 Plotlessness in Pagli………………………………………………......63 1.2.2 Plotlessness in Moi, l’interdite………………………………………...67 1.2.3 Plotlessness in Rue la Poudrière …………………………………….71 1.2.4 Plotlessness in La vie de Joséphin le fou……………………………...72 CHAPTER 2. PLURITEMPORALITY/MULTISUBJECTIVITY ………………………79 2.1 From Cyclical Temporality to Timelessness………………………………..82 2.1.1 Cyclical Narrative and Reincarnation……………………………........82 2.1.2 Multiple Pasts and Timelessness…………………………………........92 2.1.3 Devi and Eliot…………………………………………………………95 2.2 Diegetic Complexity: Multiple Narrators………………………………….101 2.2.1 Soupir: Narrative Metalepsis………………………………...............101 2.2.2 Ève de ses décombres: Multiple Narrators………………………......112 2.2.3 Indian Tango: Narrator-Character Relationship……………………..121 CHAPTER 3. MAGICAL REALISM: DEVI’S NARRATIVE TOOL.………………..130 3.1 Women in Magical Space: Soupir and Souffleur as Feminine Spaces…....136 3.1.1 Soupir, an In-between Space ………………………………………..136 3.1.2 Souffleur, a Magical Space ………………………………………….152 3.2 Magic and Mythology: Rewriting Myths/Folktales………………………..162 3.2.1 Magic and Mythical Figures in Le voile de Draupadi ……………....165 3.2.2 Folktale in Moi, l’interdite …………………………………………..179 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………...193 iv BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………...199 VITA………………………………………………………………………………….......216 v ABSTRACT This dissertation proposes a feminist narratological study of texts by Ananda Devi, a contemporary Francophone writer from Mauritius. I examine three principle narrative strategies that allow Devi to challenge the dominant androcentric discourses. These discourses ignore the feminine world of domesticity and impose images of submission on women, thereby curbing feminine expression and quest. Inspired by the efforts of critics such as Alison Case, Robyn Warhol, Susan Lanser to study narrative structures in the context of cultural constructions of gender, I argue that Devi employs narrative strategies that allow her marginalized narrators to intervene in dominant structures of narrative construction and create hybrid magical spaces for feminine expression. In the first chapter I analyze how Devi subverts the romance plot to bring to the fore alternative models of romance and sexuality that go beyond the binary man-woman opposition. Furthermore, drawing upon Susan Lanser’s notion of “plotlessness,” I argue that Devi’s plotless novels not only valorize feminine space but also allow the narrator to connect with her narratees, creating a sense of feminine solidarity. The second chapter analyses how she questions the Western notion of linear temporality by privileging cyclical narratives that create space for feminine dialogue as her works connect women across time. This chapter also examines Devi’s transgression of narrative boundaries by introducing multiple narrators through narrative metalepsis, thus introducing multiple consciousnesses by inviting different voices to construct the narrative. The third chapter probes Devi’s non-Western techniques as she merges Western reality with the magic of the Orient and allows her characters accessibility to extra-real and magical spaces that become tools for them. In this section I also examine how Hindu myths and folktales intervene in the reality of Devi’s novels, influencing her characters and narrators. In the process, however, Devi also scrutinizes the myths themselves by questioning their vi representations of women. In this way Devi has effectively used different strategies to create a hybrid space where the West meets the non-West, the feminine meets the androcentric, the real meets the extra-real and the traditional distinctions between these categories are challenged for alternate and new possibilities. vii INTRODUCTION Ananda Devi belongs to the new generation of Mauritian writers. Although she currently lives in Ferney-Voltaire close to Geneva where she works as a translator, her fiction is set in Mauritius, her native island. She has a substantial body of work to her name, including eight novels, a collection of poems, and several collections of short stories. Her first novel, Rue la Poudrière, was published in 1989 and her most recent, Indian Tango, appeared in 2007. Devi’s works are fascinating not only because of her intense, lyrical, and penetrating style of writing, but also because her texts reveal Mauritian diversity and splendor in a manner that is markedly different from her predecessors. She claims to be the first to present the reality of Mauritius as it is: “Par rapport aux écrivains mauriciens des générations antérieures, je pense que je suis parmi les premiers à avoir écrit Maurice à l’intérieur. A l’époque où j’ai écrit Rue la Poudrière, personne n’avait écrit quoique ce soit de ce genre à Maurice, (à part Marie-Thérèse Humbert), mais cela n’a pas été reconnu”.1 Devi’s predecessors such as Léoville L’Homme, Robert Edward Hart, and Malcolm de Chazal from the early and mid-twentieth-century as well as Raymond Chasle2 from late- twentieth-century glorified the Mauritian land. She, however, presents a realistic view of the island.3 In their poetry and prose Hart and Chazal celebrate the tropical nature, the scenery, and 1 Patrick Sultan, Ruptures et Héritages; entretien avec Ananda Devi. 2 In L’altérance des solstices (1975) Raymond Chasle states, “Mon poème est une sonde lancée de l’île au cœur des nébuleuses.” Pointing out Chasle’s love and reverance for the island that resonate with Hart and Chazal, Jean-Louis Joubert notes about his writings: “L’île est vécue comme une réduction parfaite du cosmos, un temple où s’opère la mise en communication de l’âme et de la vie universelle. Ce qui est parfaitement conforme à l’imaginaire traditionnelle de l’insularité” (Littératures de l'Océan Indien 159). 3 I emphasize Robert Edward Hart and Malcolm de Chazal because both are considered influential figures in Mauritian literary world of the early-twentieth-century. Léoville L’Homme, the father of Mauritian poetry, along with the first novelists such as Savinien Mérédac, Clément Charoux, and Arthur Martial were all “francotropistes.” They were highly influenced by French masters such as Maupassant and Daudet and were unable to detach themselves from the hexagon. Although Clément Charoux’s novel Ameenah (1935) focuses on an Indo-Mauritian character, it describes the failure of the alliance between a French man and the eponymous Indo-Mauritian heroine. 1 the landscape of Mauritius, thereby