Sita Following Her Husband Int Exile

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REVISIONIST MYTH MAKING AS A MEANS OF

COUNTERING PATRIARCHY IN THAT LONG SILENCE

Sita following her husband into exile, Savitri dogging Death to reclaim her husband, Draupadi stoically sharing her husband’s travails… No, what have I to do with these mythical women? I can’t fool myself. (That Long Silence 11)

In a fictional career spanning two decades and a half, Shashi Deshpande has consistently sought to come to grips with the problems of Indian womanhood in the post independence scenario. A major issue is whether the female archetypes of old or the myths of femininity constructed by the society to establish and maintain patriarchy are still valid. Her novel That Long Silence raises serious issues like, should Sita and Savitri continue to be the beacon lights for Indian women? If not, what precisely should be the role of a woman within her family and in the world beyond?

The notion of myth has undergone a radical transformation within the last century. From a term, which referred to the tales of antiquity, ‘myth’ has become one of the most universally and loosely used of cultural concepts, and its place in both literature and literary study has been extended to an enormous range of imaginative activity.

The myth-history combine marks the ruling motive of the contemporary Indian novel in English. The preservation of tradition while breaking away from it is the principle involved in combining myth in the recent Indian fiction in English. Modern writers found that ancient myths could sustain and enrich their creative sensibility and at the same time they were free to interpret and make use of the myths in their own way. The recent texts of Indian fiction in English attempted by conscious writers like R. K. Narayan, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Shashi Deshpande reflect the theoretical proposition of the preservation of tradition in practical terms. They device suitable narrative strategies to accomplish the task. The use of myth strengthens the fictionality of the fiction. The re-writing of myth in literature brings tradition and innovation into the same fold making them mutually complementary. The twin objectives of literature namely delight and instruction go hand in hand in these new texts, which cover both aesthetic considerations and social concerns. In the texts of modern Indian writers like Shashi Deshpande, myth reaches ironic levels and is presented in ironic reversals, in so far, as they choose to subvert it. Myth works into a text as a symbolic mode of expression where the move is towards the selective recreation of reality. This requires a redefinition of the mythical roles such as Draupadi or Sita with a deviance on unconventional lines as Deshpande does in her works. This sort of subversion of myth in literature is intended to evolve an oppositional political ideology as against the existing one, they evolve a new political paradigm, or in short myth offers itself to subversion to highlight the contemporary socio-cultural history in Indian fiction.

When a writer explores a myth in such a way as to converge the textual meanings with the meanings acceptable to the culture, the use of myth is just ordinary and not revisionist. The use of myth becomes revisionist when the myth is appropriated for altered ends so that the textual meanings are at variance with the meanings accepted by the community. In her book Stealing the Language Alicia Ostriker defines revisionist myth making as the process of using an ancient figure or tale by appropriating it for altered ends, the vessel filled with new wine, thus initially satisfying the thirst of the individual poet but ultimately making cultural change possible. Deshpande’s use of the myths of femininity in That Long Silence is revisionary in this sense. The revisionist myth making satisfies the immediate need of the writer as it ultimately seeks to change cultural perceptions. In this sense the historic figures are as mythic as the figures of folktales legends, and scriptures. Local myths and personal myths are also revised and reinterpreted by Deshpande in her novels. Deshpande uses this technique as a means for female self-projection and self-exploration. It is an ingenious device to literally assimilate the materials dangerous to the history and culture of the female gender. This deconstruction of myths by female knowledge of the female experience, by Deshpande, is a method of redefining the myths which have long been the source of collective male fantasy. Through the revised myths Deshpande represents the retrieved images of what women have collectively and historically suffered and also try to challenge and rectify female stereotypes embodied in such myths. Deshpande thus historicizes and desentimentalises the myths in her works and thus demolishes the fairytale conventions of femininity and feminine virtues.

This paper is an attempt to explore and analyse the revisionary and subversive use of the myths of femininity by Deshpande in her novel That Long Silence. One of the most enjoyable features of Deshpande’s writing is the unselfconscious use of literary allusion, myth and folklore, which seamlessly meshed her work with earlier literature. In That Long Silence, Maitreyee and Yagnavalkya, the wife with enquiring probing mind and her legendary – philosopher husband, are evoked as naturally as Sonia and Raskolnikov and Fanny Price and Aunt Bertram.

The socialization of a girl child for her future roles as wife and mother begins in early childhood when the prevailing social mores and norms are studiedly inculcated into her through myths, legends, folklore and rituals. Deshpande interrogates and brings out the ideological agenda involved in all such conventions, by juxtaposing these myths with lived experiences. In this context these feminine myths of patriarchy are seen as a means to sustain the order. It is through the construction of such myths that culture orders the world. Barthes is of the opinion that in a society, myth operates by confusing nature and history and thus translates bourgeois norms, which belongs to culture, to self-evident laws of nature. Thus myths of femininity constructed by patriarchy to dominate and rule over women are conceived as natural and hence inevitable. Deshpande’s purpose in using these myths of femininity in her novels like The Dark Hold No Terror, That Long Silence and The Binding Vine is to reveal the patriarchal agenda of establishing a male dominated society by making female subjectivity inferior, hidden behind the cultural constructions of such myths. Women are made to believe these mythical constructions of womanhood as natural so as to make them yield to their inferior status in society.

The the concept of revisionist myth making employed by Deshpande in her works like That Long Silence and The Binding Vine offers a significant means of redefining women and consequently rediscovering ones culture. According to Jasodhara Bagchi, Indian womanhood is constituted by a multi-layered accretion of myths, which in their turn essentialize and thereby homogenize the myth of ‘Bharatiyanari’ within the hegemonic ideology of patriarchy and thus serve patriarchy in both its local and global manifestations. As per these myths a women is the pure vessel of virginity, chaste wife, weak and owned by her husband or the self-denying mother, never an independent entity (Bagchi 1-4). Shashi Deshpande demythifies all such images in her works. The familial frame within which this myth was presented suited the caste / class agenda of the elites, for it helped to establish the upper class, upper-caste Hindu male as the social norm against which the woman of the same class, the men and women of the lower caste / class, the men and women of the lower caste/class had to be measured.

The concept of femininity in India, especially, in Hinduism, presents an important duality. The female is first of all Sakti, the energising principle of the universe. The female is also Prakriti – the undifferentiated matter of the universe. Though all beings have this Sakti by birth, it is believed that it can be increased or decreased through later actions. As far as a woman is considered, it is said that, a woman, by being a devoted and true wife, Pativrata, literally, one who fasts for her husband increases her Sakti. Various austerities, particularly sexual abstinence, also increase a person’s Sakti. But as far as man is concerned no such thing is said (Wadley 24). Deshpande reverses this Pativrata myth by presenting her protagonists as vulnerable to a certain extent. Neither Jaya in That Long Silence, nor Urmi in The Binding Vine are presented as Pativratas.

Certain other fictions of womanhood prevalent in India are concerned with woman’s sexuality and motherhood. Thus the ideal of womanhood is that of chastity, purity, gentle tenderness and a singular faithfulness, which cannot be destroyed or even disturbed by her husband’s rejections (Wadley 28). As power and Nature controlling her own sexuality, the female is potentially destructive and malevolent and according to Hindu cosmology, if female controls her own sexuality, she is changeable. In India motherhood is usually glorified. But the mental anguish and trauma that a woman undergoes during this phase of her life are often neglected by patriarchy who constructs the images of ideal motherhood. Deshpande is against such idealisations and subverts the myth of motherhood in her novels. Her protagonist Jaya, through a process of introspection, realises the patriarchal agenda behind the construction of these myths of femininity and she comes out of the illusion that all these myths are natural and try to assert themselves. Deshpande achieves this end by presenting these myths as well as their ironic reversals simultaneously.

The concept of gender is not merely a biological phenomenon, but it is a social construction. As Simone de Beauvoir says “one is not born, but rather becomes a women”. In the Indian scenario a woman is commonly construed as a submissive wife, dutiful daughter or as the doting mother. Jaya, the heroine of the Sahithya Academy award winning novel That Long Silence, is not born a woman but rather tries to become a woman. The social taboos associated with marriage and the Indian social setup in general makes her a woman. She says that she even “Snipped off bits “of herself to keep herself an ideal daughter, ideal wife, ideal mother, in short an ideal Indian female (7). This process of becoming a woman is shown through the character of Jaya. When she was born her father named her ‘Jaya’, which means victory. But after the marriage she is renamed as ‘Suhasini’, which means “a soft, smiling, placid, motherly woman.” (15-16). The former stands for a feminist figure and the latter symbolises a desexualised, ‘angel in the house’ stereotype. She is brought up in the loving and affectionate care of her parents. On the one hand she has been given modern education, which instills liberalised values in her, and she evolves herself into a writer. On the other hand her parents inclulcate in her the images of traditional ideal Hindu women like Sita, Savitri and Droupadi. She has been taught that ‘a husband is like a sheltering tree.’ (32). She comes to learn that in the male dominated society a woman has no independent identity. She is the daughter, the wife and the mother of somebody. She is defined in terms of her relationships with men. One feels that the modern women are caught in this dichotomy. She has now two options: One is to live a traditional life of an ideal woman and another is to opt for the life of a modern, independent and equal partner in society. The new role – lures her but the deep-rooted tradition in her does not allow her to give up the old guise completely. Centuries old indoctrination has made women too weak to lead an independent life. This feminist dilemma is the crux of That Long Silence. In Deshpande, women’s western education awakens in them a desire for freedom and individuality, which patriarchy tries to curb and this leaves her alienated and discontented. The marital relationship too has its share of oppression. In That Long Silence Jaya says ‘it was not Mohan but marriage that had made me circumspect’ (187). Both men and women are socialized into accepting the male superiority through the construction of various myths and fictions of womanhood. The women also collude with the patriarchal conventions. Deshpande attempts to deconstruct the numerous levels of patriarchal and sexist bias shown towards girls and women in Indian Society, particularly in marriage or within the family setup by presenting the ironic reversals of those myths of femininity.

The theme of That Long Silence is, as always with Shashi Deshpande, the protagonist’s journey towards constructing an alternate identity. The heroine Jaya encounters a crisis, which is the usual strategy, employed by Shashi Deshpande to delineate the psyche of her protagonists. The novel opens with Jaya and her husband Mohan moving back into their old Dadar flat in Bombay from their cosy and palatial house. This journey is parallel to that of Sita following Rama to forest and to Savitri’s journey to hell to bring back her husband. . In the small old Dadar Flat shorn off the usual domestic routine and confronted by the ghosts of her past, Jaya becomes introvert and goes into deep contemplation of her past. Her familiar existence disrupted, her husband’s reputation in question and the future of the family in jeopardy, Jaya a failed writer, is haunted by the memories of the past. Differences with her husband, frustrations in their seventeen years old marriage, disappointment in her two teenage children, the claustrophobia of her childhood – all begin to surface, and the process of introspection ends with Jaya deciding to break her long silence through writing her autobiography.

Minor characters weave through the story. There are two ajjis and the mother, the uncles and the two brothers, mad Kusum, and most of all, Kamat, the only character in the novel who is not touched by Jaya’s hatred and the only person who can see through her hypocritical martyr – like stand and her cultivated morbidity. Jaya further faces another trauma, another crisis that shakes her out of her complacent stupor and leads her on to the path of self-recognition. This comes in the form of Mohan’s desertion and her son’s disappearance. These two events orchestrate a quest for recognizing her subjectivity. Jaya looks afresh at the core of what it is to be a woman. The novel traces the protagonists passage through a plethora of self-doubts, fear, guilt, smothered anger and deliberate silence towards articulation and affirmation and attempts to come to terms with her protean roles while trying to rediscover her identity. Jaya’s journey is from a fragmented, self to a unified whole. The fragmented self is associated with “women – are – the victims” theory. Deshpande demythifies this theory and as the glimmer of self – recognition dawn on her, she realises that she cannot make others, especially her husband the scapegoat for her failures. She painfully finds her way back through the disorderly chaotic sequence of events and non-events that made up her life. The novel ends with her determination to speak, to break her long silence. In one of her interviews with S. Prasanna Sree, Shashi Deshpande says: