RE-SHAPING THE SELF:
N THE SHORT STORIES
OF ALICE MUNRO AND SHASH DESHPANDE
Thesis submitted to the Pondicherry
Universityfor the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PN1LOSOPHY
in
ENGLISH
BY
H. KALPANA
Department of English
PONDICHERRY UNIVERSITY
MARCH 1995
To my mother indira my father c s rao
my husband prakash my son nikhil
with all my love
Contents
Page
Certificate
Declaration
Note on Documentation
Acknowledgements
vii
Abstract
Preface
I--MAPPING OUT
xiv
f
Brief Sketch of Munro and Deshpande, and Their Works 4
Feminine Identity
6
The Short Story Genre and Women Writers
10
Postcolonial Literary Background
20
Postcolonialism and Feminism
24
The Concept of Universal Sisterhood
29
11--A MAN AND A WOMAN
Silent Sufferers
Women in a Predicament
Power Relationships
Extra-marital Relationships
Women Jilted
Male Narrator
Independentmree Women
111--PROVIDENCE
Dead/Absent Mothers
DominantPassive Mothers
Distanced Mothersmaughters
Independent Mothers
IV--VOICES
Family Ties
Sibling Relationships
Friends
Others
V--SUMMING UP: THE PHOTOGRAPHERS
Works Consulted
Dr. P. Marudanayagam
Professor and Head
Department of English
Pondicherry University
Pondicherry 605 0 14
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the dissertation entitled RE-SHAPING THE
SELF: FEMININE IDENTITY IN THE SHORT STONES OF
ALICE MUNRO AND SHASHI DESHPANDE, submitted to the
Pondicheny University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the
award of the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPW in English, is a
record of original research work done by Ms. H. Kalpana during the
period of her study 1992
- '95 in the Department of English,
Pondicherry University, under my supervision and guidance and that
the dissertation has not previously formed the basis for the award to the
candidate of any Degree, Diploma, Associateship, Fellowship or any
other simiiar titles.
Pondicheny
Date: 30-3-45
(Dr. P. MARUDANAYAGAM)
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H. KALPANA, M. Phil
Research Scholar
Department of English
Pondicherry University
Pondicheny 605 014
DECLARATION
I hereby declare that the dissertation entitled RE
-S
THE SELF: FEMININE DENTITU IN THE SHORT STORIES
OF ALICE
0
SIIASHI DESWANDE, submitted to the
Pondicheny University in partial llfilment of the requirements for the
award of the Degree of DOCTOR Of PHILOSOPHY in English, is a
record of original research work done by me under the supervision and
guidance of Dr. P. MARUDANAYAGAM, Professor and Head,
Department of English, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry 605 0 14,
and that it has not previously formed the basis for award of any Degree,
Diploma, Associateship, Fellowship or any other similar titles.
Pondicheny
Date: 3s
-
3 45
~lSignature
(El. KALPANA)
NOTE ON DOCUMENTATION
The thesis follows the MLA format of parenthetical documentation,
namely, the author-date system. The short stories, however, are
documented by referring to the collections (abbreviated format), and the
page numbers. Footnotes are used throughout the doctoral thesis to
clarify and suggest any point of view that may arise in the main body of
the thesis. Works consulted are cited at the end of the thesis. The short
story collections of Alice Munro and Shashi Deshpande have been
abbreviated as follows for convenience:
196 8 Dance o f n e Happy Shades (1988)--------DHS
Toronto: McGraw Hill Ryerson Ltd.
1971 Lives of Girls and Women (1983)-----------LGW
New York: Plume (Penguin Group).
1974
Something I've Been Meaning To Tell You (1990)--
-SIB Toronto: Penguin.
1978 Who Do You Think You Are? (1981)------- WDY
Toronto: Penguin.
1982 The Moons ofJupiter (1983)-----------------MOJ
England: Penguin.
198 5
The Progress of Love (198 7)-----------------POL
New York: King Penguin.
1990
Friend of My Youth...........................
FOY
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc.
Deshpande' s works
1978
The Legacy ....................................
Leg
Calcutta: Writers Workshop.
1986
The Miracle and Other Stories -------------Mir
Calcutta: Writers Workshop.
1986
fiwastheNightingaIe-------- ----------------Gale
Calcutta: Writers Workshop.
1986
Ifwas Dark ....................................
Dark
Calcutta: Writers Workshop.
1993
The Intrusion and Other Stories ------------Int
New Delhi: Penguin.
Many political and historical developments have influenced the
countries of Canada and India. The effects of colonisation have nurtured
an ambivalent sense of identity among the people of the two countries.
Besides this, the Canadians have also dealt a feeling of displacement.
This problem of identity is reflected in the literary work of the two
countries, and the issue is intensified in writing by women. Women
have been threatened not only by colonial influences, but also by the
existing patriarchal ideologies. Women writers, therefore have begun to
question the concept of self and the nature of feminine identity. The
aim of the thesis is to analyse this concept of feminine identity, and the
re-shaping of self that is undertaken by the women characters in the
short stories of Alice Munro, and Shashi Deshpande. The thesis is
structured into five chapters preceded by a preface:
Chapter One: Mapping Out charts the background of the thesis,
and touches upon the important areas that underlie the study. Beginning
with a brief introduction of the authors and their works, the chapter
proceeds to study the concepts: feminine identity; the short story genre
and women writers; postcolonial literary background; postcolonial ism
and feminism; and the concept of universal sisterhood.
Chapter Two: A Man and A Woman discusses what it means for
women to be brides/ wives/ lovers and draws upon some of the short
stories of Munro and Deshpande to understand the nature of manwoman relationships. At the same time, it also ponders and speculates
on the existing relationship in terms of sex and sexuality.
Chapter Three: Providence examines the short stories dealing with
mother-daughter relationships. It discusses the influence of mothers,
and the bond that exists between mothers and daughters in families.
Chapter Four: Voices realises that women characters in the short
stories have allowed other voices to nurture, and grow within them
while they have thrust down their own true selves. This realisation
becomes conspicuous when they view their childhood, or generational
connections, or intercultural connections, objectively. They realise the
problems of class and society, political bureaucracies, religious and
moral values, history and time, nature and place, fear and madness,
death and alienation as they develop self-awareness and review their
places in society.
Chapter Five: The Photographers is the concluding chapter that
assesses and sums up the writers' works and their ability, in portraying
women characters realistically. The writers are similar to photographers,
for they capture all the nuances of womens' lives. The chapter discusses
the characters who move from a loss of identity to a phase of self-
realisation. It consolidates and attempts to explain the re-shaping
undertaken by them.
PREFACE
As I begin to write this thesis, I recollect my participation in the
Canadian Workshop organised at Baroda in March '92. That was my
first acquaintance to Canadian literature. In that month long proceeding,
I was greatly impressed by Alice Munro's Pi740 Do You Think You Are?
Being a woman and being aware of society's pressures on women, I was
instantly struck by the plethora of experiences, honestly and truthfully
expressed in the portrayal of Rose, the principal character in the book. I
instantly felt an urge to explore Munro's writing, but my enthusiasm
was short-lived when I realised that securing her works was very
difficult. I, however, pursued my interest, and made a nuisance of
myself in all places in the country having even remote links with
Commonwealth literature. Finally I had managed to read not only four
collections of Munro, but also secured copies of some secondary
material which was an encouraging factor.
This progress was enhanced by the occurrence of two other related
incidents--a talk with Prof. Susie Tharu, and the discovery of the work
Women Writing in India, edited by Tharu and K. Lalitha. The richness
of Indian women's literature was a revelation and I was ashamed of my
ignorance of these writers. These related incidents initiated me not only
to survey Indian women's literature, but also to include an Indian writer
in the doctoral thesis. The final decision I reached was to explore the
writings of Alice Munro and Shashi Deshpande, and the short story
genre. To make my stand clear I have chalked out a long introduction,
but at this point, I prefer to make just three statements with regard to my
fascination for Munro's
and Deshpande's
works.
The main
considerations were:
*
The experiences within the works of these writers were easy for
me to relate to, and sympathise with.
* The works of these authors seemed ordinary superficially but
hidden within the texts were inner realities and truths.
* There was not much research done in the area of short stories,
and particularly so when it came to the short stories of Deshpande.
The task undertaken was not an easy one as the writers belonged to
two different set-ups--Munro was from a Euro-centric, white, middle
class society while Deshpande was a 'third'' world writer, and belonged
to a brown, brahmanical, Hindu, middle class society. Yet, what
motivated me was the ability of these two women writers to create an
awareness of the.. self within their women characters, and their ability
The term third world is not used in any political or derogatory
way but more in terms of being a functional description:
Peter Worsley in his 1967 study The Third World gives one of the
more plausible ways of handling this still undefinable but no longer
marginal phenomenon: "the definition and composition of the Third
World, indeed, was always situational and complex, an operational
rather than analytical term,..." (qtd in Gugelberger, 1991: 5 10).
I
in portraying characters' relationships with others. I diligently pursued
the project for two years amidst various setbacks--family pressures, lack
of material, the dubious attitude of people who thought that a body of
Canadian and Indian literatures hardly existed, the dilemma of locating
the writings from a specified point of view, and the fear that I may not
be able to achieve my goal. Finally, the encouragement and
interest,displayed by many well-wishers who argued, discussed, and
stressed the importance of pursuing such a cross- cultural research
project convinced me of the validity of the project. The project's
significance and worthiness was further proved when I received the
Graduate Research Award by the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute in
1993. This grant has helped me considerably in continuing the work and
completing it.
CHAPTER I
MAPPING OUT
Older, they become round and hard, demand
shapes that are real, castles on the shore
and all the lines and angles of tradition
are mustered for them in their eagerness
to become whole, fit themselves to the thing
they see outside them,
while the thing they left
lies like a caul in some abandoned place,
unremembered by fingers or the incredibly bright
stones, which for a time replace their eyes.
--Page, P.K. (1985: 6 )
The introductory chapter "Mapping Out" charts a background for
the thesis. It opens the discussion with a brief sketch of the authors,
Alice Munro and Shashi Deshpande, and their writings. The women
characters in the short stories of Alice Munro and Shashi Deshpande are
not pictures of Canadian or Indian women en masse, but are only
depictions of some women who belong to the upper/lower middle class
society of the two countries. Thus, the thesis is located specifically in
dealing with middle class women's experiences 2 .
2The thesis is not based on a chronological classification but is
oriented thematically and metaphorically in considering relationships
The sketch of the authors and their works leads to the topic of
identity, and the nature of feminine identity. The explanation attempts to
comprehensively view the nature of women's consciousness', and their
concepts of self. It is perceived that their ability in understanding their
selves is located in their relationship with others.
The section on feminine identity leads to the appraisal of the short
story genre and women writers. This is followed by a brief sketch of
postcolonial literary writing, relating to the Canadian and Indian
backgrounds.
The section on postcolonialism and feminism points out
intersecting trends existing between these two theories. It then proceeds
to argue that the concept of universal sisterhood has to change, for
women's oppression in all societies differs based on environment and
other factors.
This long introduction leads to a reading of the short stories of
Alice Munro and Shashi Deshpande. It hopes to gain knowledge of the
true self of women, by examining the various relationships presented in
between women characters and others in society. Only stories signifying
such relationships are considered which also means that each and every
story from these collections are not considered. At times, closely linked
stories bearingiilluminating similar links are discussed together.
the short story collections--Munro's Dance ofthe Happy Shades (19681,
Lives of Girls and Women (197 1 ), Something I'veBeen Meaning To Tell
You (1 974), kt710 DO You Think You Are? (1 978), The Moons of Jupiter
(1982), The Progress ofLove (1987), and Friend of My Youth (1990);
and Deshpande's The Legacy (1978), The Miracle (1986), It was the
Nightingale ( 1 986), it was Dark (1 986), and The Infmsion and Other
S ~ r i e s(1993). The succeeding chapters are divided on the basis of
various relationships that exist between the women characters and others
in the short stories.
Chapter 11--A Man and A Woman3 discusses women's desire and
need for relationship with men. It examines the short stories where
women characters are wives/lovers of men and the nature of women's
sexuality.
Chapter 111--Providence4 views the relationship between mothers
and daughters, in the various short stories by Munro and Deshpande.
Chapter IV--Voices depicts all other human relationships in the
short stories such as friendship, hostility and family ties, and also
3This is the title of one of the stories in Deshpande's collection,
Gale.
4This title is taken from Munro's story in the collection, WDY.
analyses experiences such as death, fear, and alienation.
Chapter V--The Photographers5 is the concluding chapter which
consolidates the various ideas and analysis put forward, in the earlier
chapters.
Brief Sketch of Munro and Deshpande, and Their Works
Alice Munro was born, and brought up, in Wingham, Ontario. She
studied at the University of Western Ontario, and afterwards moved to
Vancouver and Victoria. In 1972, she returned to Southwestern Ontario,
and now lives in Clinton. Her first collection of short stories, Dance of
Z%eHappy Shades, was published in 1968, and it got the Govemor-
General's award. 1971 saw the release of the collection, Lives of Girls
and Women6 and in 1974, her third collection, Something I've Been
5 This
title is borrowed fiom a story in Munro's collection, LGW.
6LGW and WDY are sequence stories, i. e. they are "a volume of
stories, collected and organized by their author, in which the reader
successively realizes underlying pattern and rheme7' (1989: 148). (Munro
has described LGW as a novel but I consider it as a short story sequence.
Munro herself has admitted to writing the parts at different times and
not continuosly in a sequence as a novel is generally done. Moreover
critics have viewed it both as a collection of short stories and as a novel,
thereby endowing an ambivalent identity on this book.) Robert M.
Luscher in "The Short Story Sequence: An Open Book" makes some
very interesting observations on such sequence stories. He refutes
Calisher's idea that the identity of the the short story is threatened, he
Meaning To Tell You was published. This was followed by Who Do You
Think You Are (1978), which was also chosen for the Governor-
General's award. (This collection was published with a different title in
the United States-The Beggar Maid and it was the runner-up for the
Booker prize.) Her fifth collection, The Moons of Jupiter was released in
1982. Munro was recognised a third time when she won the GovernorGeneral's award, for the collection The Progress of Love (1985). Her
latest collection, Friend of My Youth was published in 1990. Munro
presents a honest, sensitive and sympathetic view of women in her
stories and has been an experimenter and innovator in the genre of short
story writing.
Shashi Deshpande is the daughter of the renowned Kannada
playwright, Shriranga. She was born in Dharwad, Kamataka, and
graduated from Bombay University. She has in recent years settled
down in Bangalore. She started writing in earnest only from 1970. Her
initial writings were short stories which were published in various
magazines. They were collected and compiled by the Writers Workshop
points out that instead in linked stories the stories gain contexts,
characters, symbols and themes, thus providing a richer identity to the
format. He adds that they act as unique hybrids providing the pleasure of
the "patterned closure of individual stories and the discovery of larger
unifying strategies that transcend apparent gaps between stories"
(1989: 148-150). Therefore there is more room for subjective
interpretation and active participation; the reader's task thus becomes
simultaneously more difficult and more rewarding" (1989: 158).
in Calcutta--The Legacy was published in 1978, and in 1986, the Writers
Workshop brought out three volumes viz; The Miracle, i t was the
Nightingale, and It was Dark. Penguin Books in 1993, released The
Intrusion and Other Stories. Some of the stories in this collection had
already been published in the earlier coiiections brought out by Writers
Workshop. Shashi Deshpande has also authored six novels--The Dark
Holds No Terrors ( 1 980), Come Up and Be Dead (1 983), Roots and
Shadows (1 983), That Long Silence (1 986), if1 Die Today ( 1 987), and
The Binding Vine (1993)--and she gained recognition when That Long
Silence was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award in 1987.
Feminine Identity
The theme of feminine identity takes a new meaning when we
encourage ourselves to understand works of other countries by
transporting ourselves into new lands, and questioning the literary works
based on the sociological background and settings of that particular
region. Such a process is not an easy one, and it may give rise to a
number of unresolved trends in postcolonial writing. There is
satisfaction, nevertheless, in raking up this rich mass of literature, and
attempting to understand it. I am not overtly concerned at the moment
with solutions to the problems that the women characters in the short
stories of Mun1-0 and Deshpande experience, but with the ability to
atleast minimally understand and sympathise with the nature and
complexity of the problems that the women characters in these stories
face. To clarify this aspect further it is better to state that the purpose of
this doctoral thesis has been to learn the "nature" of the subjugation or
victimisation based on the society' that these characters (in the texts of
Munro and Deshpande) are rooted in. It is not possible to make a
generalised comparison between the works of Munro and Deshpande,
and therefore the thesis is located within two focal areas: i) the
intersection of middle class women and identity; and ii) the
development o f self within the relationships that exist between women
and others in society. The growing awareness of women and their role in
society has allowed both these writers* to create women characters, who
Stimpson validates the argument illustrating that cultural history
has revealed the genderised ways in which people portray themselves as
writers is mainly as a product of society. Many women writers try to
deny their social conditioning, and some of them have consciously
rebelled against this conditioning in their writings. The significant
outcome of this denial has been that women writers have created
characters who are different and who attempt to overthrow the coded
structure in a bid to establish themselves (1988:95).
7
A point that Stimpson makes is of interest here:
...feminist critics have recognised that every woman, as
language user, has multiple relationships with chosen
audiences. Each will embody its own sense of language, of her
place in the world, and of the possibilities of change in that
place. At times, women may speak or write only for
themselves. Their motives may be weariness, fear, or
insecurity. More cheerfully, they may be claiming a private
explore the possibilities and the potential of being women, and their
abilities to reshape themselves.
Feminine identity or the consciousness of woman is rooted in her
relationship with others. Carol Shields states that while Canadian men
have written about "man and landscape, man and history, man and
moral issues", women have written about "relationships between people
and particularly between men and women" (1993535). What Carol
Shields mentions about Canadian women writing is to a great extent true
of all postcolonial women's writing. In their writing, Alice Munro and
Shashi Deshpande adopt a subversive9 style reflecting the strategies
women writers employ to deal with oppression; they visualise characters
who make compromises, or who try to gain respect and a sense of selfactualisation by reversing the general image of women in that society
and at times, the writers also depict characters who intentionally resort
space in which to experiment with style, to test perceptions, to
play with fantasies. Whatever the cause, the effect is to
reinforce an impression of the apparent solitude of language
(1988:119).
9Breen's definition of patriarchy and subversiveness may help in
understanding these terms. She states that when men are dominant in all
positions of power, then it can be referred to as patriarchy;
subversiveness is depicting the "status quo" without supporting it.
Therefore, in subversive writing the writers consciously or
unconsciously undermine the established concept that men being
superior should dominate women (1990:x).
to being weak and powerless, in order to exist in a peaceful and
harmonious relationship with others.
My emphasis on identity is thus motivated by the feeling, that
women are suppressed, and are subjected to pressures of societal taboos
and prejudices. I also recognise that women's experiences can be
located at four stages of their growth:
* maturing from a girl into a woman.
* development of a sexual/intimate relationship with men.
* entering into matrimony.
* conception and giving birth.
During these developments women feel separated, and they
develop a self-awareness of what they lose. This revaluation of self
leads to a consciousness which in some cases motivates action. The
attempt to act which may be negative in terms of society is what I term
as re-shaping. In the process of the doctoral thesis I will argue that the
characters in these short stories of Munro and Deshpande move towards
self-awareness and a re-identification of their selves.
I, thus, perceive identity to be an awareness of the gendered roles
and strongly feel that the notion of identity is something nurtured by
society. Society creates certain images and women mould themselves
into these roles by the process of socialisation and domestication. They
are told that they are inferior to men, they are weak, passive and it is
feminine to be gentle, obedient and sacrificing. It is, therefore, essential
to identify, and to know the true nature of oneself. In this context, an
awareness of femaleness and an identification with other women can
lead to an understanding of the gendered power relations existing within
the institution, termed society.
The Short Story Genre and Women Writers
The short story has been in existence for a long time, and at various
points of time in history it has been judged to be close to forms like the
romance, and the oral narrative. In spite of being an ancient art,the short
story is not considered a work of art such as the novel and the poem; it
has in fact been neglected. Moreover, there has been no consistent
pattern established as far as short story writing is concerned. This may
be due to two factors, namely, the fact that short stories have existed in
all societies fi-om a long time, and that short stories, in later times, have
been published in non-literary magazines which have been considered as
cheap commercial journals. Another factor, according to Valerie Shaw,
is that short stories are not linked to the writer's works and she quotes
Elizabeth Bowen's words to clarify this point: "when a man engages
himself in this special field his stories stand to be judged first of all on
their merits
stories, only later in relation to the rest of his work"
The final problem that one faces is in the definition of the short
story. Norman Friedmanlo thinks that all narrative fiction in prose which
is short can be taken into this category. He proceeds to use two methods,
namely, inductive and deductive methods to classify this category. He
adds that if an a priori definition is needed to understand the genre, then
it can be termed as deductive. On the other hand, if one takes it for
granted that one has a rough idea of the structure and the only thing
necessary is a way of conceptualising it, then it can be termed as
inductive methodology. He further states that "The first approach fits the
evidence to the definition, whereas the second fits the definition to the
evidence". He does mention that both of these approaches have their
drawbacks--the deductive method already assumes there is a point
which cannot be wrong and the inductive method implies assumptions
and defines characteristics that one may be looking for. Therefore it is
good to realise that there cannot be only one definition, as "a definition
is always relative to the context and purpose of the inquiry, which in
turn will determine which traits we select for the initial two steps of the
definition" (1989:15-17). He concludes his study of the various short
story theories with the statement that while the short story as narrative
prose is short, it can have a number of possibilities with regard to the
"size of the action, the manner of representation, and the nature of the
lo
For a thorough understanding of his ideas see "Recent Short
Story Theories" in Lohafer's Short Story at the Crossroads (1989: 133 1). What is stated here is only a brief summary.
-
~'
end effect" (1989:30). Thus, the important point is to keep the definition
constant but to vary and combine the other traits to get different types of
short stories (eg, the biblical short story, the modem short story, etc)
which differ extragenerically but which could help in showing how the
form differs from other stories. The definition has to be suited to the
facts and not the facts to the definition. (1989:30-3 1). Mary Rohrberger
tries to define the short story but she too finds that the form cannot be
easily pinned down and she thinks that the whole issue moves around in
a circle without coming to a central point. She therefore emphasises two
ideas: i) Robert Scholes theory that "'generic study.. .[is] the central
element in a poetics of fiction"'; ii) "Another is that as long as we
articulate and exchange information, we live, continuing to define
ourselves and our creations in the only ways we can. We have no
options. We simply go on from where we are, somewhere between
shadow and act" (1989:45).
A theory close to Friedman's inductive and deductive approach is
put forward by Austin M. Wright in "On Defining the Short Story: The
Genre Question". He feels that defining the short story has two
problems, namely, historical and theoretical. He explains these terms by
referring to Tzvetan Todorov's distinctions. According to Todorov's
theory (which Wright surnmarises) the theoretical genre is "established
by a congruence of characteristics derived from a system" while a
historical genre is disclosed by the "observation of an existing body of
works or characteristics which are seen to have recurred together". Thus
to state that 'short story' is a story that is short is a theoretical category
while different versions of stories, such as the modem short storyhhe
lyrical short story are historical categories (1989: 46-47). He, too,
finally concludes that defining the short story is difficult and that only
trying to know the meaning of 'genre' may help in clarifying the
differences (1989: 53).
It may, therefore, be more relevant to find out in this context the
function of the short story instead of trying to define the forrn. This
aspect becomes significant when I discuss women writing the short
story. Women writers, are able to dream, fantasise, and weave an
imaginary world by using the form in innovative ways. Other forms like
the novel too may be able to achieve all this and more" but the short
l 1 It
is not essential for me to defend the short story or acclaim it in
terms of its pros and cons, or to redeem it from a position of neglection
and place it in contrast to the novel. What I am more interested in is
finding out what the short story is able to do, and how this helps women
writers.
I would like to draw the reader's attention to William O'Rouke's
essay, "Morphological Metaphors for the Short Story: Matters of
Production, Reproduction, and Consumption" where he makes three
central analogies that point out the difference from the novel: i)The
short story has an exoskeleton that one has to adhere to and this restrains
its size. Therefore the story is always in view while the novel does not
present such a view. ii) The other analogy is that the "the concept of
length...must be replaced by the concept of space and time intertwined".
story seems to be ideal for women writers in terms of time and space;
For women, being burdened with a number of chores have little time
and space to spend on writing.12
When he refers to time, he means not the length of time but more the
distance that the text creates between the observer and itself. Thus the
space of the novel is more and therefore it takes longer for one to
comprehend it. iii) The third analogy is taken from economics and he
states that the novel is macro form while the short story is micro form.
Thus the "short story is a micro-form, space-time, exoskeletal
phenomenon..." (1989: 193-198).
This argument is supported by many writers: Di Brandt in an
interview states that when her children were born, it was a problem for
her to find time and space to write (1993:44). Atwood, too, shares this
anxiety and wonders if one could be a woman writer and at the same
time be happily married with children. Her answer to this is an
interesting revelation. She points out that many earlier women writers-Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, the Brontes, Jane Austen, Christina
Rossetti--were unmarried or chidless or had died early. She feels that the
husbands' demands could thwart the progress of the art (Scheier,
1990:17). One notices that Deshpande's earlier works were short stories
and also that she began writing late in life. The biographical note to The
Intrusion and Other Stories mentions that the early years of her
marriage were largely devoted to the care of her two young sons. Gail
Scott in her essay, "Shaping A Vehicle For Her Use" queries:
How does a woman choose a form to write in? Is there a
connection between the form she chooses and the
circumstances of her life?...So, in answer to the question, is
the story really to be privileged over longer fiction, the
materialist in me is tempted to reply: a woman's
socioeconomic situation may be a determining factor. Maybe
she has a job; maybe she has children. In terms of time, a
I would like to divert a little here, as there is an interesting
observation made by Suzanne C. Ferguson in "Defining The Short
Story: Impressionism and Form". She feels that the short story is not a
different genre from the novel. The short story like the novel has been
affected by impressionism and being a manifestation of impression it
cannot be studied as a separate genre. It exhibits, like the novel, the
following characteristics:
* Highlighting the point of view.
* Emphasising sensation and inner experience.
* Changing or abandoning traditional plot elements.
* Description of events using techniques like metaphor and
metonymy.
* Disrupting the chronological time order.
* Economisation of formal and stylistic patterns.
* Foregrounding of style
(These are qualities that one notices largely in many women's
woman's life is never simple; she must put aside her writing
to do a million other things. To make matters worse, her
socialization has trained her to keep her mind so cluttered with
details that concentration on a longer work is often, at least
initially, difficult....(1983: 69-70).
The meagre yet reflective data tell us that women writers do not
have much time and space to write, and the short story form is
particularly suitable for the brevity of the forrn is easier to handle in
terms of time and space.
writings). The only difference is that due to the brevity of the short
storylj, these impressionistic characteristics seem to be intensified.
Therefore, she argues that the modem short story is not a separate genre,
but just a different form of impressionism (1 982: 14-15).
Moving back to the link between short stories and oral narratives,
one notices that the oral narrative projects a sense of togetherness and an
atmosphere of a community gathering. This aspect has helped in
recreating an environment of closeness in short story writing by women.
(An illustration of this is the understanding among women that one
notices in Munro's and Deshpande's short stories). On the other hand,
Joyce Carol Oates has linked the short story to a dream. She feels that it
is like a verbalised dream that is arranged in space, and thinks that as the
dream represents desire, the short story must, therefore, be a
representation of desire (May, 1976: 79). One cannot help recollecting
Freud's theory on dreams where he states that dreams are manifestations
of repressed desires (1 900). Continuing Oates comparison and linking it
to Freud's theory, one notices that women's short stories can thus
l3Friedrnan, however, finds fault with her ideas and thinks that
"Her way of handling this problem is to argue that since modernism is in
part a matter of leaving things out, and since the short story has fewer
parts to begin with, modernism affects the story more sharply than it
does the novel" (1989:21). My reason for mentioning Ferguson is to
point out the traits which, I strongly feel are apparent in women's
writing.
become portraits depicting women's repressed desires or wishes.
Other theorists of the short story like V. S. Pritchett argue that it is
a hybrid because:
It owes much to the quickness, the objectivity and the cutting
of the cinema; it owes much to the poet on one hand and the
newspaper reporter on the other; something also to the
dramatic compression of the theatre, and everything to the
restlessness, the alert nerve, the scientific eye and the short
breath of contemporary life. It is the art of the short
expectation of life (May, 1976:1 16).
Similarly, Valerie Shaw presents the speciality of the form to
integrate other art forms like painting, lyric poetry, or photography. She
feels that it is "a highly self-conscious form" that is "instinctual" and
that brings "the character to full consciousness for the first time in his
life" (1983:2). It is easy to see the affinity that women have with this
form--women are subjected to intemalising their experiences and hence
they are highly self-conscious. Moreover, women are generally
considered to be 'instinctive' and 'sensual' in comparison to men, and
3
because of these traits they are able to relate easily to the form of the
short story which is intense and compressed. Also, being sensual and
sensitive, they absorb more of what happens around them and they are
able to portray the predicaments1 oppressions/ injustices/ joys of women
with intensity and with a comprehensiveness that allows them to use the
form to turn inwards, and depict the feelings and the emotions of the
inner body and mind. "The woman writer", Whitlock thinks, "finds it
appealing as a means of questioning and reinventing womanhood; a way
of asserting a different voice and a different view" (1989: xxii). Women
live at various levels--modem women are not only housewives, but are
also educated and hold careers. They exist in two spaces and their
constant effort to do well at both levels causes tension and friction,
giving rise to different personalities. It is not possible to reconcile all the
different personalities, and it becomes a significant search for women to
know who they are. This type of tension has given rise to what can be
called the new short story which has been well defined by Susan
Lohafer:
What makes the "new" short story different is its flattery of
the self as the axis of a world. It may be a small world, a fake
world, a tragic or a crazy one; it may be familiar, bizarre,
tangible, abstract, reported, or dreamed. It may be but the
weirdest fragment, yet it will cast a rounded shadow on our
minds. It will revolve on a self. Whose? A single character's
often; the author's always; the reader's
--
but that is
speculation for another time. To the list of essentials we will
add the one that makes the historical difference: "I" - matters -
t o - you(1983:12).
Riemenschneider, discussing the short story and Indian women,
thinks that women writers in India confine themselves to portraying a
woman's step to liberate herself from the shackles of traditional roles.
Writers like Deshpande provide a new concept of women--women who
are at times able to say 'No' and who move into new spheres that they
would not be able to occupy in reality. just the point that writers in India
are able to create such situations, he feels, is because of the ability of the
short story to combine "the epic art of extension with the 'poetic art of
ellipsis"' (1986: 177).
Davey in the article, "Genre Subversion in the English-Canadian
Short Story" feels that contemporary Canadian short stories writers have
mixed genres and "the concept of mixed, blended, blurred, or
interplaying genre signals receives considerable validation" He links
this concept to Munro's works which, he states, contain non-modernist
features, and thus feels her writings to be close to realism (1 988: 147).
This could be the reason for the difference in Deshpande's and
Munro's short stories. (I do not wish to come to a closure about the
genre's abilities on the basis of just two writers but would like to leave
the subject open so that there can be a firther probing and analysis in
these areas).
Postcolonial Literary Background
The past decade has witnessed a change in the literature produced
in the English language. Literary output from countries other than
Britain and U. S. have made a big impression world wide. This is
illustrated by the acclaim received by writers like Michael Ondaatje,
Vikram Seth, Ben Okri, Derek Walcott, Githa Hariharan and others.
Accordingly the markets have opened wider to receive such literature,
and critical readings of these writings have also increased. Yet, one has
to admit that much of the critical writing has been misconstrued, as
these writers are judged by the critical standards of the imperialist
countries. This stance has to change because such writing needs fiesh
approaches, and judging by critical standards prevailing in the West
only distances the works. In recent years this perception that Western
literary theory is insufficient to judge the national literatures of nonwestern countries has motivated a number of debates, and an illustration
is Frank Davey's words in his essay "Reading Canadian reading" which
applies to postcolonial writing:
One consequence of Canadian misreading of other national
criticisms has been the privileging of particular bodies of
writing and of literary theories partially generated by this
writing. Less obvious has been the disguising of such
privileged texts as 'international' literature; the creation of the
illusion that British, French, American and Russian literatures
constitute both the international canon and the source of 'real'
literary theory. A third consequence has been the illusion that
national concerns are unconnected to literary theory and that
the latter's principles are somehow relevant to all writing
(1988:9).14
Australian, African, Canadian, and Indian works have been rooted
in their respective cultures and traditions, and to evaluate such works
without understanding the origins and the growth of the people is
inappropriate. Therefore "our minds as well as our economies must be
decolonised if we are to understand the decolonising fictions created by
postcolonial writers whose works question the values once taken for
granted by a powerhl Anglocentric discourse" (Brydon & Tiffin,
1993:ll).
Postcolonial discourse has arisen from the context of imperialism
and colonial tensions that the people have undergone. This is a
commonality that these literatures share. Ashcrofi et al, tracing the
development of post-colonial writing note two trends in postcolonial
discourse: i) colonial power is represented by writers who stress not
only the civilised society but also the beauty of the colonialists'
I4 For
further discussion see Davey.
countries. (This can be witnessed in the writings of writers like Rudyard
Kipling, E. M. Forster.) ii) The natives adopt the colonialists' attitudes
and thus, become outcasts within their own land (1989:4-5). These
writers write of experiences alien to them, and their texts were written to
gain approval from the imperialists. (Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt,
Sarojini Naidu.) This stance of writing to please or gain approval has
changed in recent years and writers adapted the colonial tongue to strike
back at the rulers. Postcolonial writing uses innovative techniques and
creates a new language separate from the standard language of the
imperialists. This is illustrated by Rushdie's Midnight's Children or
Raja Rao's Kanthapura. Postcolonial writers have ably used the English
language to create today not only an English language, but a number of
English languages. The writers are doubly endowed by being able to
straddle two worlds--their homelands and the colonisers land--by the
use of this language. They use the coloniser's tongue to write
"'decolonising fictions', texts that write back against imperial fictions
and texts that incorporate alternative ways of seeing and living in the
world" (Brydon & Tiffin, 1993:11). Pico Iyer in a discussion of
postcolonial writing15 remarks that the idea of centre and periphery has
postco colonialism does not mean anything political and it is more
concerned with the discourse that has arisen from a colonial context. It
is a term used to "cover all the culture affected by the imperial process
from the moment of colonization to the present day7' (Ashcroft et al,
1989: 2).
been turned upside down and what was the "eccentric" world is today
the world's centrel6. Postcolonial writing, thus tries to revisualise reality
and rejects the established order in the process of decolonising
(1989: 4-5).
Maxwell discussing the impact of language in colonised countries
notes two parallel developments; In the first instance, the colonialists
implanted their language in the conquered land and made it the new
language of the country. (Such a growth is observed in Canada.) In the
second instance the colonialist's language was not implanted but it
became a major language along with the existing vernaculars in the
country. (An illustration of such a development is India) (1965: 82-3).
Thus, one notices that India and Canada fall into two categories of the
colonial rule. Besides these influences, the literature produced has also
been promoted by the historical and ideological circumstances of which
the people have been a part. India has produced bilingual writers like
Arun Kolatkar, Dilip Chitre, Chudamani Raghavan, and Kamala Das
and also writers who write only in English--Nissim Ezekiel, Raja Rao,
R. K. Narayan, Anita Desai, and Shashi Deshpande. Similarly, in
Canada one witnesses French-Canadian writers such as Gabrielle Roy,
and Marie Claire Blais, as well as English-Canadian writers such as
16Iyer's article in Time magazine made an analysis of the rise of
literary writing in postcolonial countries and the change in power
relationships between the ruler and the ruled (1 993: 8).
Atwood, Margaret Laurence, Robert Kroetch, Ethel Wilson, and Alice
Munro. At the same time the concept of multiculturalism has developed
writers of other origins too. A few that can be mentioned in this context
are Michael Ondaatje, Joy Kogawa, Daphne Marlatt, and Claire Harris.
What is the main focus of these writers? Vassanji, talking about
Immigrant writing, mentions that the writers must write about
experiences true to their age and lifestyle. Such writing invariably
produces themes like alienation, social and political turmoils, racism,
economic struggles, subjection and exile (1985:3). Ruminating on this
statement one notices that most postcolonial writing too discusses such
themes. The postcolonial writers, moreover depict their rootlessness and
glorify their marginality while trying to locate themselves through their
writing.
Postcolonialism and Feminism
The idea of survival and identity has encouraged the growth of a
number of women writers in Canada. These writers have attempted to
discuss in their works the status and role of women within society.
English, however, has been an alien language for women writers in the
Indian sub-continent, and therefore the number of women writing in the
English language are very few. Nevertheless, the past one decade has
seen an increase in literature produced in English by women writers. At
present one finds that there is not only a body of creative writing, but
also a body of criticism spearheaded by critics and academics such as
Susie Tharu, Kumkum Sangari, Ketu H. Katrak, Meenakshi Mukherjee,
Arun Prabha Mukherjee, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, K. Lalitha,
Tejaswini Niranj ana, Kalpana Ram, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, and
Gayatri Chakravarthi Spivak. Some of these women are rooted in India
while others are in Western countries from where they are able to
introduce their ideas into the large body of western criticism. These
critics have not only created an awareness of Indian women, but also in
a generalised way of 'Third' world women too.
At this juncture it is important to concern ourselves with the
concept of feminism and its impact on the literature of the postcolonial
countries. Feminism is generally perceived as a political agenda that
developed in the United States after 1960s. Many developing countries
are disturbed by this concept and do not want to commit themselves to a
political ideology17 which they feel demands equal rights for women,
17A point that is of interest in the present context is Sartre's view on
Beauvoir's feminism. Discussing this aspect Tori1 Moi states:
...Sartre rightly assumes that simply to discuss women's social
situation, their sexuality or their identity is not in itself a
feminist entreprise. To be a feminist is to take up a political
position: it requires the capacity to posit certain goals and to
define one's enemies, and the will and ability to attack them.
Feminism, one might say, requires us not simply to describe
the status quo, but to define it as unjust and oppressive as
and which is moreover far removed from their circumstances. In
countries, like India, there has been the additional claim by some
women that they don't need feminism, for Indian women gained
political and legal rights with independence. Another factor promoting
this theory is that the Indian constitution has not made any
differentiation in gender.
What is to be considered at this point is what feminism is and how
one can define it. It cannot forever be connected to the establishment of
equality between sexes. It has steadily gained a number of connotations,
and also has invited a large number of critical theories variously labelled
as Marxist feminism, psychoanalytical feminism, socialist feminism,
radical feminism, French feminism, etc. What is relevant at this juncture
as far as feminist concepts are concerned is to feel, to know, and to
understand the predicament and dilemma of women within the context
of the society and culture to which they belong. This can be defined as
feminism18 because such an ideology creates a conscious awareness of
well. It also requires a vision of an alternative: a utopian
perspective which inspires and informs the struggle against
current oppression (1994: 185).
l8This feeling is authenticated by the words of Smaro Kamboureli in
Sounding Dzfferences:
Let me say first that feminism doesn't have to do only with
women. Quite the contrary: it has to do with all aspects of
culture. In other words, it is a political movement that seeks,
women's problems. Mohanty points out that feminist struggles can
occur simultaneously at two interconnected leilels: "an ideological,
discursive
level
which
addresses
questions
of
representation
(womanhoodifemininitS.), and a material, experiential, daily-life level
which focuses on the micropolitics of work. home, family, sexuality,
etc" (1 99 1 :2 E ).
Passing from feminist theories to postcolonial theory, one notices
that there are many points of intersection between the two concepts.
Both postcolonialists and feminists are faced with the question of
identity, problem of language, the theme of displacement, and the sense
of loss. The problem of language is intensified in feminist writing
because women in society are always the other, the "second sex" and
they, like the postcolonialists, are forced to use the language of their
masters. Women writers experience a void, a vacuum as they have to
use a language that has been created by patriarchy. One may argue that
postcolonial countries do not have a language, but as Ashcroft points out
there is a preexisting language in all societies, and it is women who
among other things, to undo the political rhetoric of our
tradition, which is a rhetoric of polarities, as Lola said. So
feminist writing as an activity is - has to be iconoclastic ....
that we should move away from our obsession with identity to
a concern with difference, from wholeness to incompleteness,
from representation to presentation. This kind of movement is,
for me, a political gesture that deflects the status quo, be it
literary or social (1 993 : 137- 138).
-
have no language at all (1 989:25 ). Therefore \yomen gvriters ha1.e to
create a new language'o from the existing one. The construction and
perception of such a language, says it'hitlocl;. can be called "female
naturalism" (a term she bonou~sfrom Kay Ferres) kvhich means women
writing about sensual experiences such as touch, taste. hearing, and
smell, or referring to details like food. and clothing, or attempting to
chronicle their lives in terms of events like birth, death, and marriage
(1989: xxxi).
Viewing the theme of displacement, one finds that postcolonial
feminist writing deals with power relations, that constraints women. In
certain instances women's position changes and they may assume a
powerful role. Such power transferences are witnessed in Indian
households where women are socialised and domesticated, within the
family, by the dominating attitude of the mother-in-law, who becomes
the defender af a tradition which had earlier circumscribed her. The
connections between the two concepts can also be noticed in terms of
not just language and hegemony, but also in the political set up of the
society, the experience of being silenced, and the attempt to gain a
voice.
I9For a more enlightening discussion see Kate McKlunkie's
argument in the article, "Women's Language and Literature: A Problem
in Women's Studies" (1983: 5 1-6 1).
Feminism and postcolonialism try to understand the marginaiised
and they try to shift the roles of the oppressor and the oppressed.
Postcolonialist feminist writing has now hegun 1~jtl-1"questioning of
forms and modes, to unmasking the assumptions upon tj*hich such
canonical constructions are founded, moving first to make their cryptic
bases visible and then to destabilise them" (i\shcroft et al. 1989: 175176). Feminism's agenda is not only to oppose sexism but also to make
women think of their roles or their images. Postcolonial feminist
writing, thus discusses the position of the victim, and here I restate very
briefly what Atwood has discussed at great length in her critical work
Survival:there is the position where you deny the fact that you are the
victim or acknowledge that you are a victim but explain your position as
the will of God, fate or the dictates of biology. There is also the position
where you acknowledge the fact that you are a victim but refuse to
accept that the role is inevitable (1972: 36-37).
The Concept of Universal Sisterhood
Most writing dealing with women assumes a universality, a
women's group bonded together in their systems of oppression and
suppression. Class, race and society are de-emphasised in such writings,
and the major assumption is that men are the perpetrators of violence
and domination, whereas women are the victims and subjects of these
atrocities. This is not to state that all writing pursues this role model, but
this image has clearly been the one mast projected when dealing with
man-woman relationships in societies. .A growing body of women
protesting against the fact of women all m7er the world being a
"coherent group with identical interests and desires" has in recent years
been challenged by many women. These women argue that "sisterhood
cannot be assumed on the basis of gender; it must be forged in concrete,
historical and political practice and analysis" (Mohanty, 1984: 337 &
339).
I too, disagree with this system of universality because I feel that
feminism can locate "the differences within the relationships and
practices it explores, treating them not as unified and homogenous, but
as contradictory to the degree that they participate in the uncertainties,
incoherences and instabilities of the cultures where they are found"
(Meaney, 1993: viii). I also wish to emphasise that the reaction of
women to male domination varies depending on the class and status that
women occupy in society. Thus, an Indian woman from the lower class
is not restricted by social customs and taboos, and knows the dominance
of man and can act accordingly, while an educated middle class woman
may know what is happening to her, but is restricted from acting
because of social conventions. There may be other women who are
totally ignorant of what is happening to them, and may accept the power
relationship matter of factly. Also the position of women in India is
different from that of western women--the former are economically
dependent on men. and are very much circumscribed by cultural -values.
Given this picture of women in India one cannot expect to equate the
problems of western and Indian women. Canadian women are
economically independent, and more educated, than their Indian
counterparts. Nevertheless, they too, are dominated by the values of the
male, at work and at home, and feel the categorisation of class.
The assumption of a universal sisterhood also typecasts women
based on their nationalities. Thus women from developing countries are
thought to be submissive, passive, willing, ignorant, and domesticated.
In a similar vein, women of developed countries are judged to be smart,
loose, unsteady, outgoing, dominant, educated, individualistic, and
sexual20. Creation of such stereotypes can be dangerous for one
presumes characteristics without considering the values, the traditions,
and the backgrounds of women in different countries. Therefore,
feminist studies should not construct a homogenous patriarchy, but
evaluate and study the differences based on gender and other
relationships.
2oAfter writing this I happened to discover that Chandra Talpade
Mohanty in "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Discourses" takes a similar viewpoint. However, she implies that the
concept/idea of the western women as educated, dominant,etc, is a
(implicit) self-representation by the western women themselves (1984:
337).
One should at this point remember that "the iiterar! traditions of
post-colonial nations share...thematic interests. metaphysical concerns.
changes in language pattern. experiments in form" because of their
"collective historical experience ..." (Tiffin, 1983:12). These similarities
have been stressed in comparative studies done by various writers. What
is ernphasised here within the limits of this particular research project is
to view women's writing not as a monolith but to see how "these
literatures bear the imprint of the material forces of politics, economics,
and culture which acts upon them within the imperial construct and of
how this is bound up with the replacing of the improved language in the
new geographical and cultural context" (Ashcroft et al 1989:27). Within
the presence of the coloniser and the colonised, feminist studies become
significant as they engage in assessing the women's role within society,
and bring into sharp focus the link of power and domination, that exists
between coloniser and the colonised. Thus, in many ways women
writers of postcolonial countries become important not only in studying
this image of a victim, but also in the study of the predator who is also
circumscribed by the society. Is the woman able to raise herself from the
position of the victim and is she able to rebel and assert herself is what
concerns the study of identity. Therefore, I cannot hope to universalise
the women's experience, but locate the difference and understand
women from this difference. Finally it must be noted that by
universalising women's experiences21. one would only be, once again
2iArun Prabha Mukhejee arguing in the context of academic
assuming a position of power and domination, thrreblh becoming the
coloniser as Mohanty points out:
Western feminists appropriate and "colonise" the fundamental
complexities and conflicts which characterise the lives of
women of different classes, religions, cultures. races and
castes in these countries. It is in the process of homozenisation
and systemisation of the oppression of women in the third
world that power is exercised in much of recent Western
feminist discourse and this power needs to be defined and
universalisation, feels that Western literary criticism focuses solely on
"form and character7'ignoring other factors. She supports her argument
by pointing out that most works are judged on "available classification"
(such as the questipastoralibildungsrornance), ignoring the factor that
the work maybe rooted in more "formal complexities" of a society's
"experience of colonialism, legends o f heroes and villains, deeply held
belief systems, rhetorical pronouncements of local elite such as
politicians, businessmen and movie stars" (1988: 13). Meenakshi
Mukherjee too agrees with this point of view but she thinks that the case
of literary theory, especially in a country like India, is complicated by
various other factors such as colonialisation for a long period, deep
rooted traditional and cultural heritage, plurality of linguistic tongues
and cultures, and limited access to literary pursuits due to low literacy
rate, and therefore the printed text becomes the preserve of the
privileged (1989:45). This is not the means to understand and read
literary texts, especially of postcolonial countries where not only
problems of caste, and class intervene but also political and economic
bureacracy exists. Within this space exists the body o f women's writing
which forms the focus of the thesis.
named (1 99 1:351).
Katrak's statement too validates these differences: "women writers'
stances, particularly with regard to glorifjvingidenigratin traditions,
vary as dictated by their own class backgrounds, levels of education,
political awareness and commitment" and they search for alternatives to
the acts of oppression within the most "revered traditions" (1989: 173).
She adds that most of the texts question patriarchal notions that existed
before colonisation, and that also exist afterwards. She feels that women
writers locate their predicament within the economic system that bas
become capitalistic because of colonization (1989: 173). Therefore
women writers tend to decolonize themselves by using new narrative
methods as witnessed in the set of linked short stories of Alice Munro:
Lives of Girls and Women and
Do You Think You Are, or by
converting myths and legends as illustrated by Shashi Deshpande's
story, "The Inner Rooms" (Dark),or by displacing the roles of the wife/
motheddaughter.
In conclusion I would like to clarify that I am hereby
deconstructing the subject of women within the context of short story
fiction and not trying to prove theoretically that women's awareness of
identities in the Canadian and Indian context is the same. Within the
purview of this chapter I have tried to delineate the various influences
that underlie women's writing and in future chapters will attempt to
discuss women and their relationship with others. The aim of the project
has been "to make an important contribution to our understanding of
ourselves and others, and of the complex processes by which different
cultures make meanings" (Brydon & Tiffin, 19932 1 ) .
CHAPTER II
N AND A WOMAN
Now, what specifically defines the situation of
woman is that she - a kee and autonomous being
like all human creatures - nevertheless discovers and
chooses herself in a world where men compel her to
assume the status of the Other. They propose to turn
her into an object and to doom her to immanence
since her transcendence is for ever to be transcended
by another consciousness which is essential and
sovereign. The drama of woman lies in this conflict
between the fundamental aspirations of every
subject - which always posits itself as essential - and
the demands of a situation which constitutes her as
inessential.
--Beauvoir (198429)
Beauvoir's statement points out the existing inequality between
men and women. This viewpoint is shared by many others and it has
forrned the basis for a large body of feminist studies. Munro and
Deshpande, too, in their writing portray the unequal relationship
existing between men and women. The present chapter proceeds to
examine women's relationship with men as wives or lovers. The study
of the stories questions and probes the concept of marriage, the concept
of sexuality and the awareness that is nurtured in women through these
bondings.
Before attempting to read the stories, it is significant to understad
what the concept of marriage implies in the two societies. Generally
speaking "marriage" is understood as an ever-lasting relationship
between two people. It also connotes men and women sharing love,
affection,
companionship,
understanding,
security,
sex,
etc.
Nevertheless as many feminist theorists have pointed out maniage i s a
bond that thrusts women into the role of sen.ants/slaves and creates a
negative image within them.
This relationship in the Indian context has gained considerable
sanctity. Thus, manied women are given importance and treated
respectfully. The qualities of piousness, chastity and generosity are
thrust on them and married women are expected to emulate mythical
archetypes such as Sita and Savitri. A girl-child in India is brought up
with the view that she is to be ultimately married.
In Canada, on the other hand, marriage does not gain such
importance. Women are empowered with a greater amount of freedom
as compared to the Indian women. The Canadian women are allowed to
choose their partners and in many cases, women even choose to live
singly and separate from their partners due to incompatibility. Yet, even
in such a society where women have greater freedom to choose their
life-styles, one finds that within the relationship itself there is
considerable amount of gender differences and women are dis-satisfied
with the struggle for power and economic stabilit!..
Marriage as The Feminist Dictionafy explains can be seen:
(1) as a woman's trade, (2) as a system of economic exchange,
(3) as a system of legalised rape and/or prostitution, (4) as a
union to be entered into for countless practical, economic,
spiritual, legal, political, emotional, or other reasons, not
necessarily between a man and a woman, with many
possibilities for form and structure, (5) as the material
appropriation by men, (6) as a social contract between
individuals who have some freedom to determine its terms, (7)
as slavery and servitude, (8) as freedom and escape fiom
family, community, or class, (9) as a power struggle between
two differently sexed individuals whose power is unequal and
whose conduct is judged differentially, (10) as a mutual
negotiation of rights, needs, joys, and responsibilities, (1 1) as
a trap which promotes both security and disability, and (12) as
no longer required of women for economic support or social
approval (1985:252).
Some of these concepts are portrayed in the stories of Munro and
Deshpande. A point that is to be remembered at this junction is that
marriage continues to be an essential goal that women strive for in most
societies. Women are still considered weak and powerless. and an
unconscious ideology of protecting them esjsts in both societies. The
growth of literacy and awareness of social conditions should have
brought greater awareness among women. But, still many women desire
marriage. This is because women still consider it to be a means of
gaining social approval and recognition in society. The trend as noticed
in some of the stories is gradually changing and women especially in
Indian middle classes are becoming aware of what marriage means.
The readings are grouped22 according to the identity struggle that
takes place among the women characters. Some of the women characters
in Munro's and Deshpande's stories are silent sufferers while others are
aware of the trap they have entered into. In some other stories women
recognise the power struggle and while some of them try to accept it,
others attempt to overthrow it. Women dis-satisfied and unhappy with
their life-styles also attempt to form relationships with other men.
Women characters are also betrayed by men in few of the stories.
Interestingly both the writers also attempt to narrate stories from a male
22This division is not very rigid and I am aware that one story can
h c t i o n in two or more categories. My aim has been to take the most
prominent idea that the story depicts. A second factor that has to be
considered is that though I discuss rnarital/sexual relationships, the story
may at the same time reveal other relationships too.
point of view and such stories rel~eaithe masculine concept of women.
A final type o f portrayal i s that of the independent or free women by
both the writers. These women are able to outgroiv and distance
themselves from the bond of marriage. They depict the women who are
able to shape their individual personalities and exist as New &'omen.
Silent sufferers
Only two of Deshpande's stories can be grouped into this category.
None of Munro7scharacters portray such subservient, obedient attitudes
and this could be due to the awareness that women already have in
Canadian society.
The image of such traditional women is reflected in the two stories,
namely, "And What's A Son" (Gale), and "A Wall is Safer" (Dark).
"And What's A Son" (Gale) discusses a wife who assumes an extremely
subservient and obsequious personality. On the other hand the wife in
"A Wall is Safer" (Dark) is quite aware of her position, is educated and
yet does not want to change.
The husband in "And What's a Son" (Gale) is a "dignified and
respected" old man. He has an illicit relationship with a woman from the
lower class. Consequently she conceives, and he keeps her at his place
claiming that she is the widow of his dead son, Harsh. The toiyn people
do not n7ag their tongues because "it was as much his reputation for
absolute integrity as his wife's staunch acceptance of the younger
woman that kept scandalous tongues at abeyance" (Gale : 21). One day,
some months after the death of the old man, the child falls ill, and the
doctor diagnoses the problem as asthma. It is only then that the widow
of the man remarks that the child's father was not her son, Harsh, but
her own husband. She had known the truth when the woman had come
to their home, and had also been aware of her husband's weakness for
women from the lower classes. Even though she knows his weakness,
she is silent about the whole affair. Moreover she is pleased about her
husband's virility and thinks that "At his age...it was a miracle, no less7'
(Gale: 24).
"A Wall is Safe?' (Dark), too, discusses marital relationships at
two levels--the middle class portrayed by Hema and her family, and the
lower class illustrated by the maid-servant, Sitabai and her husband,
Ramchandra. Sitabai feels that her name23 is the source of trouble. Her
husband lives with another woman, not caring about her. She works,
even though she is pregnant because she needs the "money and the
food". For her it is a question of survival because her husband gives all
23The Indian epic Ramayana portrays that Rama's wife, Sita
undergoes a number of hardships and has been projected as the symbol
of an ideal woman in India.
his pay to his mistress.
Hema, on the other hand, is a lawyer ushohas donned the role of a
typical housewife doing jobs such as cooking, cleaning, ironing, and
taking care of the children. She is not interested in taking up a
profession as she feels that this would cause disruption in the family.
She is aware that she has become an insignificant being as her thoughts
reflect:
Everything here is limitless immense. Your eyes go easily a11
the way to the horizon. The immensity makes nothing of you
and your concerns. Sometimes it soothes me, this idea of my
own insignificance. Often, however, I am angered that it
makes so many years of my life take on the grey colour of
futility (Dark: 67).
In the first story, the housewife displays pride in her husband but
she does not think even once of the other woman. The reason for this
may be the hierarchial power structure existing in Indian society. When
a woman mistreats another woman, she enhances the total power of men
as a group within patriarchy. In other words women are able to get
power only as agents of domination and oppression within the male
dominated family structure. The woman who comes to gain the upper
hand is usually one who has the backing and the approval of the
powerful men. The story plays not only on the comventional selfsacrifice of the wife but it also reveals the poiver of man and the need
for a male child. A third factor is the exploitation of people from the
lower classes.
The second story reveals that women like Sitabai when illtreated
are unable to offer effective resistence because of their dependence and
vulnerability. No alternative sources of support are available to most
women outside their family in the Indian society. There is nowhere else
they can go, if they suffer abuse and neglect. The other woman, Hema,
suffers and gives up her career for maintaining the harmony of the
family. She does have aspirations but is able to forfeit it. In the process,
she thwarts her own selfhood and becomes a self-effacing personality.
One wonders, (at this point) why women are silent and bear all
problems stoically. It is true that they are trained to undergo suffering
and a secondary role without resistance: Still the question is why do
they put up with it? The answer may be found in the words of Beauvoir
as expressed in The Second Sex. She thinks that the young girl though
aware of the injustice does not complain because, "she is too much
divided against herself to join battle with the world; she limits herself to
a flight from reality or a symbolic struggle against it" (1984: 375). She
Eurthers states that:
Woman plays the part of those secret agents who are left to
the firing squad if they get caught. and are loaded r ~ i t h
rewards if they succeed; it is for her to shoulder all man's
immorality: all women, not only the prostitute, senre as sewer
to the shining, wholesome edifice where respectable people
have their abode. qTbenen, thereupon, to these bvomen one
speaks of dignity, honour, loyalty, of all the lofty masculine
virtues, it is not astonishing if they decline to 'go along'
(1984: 625-6).
Women in a Predicament
Generally many women are unable to get out of their relationship
due to a number of reasons. At times they may be economically
dependent or emotionally dependent on their husbandsilovers. In other
instances as illustrated by the Indian women the restraints imposed by
society makes it very difficult for women to move out. Also the women,
in most cases are aware of their positions and roles as can be seen in
Deshpande's "Why a Robin" (Leg), "A Man and A Woman" (Gale),
"The Valley in Shadow" (Dark), and "My Beloved Charioteer" (Dark)
and h h x o ' s "How I Met My Husband" (SIB), and "Bardon Bus"
(MO*
The husband and wife in "\brhy a Robin' (Leg) are distanced
because of a dead child. The wife is unable to communicate with her
husband as he blames her for the child's death. She feels the rift and his
silence freezes her: "But his silences, more eloquent than any anger,
freezes me. And I don't really need to ask the question-why me?
Because I know" (Leg: 51). She is, therefore, filled with a sense of guilt
and thinks that she is a failure, "as a wife as a companion, as a mother.
Between my husband and myself there is a blankness--we never even
quarrel" (Leg: 52). Her life is made miserable by her low self-esteem,
which is intensified by the difference in their status. The marriage had
not been successful fiom the beginning due to the wife's feeling of
inferiority. She thinks of her presence as an intrusion when she says: "I
dawdle over my work deliberately so that I am late going to bed. Two
single beds. Two islands that nothing can bridge. Not the child. Not
even the bridge of passion. It is his special place, his retreat, the place
where he can be most alone. I will not intrude" (Leg: 52).
The main problem she realizes is that she has denied and sacrificed
so much that she has lost herself. She fails to recognise her desire and
wants. She realises that without wantsidesires of one's own, a person
loses one's ego! "That without wants, there is no I". In contrast to the
women characters in "And What's a Son" (Gale) and "A Wall is Safer"
(Dark)the wife here is conscious of what is wrong and is also aware of
her own loss of identity.
"A
and A Woman" (Gale) describes the agony and anguish of
Lalita, a widow. Lalita recognises that with the death of her husband,
life has become dead. She notices that small joys of life become big
issues in the eyes of society. Her desire for "a red and blue sari" meets
with such astonishment that she feels that as if "she had danced naked
on the street" (Gale:37). Her delight and laughter at her child's attempt
to stand up is greeted with the words, "...My God, Lalita, You! ...You
think it looks nice to laugh like that?" (Gale: 30). And thus she had been
made to sacrifice all joy of living as her husband was dead. Lalita's
agony is increased when her repressed physical desires are kindled by
the sexual advances of Ajit, her seventeen year old brother-in-law. She
feels guilty about her sexuality and also feels imprisoned by the kind of
circumscribed life that she has to lead which provides "no outlet for her
vitality, her energy" (Gale: 37).
In an attempt to share her agony and guilt, she discusses the issue
with Manu, her dead husband's friend who has been crippled by an
accident. Her sense of guilt is nurtured by her Indian upbringing which
has invoked the feeling in her that physical desire is evil. Manu, on the
other hand, explains to her that the act of sex is natural, and one need
not feel ashamed of it. Inspite of his explanations she is not convinced
of what she has done and tells him:
Nothing can convince me that what I've done is not Krong. If
it were not for Ramesh, [her son] f would kill myself. But you
know what they would say of me afien~rardsand how that
would hurt Ramesh, when he grew up. So I haye to live with
this weakness. A slave to my own body. I disgust myself. I'm
dirty, abnormal (Gale: 37-3 8).
Manu suggests that she could leave the place, but she knows that
she is trapped--her parents are dead and she cannot live on her brother's
sympathy. Moreover her in-laws won't allow her to take away Ramesh,
whom she loves. Manu understands that "she was like a restive colt in
an enclosure struggling to get out. But there was no gate. She had to
jump. And she had lost her legs. Welt, if there was no gate. She had to
make one" (Gale: 39). Finally, Manu suggests to her that they could get
married, for both of them are maimed in life--one physically and the
other mentally. He thinks that they could share their experiences and
fight against society, as both of them had faced "living death", they
could now make life more meaningful. He thus wishes to help her and
erase the guilt within her. He offers her a new beginning, but is Lalita
able to thrust aside her traditional upbringing and accept him is the
point.
Marriage for the sake of economic gain is the basis of "The Valley
in Shadow" (Dark). The protagonist here is a woman crippled by polio,
and neglected by her husband. She craves for love, and attention but he
does not care for her. He neglects her and she rraiises that he had
married her for her money. He had also slept with her initially, only
because he wished to have a heir. She recollects that he had married her
for the money she earned. She realises after the birth of their son that he
finds her distasteful. He had only put up with her "because of his desire
for a son". After the son was born he had avoided her and she "had shut
out forever all hopes of any human contact" (Dark: 40).
This disregard by him for her sexual needs makes her weave sexual
fantasies. These fantasies are also curbed when she becomes conscious
of her crippled body, she feels guilty for indulging in such dreams. The
story has a cliched ending because the wife in spite of being wronged
feels sony for her husband.
In Munro's "Bardon Bus" (MOJ) the narrator, a divorced woman,
pictures the romantic notions that women possess about men. She traces
the life of a woman like herself who could be pleased by just a man's
intimate touch or an intimate tone of voice, With memories of such
intimacies, she could exist and thrive in secret pleasure: "A life long
secret, life long dream-life. I could go round singing in the kitchen,
polishing the stove, wiping the lamp chimneys, dipping water for the tea
from the drinking pail7' (MOJ: 11 1). This fantasy of hers is partially
realized when she meets an anthropologist whom she refers to as X. She
stays with him and enjoys a feeling o f "leisureb domesticitj- with a
feeling of perfect security" (IMCIJ: 113). kloreover, they recogise the
happiness that they share for the short period and as she states:
We were not afkaid to use the ward lave. We lived without
responsibility, without a future, in freedom, with generosity in
consent but not wearying celebration. We had no doubt that
our happiness would last out the little time required (MQL
Even after both of them separate and go back to their respective
lifestyles, the narrator keeps dreaming and thinking about 'X'. On the
other hand her friend, Kay is constantly falling in and out of love: "To
her, it seems an adventure and whenever she falls in love, she takes up a
man and his story whole heartedly" (MOJ: 116). The narrator realises
that her friend's behaviour is not exceptional and she understands that at
least she is not condemned to living with reservations and withdrawals,
long drawn-out dissatisfactions, inarticulate wavering miseries as she
herself is forced to.
She then meets a friend of X's called Dennis. The hopes to gain
some infomTion about X through him, but Dennis is too wrapped up in
his own theories which he wishes to discuss with someone. He talks
about men and women's way of life and tells her that men even when
they are aging love a wider choice and can get younger Ivomen while
women cannot do the same. Thus, women are at a disadirantage. He
further states that men by such choices are able to renew themselves and
gain vitality while the women are removed from life. He, however,
changes his view in the final part of his talk and states that Fwmen are
lucky as they are able to accept loss and death more easily than men. He
concludes by emphasising this point:
I've seen so many parts of the world and so many strange
things and so much suffering. It's my conclusion now that you
won't get any happiness by playing tricks on life. It's only by
natural renunciation and by accepting deprivation that we
prepare for death and therefore that we get any happiness.
( M r n 122)
This talk makes the nanator realise that her life is not meant to
dream about men such as X. She, thus, realises that she has to let go:
"What you have to decide, really is whether to be crazy or not, and I
haven't the stamina, the power, the seething will, for prolonged
craziness" (MUJ 127). Her distancing herself from the man she loves,
she feels, is the way to be reassured of oneself.
This story reflects the predicament that the woman goes through
and how she is finally able to raise herself from the dilemma she
undergoes through.
"Material" (SIB) by Munro discusses how women are used as
materials to construct stories. The narrator is diirorced from her first
husband, Hugo who is a writer. Her second husband Gabriel, notices the
book published in Hugo's name and buys it so that Clea, the daughter
learns about her father. When the narrator reads the biographical note
she thinks that Hugo leads a false life. It is then she realises that to him
life has always been unrealistic and dramatic. To him women are just
material from which lies and stories could be fabricated. It is this
realisation that strikes her and she also perceives that Hugo and Gabriel
are alike as they both have the ability to label and compartmentalise
thingsheings without caring for their individual personalities:
At the same time, at dinner, looking at my husband Gabriel, I
decided that he and Hugo are not really so unlike. Both of
them have managed something. Both of them have decided
what to do about everything they run across in this world,
what attitude to take, how to ignore or use things. In their
limited and precarious ways they both have authority. They
are not at the mercy. Or they think they are not. I can't blame
them, for making whatever arrangements they can make
(SIB: 43-44).
The idea of entrapment and release forms the theme of
Deshpande's "My Beloved Charioteer'' (Dark)and Munro's "How I Met
My Husband" (SIB). The old woman in Deshpande's stov has no love
for her husband because she had felt very restricted by his authoritative
manner. In fact she had been like a puppet who had been manipulated by
her husband according to his desires. She had lived with him for twenty
five years and had learnt to know his likes and dislikes, yet he had never
troubled himself to know her likes and dislikes. She thus feels liberated,
free and happy after his death.
Edie in "How I Met My Husband" (SIB) is infatuated by a pilot and
waits after he goes away for a letter from him. She waits eagerly for the
letter but as she awaits she realises that he is never going to write. She
understands that her waiting was futile:
...till it came to me one day there were women doing this with
their lives, all over. There were women just waiting and
waiting by mailboxes for one letter or another. I imagined me
making this journey day after day and year after year, and my
hair starting to go grey, and I thought, I was never made to go
on like that. So I stopped meeting the mail. If there were
women all through life waiting, and women busy and not
waiting, I knew which I had to be. Even though there might be
things the second kind of women have to pass up and never
know about, it still is better (SIB:65).
Finally she marries the mailman who sees her ~ ~ a i t i nfor
g the post
everyday.
Deshpande's story "My Beloved Charioteei' (Dark) discusses the
entrapment of a wife due to the social conditions imposed by a
patriarchal society, while Munro's "How I Met My Husband" discusses
the romantic trap that women may get into. The story "A Man and A
Woman" (Gale) displays the authority of the in-laws. It also reveals the
amount of freedom an Indian widow enjoys. The fact is that women are
caught in a vicious circle by family and society which makes it difficult
for women to even attempt to free themselves. In this story though
Manu offers her a solution, one wonders if Lalita is able to accept it.
This predicament arises because a woman who wishes to escape needs
to be able to withstand alienation. How many women are strong enough
to withstand such an ostracization is the question. A final point that is
raised in this story as well as others is the rigid attitude towards sex and
sexuality that women display as opposed to the extremely open attitude
revealed by the women characters in Munro's stories.
The story "My Beloved Charioteer" (Dark) once again portrays the
trap that marriage becomes for an Indian wife. The woman is unable to
get out of the situation while Munro's three stories "How I Met My
Husband" (SIB), "Bardon Bus" (MOJ) and "Slaterial"" (SIB) depict the
ability of the Canadian women to m o w out of their predicament.
Though Eddie in "How I Met My Husband" (SIB)waits for the man of
her dreams, she realises that he may not return. Once she becomes aware
of this fact, she marries the postman and settles down. Similarly in
"Bardon Bus" (MOJ) Kay and the narrator are divorced. Both these
women realise the meaning of love. While the narrator in the story has
recognised the illusionary nature of the man-woman relationship, her
friend Kay seems to play around with men, falling in and out of love.
The concluding story in this section "Material" (SIB) displays the
enlightened view that the narrator has of men. The story reveals not only
men's exploitation of women but also their inability to come to
conclusions and decisions. Women, it is pointed out, are unable to
decide and acknowledge priorities. This could also be beneficial for
women who are then able to be flexible and adapt themselves to
different circumstances.
Power Relationships
Kate Millett in Sexual Politics points out that the basis for all
power relationships is the male-female relationship. She fiuther states,
"Social caste supercedes all other forms of inegalitarianism: racial,
political or economic, and unless the clinging to male supremacy as a
birthright is finally forgone, all systems of oppression will continue to
function simply by virtue of their logical and emotional mandate in the
primary human situation" (1970: 25)
Male control and power over women in all spheres of life is mhat
constitutes patriarchy and therefore, one needs to eliminate it. But this is
not easy as patriarchal ideology, says Millett has made it certain that
men always love the dominant roles while women love the subordinate
roles. By such a conditioning, men are able to gain the approval of the
women that they oppress. Their oppression is carried out through
institutions such as the academy, the church and the family". These
24Power is generally consolidated by conditioning women.
Conditioning is generally done by shaping women's appearances,
behaviours and attitudes. One method adopted often in Indian
households is differentiation. A new bride is usually taunted and the
differences between her father's place and her husband's place pointed
out thus creating a feeling of inferiority within her. She is considered an
alien and the rules of submission are thrust on her, mainly by her
mother- in law. The mother-in-law becomes the enforcer, as she is now
given the authority to rule. She has the right by convention, to dominate
and exhibit power over the new daughter-in-law.
It may be argued that in present times a change in the traditional
family structure has been disrupted as more families are becoming
nuclear. Moreover, the practice of purdah in most of the households is
gone. Nevertheless one notices that the appearance of the nuclear family
and the disappearance of purdah has not changed the status of
relationships, Authority is still vested with the father-in-lawimother-inlaw or other males close to the husband. The idea of confinement and
institutions rationalise and justify women's subordi-nation to men and in
most cases, women develop a sense of inferiority.
Millett also noted that contemporary feminism attempted to destroy
the sexlgender system and she looked forward to a society in which
equality of the sexes was established (1970: 62). Marilyn French, too
like Millett, believed that patriarchy is the cause of all oppression. She
stressed that "Stratification of men above women, leads in time to
stratification of classes; an elite rules over people perceived as 'closer to
nature', savage, bestial, animalistic" (1985: 72). She traced in her book
Beyond Power : On Women, Men and Morals the origins of patriarchy
and explained that over a period of evolution, men had become the
authoritative figures and held 'power-over' the women.
Mary Daly taking this concept further, states in Pure Lust that
women must create and adopt new understanding, different from men
and thus, develop themselves. She analyses different types of passions -genuine passions, plastic passions and potted passions. She feels that
genuine passions such as love, hate, despair, anger and fear activate and
inspire women, while plastic passions such as guilt, bitterness, boredom
and hostility make women passive and ruin them. She also mentions that
enclosure still plays a major part in the lives of women. These aspects
are part of the issue of domination and socialization as can be witnessed
in some of the stories.
emotions like 'love' when packaged and doled out as pulp romantic
fiction can harm women and she terms such passions that are idealised
and marketed by society, as potted passions.
In this section, the various power relationships existing between
men and women in some of the short stories of Munro and Deshpande
are examined.
Deshpande's "Intrusion" (Leg) is a powerful story dealing with the
awareness of a newly married woman. The newly married couple come
to spend their honeymoon at a small sea side resort. The wife dreads this
trip as she feels that her husband is a total stranger to her. She is upset
by his sexual intimacy and is repulsed by his expectations. She feels like
a whore and the atmosphere of the place creates in her an uneasy
feeling:
There was something furtive about the place, something dead
pan about the servant's face, which made me feel that the men
who came here did so with 'other women'- girls, perhaps,
bold-faced and experienced, who would laugh and chat with
men, not go through what I was enduring now. Fears. Tremors
(Leg: 41).
Her anxiety is increased as the day proceeds and she reviews her
marriage to the man. She feels that she has been marketed as a woman
who is "simple and sophisticated. Her desires and feelings are not taken
into consideration by her parents before marriage or her husband. She
has doubts about the marriage but her father brushes them away by
uttering two practical statements; "what's wrong with him? I have two
more daughters to be married" (Leg: 43). She is unable to defend and
argue against these statements and she, therefore quietly submits to the
marriage. After the wedding, the couple go to a small fishing village for
their honeymoon. The newly married bride is however sick o f what the
night holds for her and wishes to escape. But she has no choice. On the
other hand, the husband is not troubled by any such thoughts and is keen
on satisfying his lust. His attempt to hold and kiss her i s shattered by her
attempts to ward him off. The protagonist wishes to know more about
him before she shares her privacy with him. She also hopes that he
would talk to her and familiarise herself with her tastes, her likes, and
her dislikes. But she understands that he is not interested in her inner
feelings and the bond of marriage has given him the power to conquer
her body:
I could do nothing. He put his hands, his lips on mine and this
time I could not move away. There was no talk, no word
between us-just this relentless pounding. His movements had
the same rhythm, the same violence as the movements of the
sea, yet, I could have borne the battering of the sea better, for
that would hurt but not humiliate like this (Leg:38).
This act shatters her as it is an intrusion. a move that is against her
being as a woman.
Another story that foregrounds such helplessness of a woman is
Deshpande's "I Want" (Miv). In this story, Alka, the protagonist is to be
married. She, too, like the narrator in "Intrusion" (Leg) realises that her
wants and needs are not important. Her parents decide the husband for
her, while her future husband chalks out what he wants in his .future
wife. No one bothers to find out what her wishes and desires are.
Munro's "Friend Of My Youth" (FOY)provokes a number of
questions on the husband-wife relationship. It questions the validity of
marriage, and the way society views women who are not married. An
incident is narrated as a story by a mother to a daughter, thereby
endowing it an air of fiction. The incident narrated is a portrayal of the
lifestyle of two sisters Flora and Ellie. The mother recollects the fact
that though Ellie had married Robert Deal, the house had not taken up
the name of Deal.
The views of the mother and daughter differ when they discuss the
way they would have told Flora's story. The mother titles the story as
"The Maiden Lady" and shrouds it with stateliness and reverence". In
her story she wishes to "make her [Flora] into a noble figure. one who
accepts defection, treachery, who forgives and stands aside, not once but
twice" (FOY: 19). The daughter views the story in a different way: "I
had my own ideas about Flora's story...I would take a different tack. I
saw through my mother's story and put in what she left out. My Flora
would be as black as hers was white. (FOY: 20). The reason why the
daughter is against her mother's visualisatio~lis because she feels that
Flora may be evil as she turns away from sex. The story also points out
the sexual power men have over their wives. Robert Deal, Ellie's
husband is aware of the delicate health of his wife, and yet he has sex
with her which results in repeated pregnancies and miscarriages.
Weakened by these miscarriages she finally dies. Robert Deal remarries
the nurse who had been hired to nurse his wife instead of marrying Flora
to whom he had been engaged at the very beginning.
The extra ,marital relationship of Brenda with Neil in "Five Points"
(FOY) is not founded on love but is carried on because Brenda enjoys
the secret power she holds. She enjoys the moment of meeting Neil
secretly. The secrecy and excuses that she has to make up excites her. In
order to meet Neil she does good deeds such as "cleaning jobs around
the house that she was putting off, mowing the lawn, doing a
reorganisation at the furniture barn, even weeding the rock garden"
(FOE 31). This sense of power makes her feel like the girl in the story
that Neil tells her where the girl used to have sex with young boys by
paying them. The paradox is that she like the young girl in Neil's story
is trapped in her condition. Brenda feels that the absence of Neil, the
possibility of his defection, his denial of her could turn any place, any
thing, ugly and menacing and stupid" (FOK 36).
She has the affair as she wants to have freedom and in the
beginning was reminded when she saw Neil's bed that it was "not a
marriage bed or a bed of illness, comfort, complication". She also "loves
the life of his body, so sure of its rights. She wants commands from him,
never requests. She wants to be his territory" (FOE 41). Brenda by the
end of the story becomes aware that Neil had "lost some of her sheen for
her" (FOE 49) and she comes to the conclusion, that every relationship
can finally turn out to be just a continuation of life.
The strength of power and its impact on men is discussed in
Munro's "Hold Me Fast, Don't let Me Pass" (FOY), and in Deshpande's
"First Lady" (Leg). Hazel after the death of her husband, Jack comes to
Scotland hoping to meet Jack's girl-friend, (of younger days),
Antoinette and his cousin. During her stay there she notices the changes
that have occurred in Antoinette and Dobie. This revelation reminds her
of how she and Jack too had changed. She realises then even before
Jack's death she had a nervous breakdown and after that incident she
changed her life into one of "action, exercise, direction" (FOJ".83).
She knew that when she had got out of bed (this is what she
doesn't say), she was leaving some part of herself behind. She
suspected that this was a part that had to do wit11 Jack. But she
didn't think then that any abandonment had to be permanent.
Anyway it couldn't be helped. (FOE 83).
She realises that Jack too had changed from a quiet young
charming man, into a braggart. One distinct ~nernoryshe has of him is
what she had noticed in him one day when she had been travelling to
college. She feels that he had become a dull, grey and insubstantial
person. She thinks of the routine life he led spending a couple of nights
at the legion and other days watching television. His life had become a
mechanical routine filled with "chores, routines, seasons, pleasantries".
She had only then realised that day that his loss of power had been
replaced by "a ghostly sweetness7'(FOE104).
Deshpande's "First Lady" (Leg) depicts the accumulation of power
and the changes it can wrought in a man when he gains power. The story
is also a remark on the sexual constraints that women have to face. The
woman character, in this story, is enamoured by a freedom fighter and
marries him inspite of the class differences existing between them. Later
after Independence, she discovers that her husband has turned into a
power wielding politician, leading a powerful life.
She falls in love with the man hoping that he too would reciprocate
her love. But she realises that he has no time for love and he is also not
capable of loving another human being. After the birth of children he
adopts celibacy as he thinks that the purpose of marriage is procreation.
She, however, feels dissatisfied by her life and is attracted to a young
man who dies later. She soon realises that "life has lost its meaning
because it relates to nothing but one's own petty concerns" (Leg: 3).
Rather cynically she thinks of a line from the Bible at the end of the
party as she and her husband go up to bed which states that old men
have dreams and young men have visions but now she realises that old
men neither have visions nor young men any dreams. Ironically her last
statement as they go to bed falls on deaf ears as he has removed his
hearing aid and consequently cannot hear her. One finds as one goes
through the story the need for love, the illusory nature of women's
desires and dreams, the craving for comfort and the feeling that there is
no one even to listen to them.
The question of power is once again focused upon in Munro's
"Labor Day Dinner" (MOJ). Roberta is married to George, a man
younger than her. The story reflects on Roberta's love for George, and
her attempts to please him. Roberta does not wear skirts and caftans,
because George dislikes them. His contention is that such dresses
"announce to him, ...not only a woman's intention of doing no such
serious work but her persistent wish to be admired and courted" (MQA
136). Roberta is moreover conscious of her age and feels that being
older than George he may despise her. She realises that for her to be
herself she has to get away and live alone.
George, on the other hand, feels that Roberta spoils her children.
He thinks that she placates them, and begs them to do small chores at
home and thereby indulges them. He unconsciously thinks that "if either
of his sisters had ventured on such a display, his mother would have
belted them."(MOJ: 144). This reveals George's conventional attitude.
His authority is emphasised in Eva's statement when she asks him to
take care of her cat: "But will you & Mom take care of Diana when
we're gone?" (MOJ: 145).(ernphasis added). .
Roberta's elder daughter Angela also recognises that her mother,
has become self effacing after her marriage to George. She feels that
George holds power over her mother. She remarks in her journal entry:
I have seen her change...from a person I deeply respected into
a person on the verge of being a nervous wreck. If this is love
I want no part of it. He wants to enslave her and us all and she
walks a tightrope trying to keep him from getting mad. She
doesn't enjoy anything and if you gave her the choice she
would like best to lie down in a dark room with a cloth over
her eyes and not see anybody or do anything. This is an
intelligent woman who used to believe in freedom
(MOJ: 147).
Lydia in Munro's "Dulse" (AIOJ) is abandoned by her lover,
Duncan. She goes to the maritimes and during her stay there she
analyses her relationship with Duncan. She realises that after her final
talk to a psychiatrist about Duncan she had felt like "an egg carton,
hollowed out in the back"
( M U41). She at that point of time had felt
"deprived and powerless and she had an overwhelming feeling "to cover
her head and sit wailing on the ground" (MOJ:53). She scrutinises their
relationship and reflects, "What gave his power? She knows who did but
she asks what and when - when did the transfer take place, when was the
abdication of all pride and sense?" (MOJ 55). She had been humiliated
and embarrassed by Duncan's remarks which were objective analysis of
"her person and behaviour". He did not just mention them but he had
listed them precisely. Some of his remarks had been very intimate in
nature and she had "howled with shame and covered her ears and
begged him to take back or say no more" (MOJ: 53). Lydia understands
that she had given him the power and was now complaining about it.
At the conclusion of the story Lydia has a discussion with one Mr.
Stanley who is also staying there about Willa Cather, the writer. Mr.
Stanley tells her about the advice Cather gives an young man about his
marital life and Lydia can't help pointing out to the old man that Cather
had not married and was staying with another Lvoman. Therefore she
thinks that she could not have advised him properly.
bfunro's "Oranges and Apples" (FOI? sketches the suspicious
behaviour of Murray towards his wife and his way of taking it out on
her. Murray befriends Victor, a Polish man who comes to live close to
their place. Victor soon breaks up with his wife, Beatrice, and Murray
not only gives him shelter but also finds a job for him. Soon however
Murray starts having doubts about his wife and Victor. To know the
truth one rainy night he insists that Barbara should take some
bedspreads for Victor. He knows when she returns that Victor has had a
relationship with Barbara. Victor, the day after this incident leaves the
place. One can notice in the narration Barbara's innocence. It is Victor
who views her body, while she is sunbathing. Murray makes Barbara's
body the scene of battle, thus scarring her.
"Prue" (MOJ) too discusses the sexual outlook portrayed by
Gordon. Gordon desires to marry Prue after he is finished being in love
with a younger woman. Prue, narrates this idiosyncrasy of his to others
in a cynical and light hearted manner. Within her heart however she is
angered by his remarks. She therefore begins to take things from
George's house and stores them. As Martin says in Paradox and
Parallel: "She does not have the passion to throw an overnight bag at
Gordon , so her response takes a devious form, apparently obscure to
herself because she shows no sign of recognising it for the revenge it is"
(MOJ: 145).
One finds in this section that women are treated as
beings necessary for satisfying the male ego. Stories such as
"Intrusion" (Leg), "I Want" (Mirir), "Prue" (MOJ),"Dulse"
(MUJ), "Labor Day Dinner" (MOJ), and "Oranges and
Apples" (FOY)highlight the gender inequalities present in
both the societies. The stories throw light on the oppressive
environment that the women have to live in.
Extra-marital Relationships
Marriage, women realise, is not as romantic as they had
anticipated. It becomes a life of duties and responsibilities and fulfilling
various expectations. In order to escape such constricted/burdened
lifestyles they resort to having affairs with other men. At times they are
married but at other times they are not married and have relationship
with married men in order to experience security and comfort without
being committed. Many of Munro's stories focus on the adulterous
affairs of women in stories such as "Oh, What Avails7' O Y ) ,
"Differently" (FOY) and "Eskimo" (POL).
Joan in "Oh what Avails" (FOI') walks out on her husband arld
children and begins a new life. She explains her desertion by stating that
at that time many parents underwent the phenomenon of separating.
Marriages which had started innocently without any misgivings had
split up (FOE 207). Joan is amazed at the love affairs she has had. Joan
realises as she thinks of her past that that her brother and she had been
taught some values: "They were taught a delicate, special regard for
themselves, which made them go out and grab what they wanted,
whether love or money" (FOE 215). But the difference had been that
while she had not been good in money matters and had grabbed love,
her brother, Morris had grabbed money and had not had a good love life.
Georgia in "Differently" (FOY) divorces her husband, Ben and
lives with an instructor of creative writing, with whom she had taken a
course. She meet her ex-husband's friend Raymond some years later at
Victoria. This meeting reminds her of her ex-husband Ben and
Raymond's wife, Maya who had been her friend. Maya and Georgia had
sex with other men and had kept it a secret from their husbands. Maya
had an affair with another doctor, Harvey and had also had an abortion.
Unlike Georgia she had not divorced Raymond and had continued a
double life. Georgia had not been able to lead a life of lies and hypocrisy
and had therefore blown up her own secure, happy life. But she had
been ashamed to reveal to others her happiness with Ben and had always
insisted that she had never been happy:
She had entered with Ben. \i7hen they were both so young. a
world of ceremony, of safety, of gestures, concealment. Fond
appearances. More than appearances. Fond contrivance. (She
thought when she left that she would have no use for
contriving anymore.) She had been happy there, fro111 time to
time. She had been sullen, restless, bewildered, and happy.
But she said most vehemently, Never, never. I was never
happy, she said (FOE 242).
Now, when she meets Raymond she realises that he still thinks that
his dead wife as an ideal wife and tells him to take death differently.
Two stories that discuss the relationship of married men to women
are "Eskimo" (POL) and "Accident" (MOJ). Mary Jo in "Eskimo"
discusses very ironically her relationship with Dr. Streeter for whom she
works as a nurse. Mary Jo, while on a trip to Tahiti, slowly understands
the relationship that exists between her and the doctor. She realises that
she is after all just a mistress . She had faithfully served the doctor for
ten years but she knows that though she had worshipped and adored
him, her place in his life would always be secondary. Carrington
discussing the story concludes that "Mary Jo can do her work because a
nurse's work traditionally defines her role as secondary to a man's.
Thus, Munro uses the traditional doctor-nurse relationship as a paradigm
of the secondary position of some of her earlier characters" ( 1990: 163).
"Accident" ( M O a is a story with a different ending. Here Frances,
a school teacher, has an affair with Ted, a married man. The story takes
a twist when Ted's son has an accident and dies. This incident disrupts
his marriage and he divorces his wife and marries Frances. What is
striking about this story is Frances' awareness of her relationship with
Ted. From the beginning of their relationship she is aware that love is a
sham: "There had been a dreadful air of apology and constraint and
embarrassment about the whole business the worst of it being the moans
and endearments and reassurances they had to offer" ( M U 1 83). She is
also conscious of Ted's involvement with his own self. He thinks of
"himself and his beliefs" (MU& 103) and Frances dislikes this self
centredness. She now understood that in her affair with Ted "she had
been involved in something childish and embarrassing". She also
understands that she had managed it all for her own delight seeing him
as she wanted to, paying attention when she wanted to, not taking him
seriously, although she thought she did" ( M U 103).
Only one story of Deshpande's reflects an extra-marital affair and
even in this story the woman character is so conditioned that she lets go
of her relationship. The protagonist in "An Antidote to Boredom" (Leg)
is married to a man who is hardly aware of her presence. He is aware
only of his life and does not care for her,feelings or desires. He lives
every day by routine and she kno\vs how each moment \\.ill be like: "I
knew what he would do next, after eating. He would wash his hands, sit
down with the newspaper in his hands, for exactly five minutes, while I
moved restlessly, wishing he would go away so that I go on with my
day's work ..." (Leg: 67).
Her life changes when one day at her son's school she meets a
widower. Their relationship grows and her dull, mechanical life changes
into an exciting adventure for her. She looks forward to her rendezvous
with him and when he thinks that she must be having guilty feelings, she
explains that she does not because her husband had never cared or
thought of her. This feeling that her husband does not know anything
about her prompts her to arrange for her lover's stay at her place, when
her husband proposes to go to Delhi on an official trip. But on the day of
departure he asks her to accompany him and when she refuses he tells
her that she better decide to accompany him. By his manner, she knows
that he has become aware of her relationship.
The words sounded suddenly menacing and I looked up
startled. The same face, the same voice, but for a brief second
I saw a challenge,...And then I knew that he knew, he cared, as
if a dam had burst, a flood of shame, of guilt swept over me,
drowned me. I let go the mirage that I had tried to grasp all
these days, and now I realised, when it was too late, the most
piercing thought of all--that it had been no mere antidote to
boredom, but the best part of my life. And I let it go (Lcg: 76).
Women Jilted
The theme of cheating and taking up a relationship is witnessed in
"Postcard" (DHS),"Tell Me Yes or No" (SIB)and "Winter Wind"
(SIB).
The narrator, Helen in "Postcard" (DHS) dates a rich man, Clare and
hopes to many him eventually. However, while on a trip to Florida he
marries another woman. Helen's mother thinks that it is her daughter's
fault as she had already slept with the man. She thinks that because of
her sexual relationship with him he had lost respect for her. This belief
is also echoed by Helen's friend, Alma who mentions that "Men are
always out for what they can get" (DHS:26).
The narrator in "Tell Me Yes or No" (SIB) after the death of her
lover visits his town from where she used to get his letters. Over there
she visits the book shop that his wife runs and his wife learning that she
is her husband's girlfriend gives her the packet of letters. Only later the
narrator learns that the letters are not addressed to her but are written for
another woman.
"Winter Wind" (SIB) refers to the married lives o f the narrator's
grandmother and aunt Madge. Aunt Madge, the narrator states, is
happily n~arried. Aunt Madge's husband was a farmer politically
conscious and he was determined, stubborn and entertaining. She
behaves as the perfect wife. She could have been held up as an example,
an ideal wife, except that she gave no impression of "
resignation, of doing one's duty, such as is looked for in ideals".
(emphasis added). In fact she was "light hearted, impudent sometimes,
so she was not particularly respected for her love, but held to be lucky,
or half- dotty, whichever you liked" (SIB: 199).
On the other hand, the grand mother had assumed a martyred air
about her as she is angry with her lover and to spite him marries another
man. Even after marriage now and then she met the other man but "no
one ever accused them of misbehaviour". The grandmother seems to
believe in proximity, impossibility, renunciation and the narrator points
out that "this seemed to make an enduring kind of love!" And I believe
that would be my grand mother's choice, that self-glorifying dangerous
self-denying passion, never satisfied, never-risked, to last a lifetime. Not
admitted to, either, except perhaps that one time, one or two times,
under circumstances of great stress (SIB:200).
Male Narrator
The ideas that men have about women are etlidenced in many of
the stories as can be seen by the perception of the male narrator or the
male views.
"Uncle Benny in "The Flats Road" (LGF] marries Madeleine, who
has a eighteen month old baby, Diane. When Madeleine runs away
Del's father consoles Uncle Benny by pointing out that she had not
made Uncle Benny's life exactly "comfortable and serene. He did this in
a diplomatic way, not forgetting he was talking about a man's wife. He
did not speak of her lack of beauty or slovenly clothes" (LGW 17).
"Lichen" (POL) is a story that reflects on men's selfishness. The
main character, Stella is aware of the defect of her ex-husband, David.
David has relationships with various women but the fact is he can't get
younger. He visits Stella with his new girl-friend, Catherine. He thinks
that since Stella has no man, she has turned into a shapeless woman. He
remarks to Catherine, "Look what's happened to Stella...She's turned
into a troll". He is angered when Catherine defends Stella and he thinks
of her as ('the sort of woman who has to come bursting out of the female
envelope at this age, flaunting fat or an indecent scrawniness, sprouting
warts and facial hair, refusing to cover pasty veined legs, almost gleeful
about it, as if this was what she'd wanted to do all along. Man-haters
from the start" (POL: 33).
David is bothered about age and appearance and this is e~idenced
by his description of Catherine too: "When David first met Catherine ,
about eighteen months ago, he thought she was a little over thirty. He
saw many remnants of girlishness; he loved her fairness and tall
fragility. She has aged since then. And she was older than he thought to
start with-she is nearing forty" (POL: 34). David has already begun to
have another affair with a younger woman, Dina. He not only mentions
his new relationship to Stella but thoughtlessly remarks, "You know,
there's a smell women get... when they know you don't want them
anymore. Stale" (POL: 40).
David is ready to humiliate himself by begging for Dina's love.
When he rings her up he begins to assume shameful ways of begging
and in this way humiliates himself. His affair is based totally on sex and
this is illustrated by his revelation to Stella of Dina's photograph. When
Stella sees the picture of Dina, naked, she is only able to think of lichen,
the stale weed that clings. David, while leaving, forgets to take the
photograph with him and it lies on his table, where it gets spoilt due to
the sun's rays. When Stella sees the spoilt photograph, she feels:
...the black pelt in the picture has changed to grey. It's a bluish
or greenish grey now. She relne~nberswhat. she said it looked
like lichen. But she knew what it was even when David put his
hand to his pocket. She felt the old cavity opening up in her.
But she held on. She said, " Lichen". And now, look, her
words have come true. The outline of the breast has
disappeared. You would never know that the legs were legs.
The black has turned to grey, to the soft, dry color of a plant
mysteriously nourished on the rocks. (POL: 55).
It is her awareness of the effect of age and the realisation of her
husband's material attitude that had made her divorce and had helped
her to keep the "flow of the days and nights. (POL: 55).
Edgar and Sam have a relationship with Callie in "The Moon in the
Orange Street Skating Rink" (POL). In the story though Edgar and Sam
don't display it they have a sort of superior sense of their selves as once
they remark, "Because she was a little slavey, forever out of things,
queer looking, undersized, and compared to her they were in the
mainstream, they were fortunate" (POL: 142). Callie, however, has a
superior sense of herself and proves it by daring everything:
It was her scrapbook, and pasted in it were newspaper items
about herself. The newspaper had invited people to enter into
competitions. Who could do the most bound buttonholes in
eight hours? Who could can the most raspberries in a single
day? Who had crocheted the most amazing ~ ~ u r n b eof
r
bedspreads, tablecloths, nmners, and doilies? Callie, Callie,
Callie, Callie Kemaghan, again and again. In her own
estimation, she was no slavey but a prodigy pitying the
slothful lives of others. (POL: 143).
She finally even goes to the extent of having sex with both of them
and in the act, too, they are the ones who feel inferior. Later on Edgar
proceeds with his sexual intercourses and finally fearing that his sexual
acts may have resulted in consummation, he and Sam run away. But
Callie is too smart to be outwitted, and figuring the young men's
intentions she pursues them . it is at this point that Sam understood,
"Callie's power, when she wouldn't be left behind--generously
distributed to all of them. The moment was flooded --with power, it
seemed, and with possibility" (POL:157).
Years later Sam goes to Gallagher and meets Edgar and Callie. In
their house he sees a photograph of Callie and Edgar and "Callie looks a
good deal older than on her real wedding day, her face broader, heavier,
more authoritative. In fact, she slightly resembles Miss. Kemaghan"
(POL: 158). The story ends stating that Edgar is happy. He seems to be
happy because he is a man who is mentally dependent on someone and
being with the hard-working efficient Callie has given him happiness.
The title reflects the femininity associated with the moon and the power
of this female self at times of need. As Pappington remarks,
"
Thus,
Callie's association are not always true, for her infinitely complex
symbol reveals another contradiction. Callie has power, but she does not
seem to have used it to humiliate her husband7'(POL: 170).
"Queer Streak" (POL) discusses the story of Violet. Violet is to
marry a clergy man but the marriage does not take place as Violet's
father starts getting anonymous notes. When Violet finds out that it is
her own sister she reveals the truth to her fianck and he refuses to marry
her as he thinks that there may be a streak of lunacy in her family.
"Thanks for the Ride" (DIIS) is told from the male narrator's point
of view. The narrator is a teenager just out of school. The story portrays
the barrenness existent in the town as well as in individual lives. The
desolation and barrenness of the town is narrated.
"
It was a town of
unpaved, wide, sandy streets and bare yards. Only the hardy things like
red and yellow nasturtiums, or a lilac bush with brown centred leaves
grew out of that cracked earth.
"
(DHS:46). The narrator's new girl
friend Lois too is a symbol of this bare, desolate atmosphere. She is also
hardy like the nasturtium as she is able to survive the sexual relationship
she has with various men. The narrator is initially upset as she
introduces him to her mother. He wonders if she
"
might have done it
then to mock me, to make me into the caricature of the Date, the boy
who grins and shuffles in the front hall and waits to be presented to the
nice girls family" (DHS: 50). The narrator after talking to the mother
notices the grandmother and realises that these people are different.
They are not innocent like their mothers or like his cousin George. They
are on the other hand born
"
shy and sad and knowing". This point is
stressed when Lois tells him about the earlier boyfi-iend, " He just went
around with me for the summer. That's what those guys from up the
beach always do. They come down here to the dances and get a girl to
go around with for the summer they always do" (DHS: 54). She hrther
adds that one has to behave grateful to these boys because otherwise
they would go around and say that these girls are bitching.
Deshpande's "Rain" (Leg) is narrated by a man who is in love with
his cousin, Radha. But later on she marries another man. Twelve years
later she comes to stay with the narrator who is now a doctor. She comes
to Bombay because her husband is sick and needs treatment. While her
husband is in hospital, Radha's relationship with her cousin develops
into sexual intimacy. One evening as the narrator and Radha are making
love they receive a phone call informing them of the husband's death.
Later, Radha goes back to her parents, but the narrator cannot forget her,
and he eventually marries her. Their life is quite satisfactory but one day
when they are making love, the phone rings and he is reminded of his
love making on the day her first husband had died. This haunts him and
after that things are not the same between them. He wonders:
It has never been any good again. Always, the same. I spend
hours wondering what is wrong with me. Has the guilt of that
rainy night scarred me so deeply? Meanwhile I wait for
something to release me from the cage of guilt and fear, for
something to set my manhood fiee. But nothing happens. And
all the time I remember her words ... "To live like this
forever.. ." (Leg: 66).
Independentmree Women
"What woman essentially lacks today for doing great things is
forgetfulness of herself; but to forget oneself it is first of all necessary to
be firmly assured that now and for the future one has found oneself'
(1984: 168). These words of Beauvoir indicate the path that women need
to follow to be fiee and independent women. The stories discussed in
this section reveal the total removal of women characters from the
traditional issues of society and their determination in following new
paths.
Jayu in Deshpande's " It was the Nightingale" (Gale) has been a
working woman, who has taken up the opportunity to further her career
prospects by being away from her husband for two years. She desires
like other women , "to give ambition and success the go by and stay
with him, [her husband] throttled by his love" (Gale:12). Jayu is
tormented by the thought of deserting her husband, and of not fulfilling
her duty as a wife. She has known from her mother that it is the
woman's sacrifice and self-effacing personality that pleases the society.
At this point she is tormented, and wonders if her decision is right.
Although she loves her husband, she knows that she along with her
husband form a whole, and "though their lives are intertwined yet they
are two distinct strands. But to keep her light burning is her
responsibility and hers alone" (Gale; 13).
J a y ' s decision to leave her husband for two years to further her
career prospects; creates a feeling of guilt in her. It is not possible to
wipe out in a few days what has been nurtured within her for a number
of years i.e., the image of a wife. Similarly the husband, though a loving
one, cannot comprehend her as she is so different fi-om the grand-aunt
who nurtured him as a child. His construct of a woman is one who is
"totally selfless and totally loving" (Gale: 14). Jayu knows that her
mother-in-law does not like her, though her husband asserts that she
does. She senses the disapproval of the mother-in-law in the single
statement: "I never went even to my mother's house once after my
mother-in-law died, because if I did, who would look after him" [her
husband] (Gale: 13).
To adopt a new way of life breaking the traditional boundaries is
rather difficult for Jayu, and yet she knows that she has to and she will
live her own life. She is aware of the hurt that she has caused--the hurt
that may never heal. She realises that two years is a little too long, and
the physical distance established between them may ultimately become
a mental one , and yet she decides to do what she has to.
Deshpande's "A Day Like Any Other" (Gale) portrays a
housewife's predicament, when she learns through a female informer
that her husband has an affair with another woman. The housewife's
reaction to this news is rather unusual. She dislikes the informer's
gossip, for she has the feeling that she is trying to wreck the happiness
of other people. Moreover she does not feel cheated or unhappy with
what has happened; she knows that " no one can cheat her out of what
she alone had created for herself' ; she has not sacrificed anything for
she has " always wanted to marry, to have children". She had what she
wanted and she saw no meaning in " life without all this" (Gale: 81).
She momentarily doubts if by any chance she is bothered about her
comfort and security, and hence does not want to take the information
seriously. She is aware that it has taken years for her and her husband to
develop a relationship, and it would take only "minutes to destroy" it.
She wonders if, "This face, this body ....is that all I mean when I say 'I' ?
Is that all.he says when he says 'my wife'? The thing that we have built
between. does it all depend on this face, this body? Love ...I wish I knew
what it meant" (Gale: 82). She rings up her husband, only to find that he
is in a conference. Initially she plans in dressing up, making something
special for tea, hugging him, kissing him and saying 'I love you' when
he returns as counter measures for winning back his love. But she is
proud of her individuality, does not wish to change, and desires that her
personal traits be "careless, a little untidy and incapable of socialising,
of dissemblingy'.She thus decides that, her husband will have to "accept
her as she is" (Gale: 83).
She calmly tells her husband when he returns home the information
that she has received. He is frightened by her calmness and sets out to
reassures her, "promising her a lifetime of fidelity, of loyalty" (Gale:
85). Yet he never speaks of love, and she knows then that he has never
loved her, and at night "as she lay gathering into herself all the trends of
the day" she realizes that her life is her own, and this fact does make her
happy (Gale; 86). She is therefore not bothered about his infidelity as
she had gained whatever she wanted in life. She knows that her life is
her own: "the words the thought grew in her, filling her with a rare arid
fearful happiness, a feeling of being suspended in space and time all by
herself' (Gale: 86). Once again the reaction of the housewife in this
story is totally different from that of several others. She does not rave or
become hysterical on learning of the 'affair', she does not accuse her
husband and, in fact, it is her silence that unsettles her true self, even in
the face of such a serious situation as her husband's infidelity. The story
also foregrounds the fact that the husband has an affair inspite of the fact
that he is happily married, has a nice wife and three kids. This is
motivated by the knowledge that he can get away with this flirtation and
also that he can drop the girl once she loses the cham and glamour she
holds for him.
"Death of a Child" (Leg) is a story that depicts a man's lack of
understanding and sympathy. The woman has decided to do away with
an unwanted pregnancy and it is too much for her to go through this as
she already has three children She knows that he i. e. her husband can
get away from all this but she can never get away as it is something that
she is tied to;
"
I can never get away-fiom me, not even f?om my own
body. I am tied to these things in a way he will never be" (Leg: 47). He
does not understand her but she feels like an animal as this is the third
time in four years. He thinks that the whole issue is simple and there is
nothing complicated about it but she, she knows that one cannot iisolate
the child from her life" (Leg: 44). For her it appears that breeding is just
not the purpose of life. She tells him that children stifle and stunt your
personality and he dismisses her telling her that she is parroting words
out of the books. She finally decides not to have the baby and goes in
for an operation. Taking such a decision is hard for her and yet she opts
not to have it because she knows that she can give all of herself or
nothing at all to the baby but she also wants as she says "to reserve some
part of myself, my life" (Leg: 47).
Munro's "A Trip to the Coast" (DM') has a structure and tone
similar to "The Beloved Charioteer" (Dark) by Deshpande. In "My
Beloved Charioteer" (Dark) the two women are widows and while the
grandmother feels happy that her husband has died, giving her fieedom,
the young daughter feels cheated as both her father and husband are
dead. She therefore has no time for her daughter and the daughter grows
closer to the grandma. The story, "A Trip to the Coast" (DHS) too
discusses fieedom and escape but only in terms of the grand daughter,
May who feels restricted by the grandmother. Her grandma dies finally
trying to get hypnotised. Nevertheless, May cannot cherish her freedom
because she feels her grandma is the one who has won.
She sat with her legs folded under her looking out at the road
where she might walk now in any direction she liked, and the
world which lay flat and accessible and full of silence in front
of her. She sat and waited for that moment to come when she
could not wait any longer, when she would have to get up and
go into the store where it was darker than ever now on account
of the rain and where her grandmother lay fallen across the
counter dead, and what was more, victorious (DHS: 189).
"An Ounce of Cure" (DHS) discusses the rejection of a young girl
by her boy friend. The young girl on one of her baby-sitting nights
drinks a lot and shames herself. She is infatuated by her schoolmate,
Martin Collingwood. The boy later drops her and starts dating a girl
with whom he is staging the play " Pride and Prejudice". The young
disillusioned girl moons over him and she spends "ten times as many
hours thinking about Martin Collingwood- yes, pining and weeping for
him- as I ever spent with him; the idea of him tormented my mind
relentlessly and after a while, against my will" (DHS: 77). Finally at the
end of the story when she is grown up she realises that she is a grown
woman and her catastrophe is now forever buried.
Munro's "Baptising" ( L o portrays the status of marriage, the
status of bodies and the status of boy-girl relationships. Del's
relationship with her friend Naomi changes when Naomi develops
feminine attitudes and learns to discuss, "diets, skin-care routines, hairshampooing methods, clothes, diaphragms..." ( L G E 149). Del
discovers that she can't talk about such aspects and she also finds her
own identity threatened when she reads an article by a American
psychiatrist on modes of thought in men and women. The psychiatrist's
article mentioned that the vision of a full moon triggered different ideas
in boys and girls: "a boy would think of the universe the mystery and
magnificence of it while the girl would think of washing her hair. Del is
upset as she does not think in this way and wonders if she is abnormal.
Ironically enough the article also states: "For a woman, everything is
personal, no idea is of any interest to her by itself, but must be translated
into her own experience, in works of art she always sees her own life or
her daydream" (LGW: 150). Del recognises the difference between her
friend and her and she wonders:
I was amazed and intimidated by her at her boring and
preoccupied new self. It seemed as if she had got miles ahead
of me. Where she was going I did not want to go, but it looked
as if she wanted to; things were progressing for her. Could the
same be said for me? (LGW: 150)
Naomi's aim is to get manied which is assumed to be the normal
life for girls. "It was the life of the girls in the creamery office, it was
showers, linen, pots and pans and silverware that completed the
feminine order, ..." (LGK 161). Del rejects this goal and aims at gaining
grade 'A's in her studies. At this point of time she is attracted to Garnet
French. Her relationship to him opens to her physical aspect of life. She
continues her relationship with him, abandoning her studies. She
realises Garnet's oppression when he wants her to be baptised and she
becomes aware of the freedom that she will lose.
"The Beggar Maid" (WDY) casts the protagonist Rose in the role of
a poor woman having to be dependent on the king. The king in this story
is Patrick Blatchford who is from a rich home. The beginning of the
story announces that he is in love with Rose. Rose's relationship with
Patrick is very similar to that of Del's in "Baptising"
(WDY).
Del could
spurn Garnet and realise that her personality was being drowned. But
Rose is unable to drop the relationship, because Patrick is too gentle, too
honest and "good and guileless". Therefore, she marries him. Later
when she reviews her marriage and her separation, she wonders if she
had entered the relationship because of vanity, greed, and economic
security. The answer to that lies in her words: "What she never said to
anybody, never confided, was that she sometimes thought it had not
been pity or greed or cowardice or vanity but something quite different,
like a vision of happiness" ( WDY:99).
bbMischief'and "Providence" (WDY) throw light on Rose's affairs
with Clifford and Tom respectively. Rose has affairs with other men but
she finally realises that her identity is not within these relations with
men but in her own being. "Wild Swans" (WDY)
has sexual implications
similar to what Del experiences in "Lives of Girls and Women" (LGFV).
Mr. Chamberlain's sexual act is objectively viewed by Del and in a
similar fashion Rose undergoes the whole lecherous behaviour of the
clergyman thereby becoming both the "victim and accomplice" (1 08).
Thus,
Del in Lives and Rose in The Beggar-Maid are the inheritors
of this tradition of repression and guerrilla warfare, practised
within the bound of social conformity, but their difference is
that through their intelligence and educational opportunities
they have the chance to deviate openly from gender
stereotypes, resisting not only the maxim of the masculine
tradition but also of feminine cultural traditions, imagining
newer and more ambitious plots for their own stories
(Howells, 1990: 5).
In this bid to "carve a living space" women had for long "colluded
in their own oppression" as is seen in the case of the wife who accepts
another woman in "And What's A Son" (Gale) ;but gradually women
have become more and more conscious that they need to change. It has
been noticed that "women are not weak but oppressed and powerless,
not incapable but uninitiated, not inadequate but unacknowledged,
unrecognised and rendered helpless due to denial of opportunity,
subjugation and suppression" (ChitnisJ987: 237). The fact that a
woman is strong, adequate and an individual with an identity is
highlighted in these stories.
In the West, individualism has played a great role and in a way this
has helped women to step out of their role-models and achieve an
independent life. In Indian societies women have been greatly restricted
by the community. Women are pushed away into the inner sanctum of
the house and are taught to practise propriety and obedience. They are
taught to deny, and sacrifice instead of asserting their selves. Individual
talents, skills, capabilities were pushed backwards. Women are not
allowed to pick and choose their partners and marriage is more a
convenience than one of love and affection.
Malashri Lal feels that the essential difference between the Western
and Oriental concepts of Womanhood rests upon the interpretation of
the word, "self-actualisation". In India a woman's roles as wife, mother,
mother-in- law are modes of self-actualisation; while the west tends to
perceive self-actualisation as an individual goal. (1986: 43) Feminist
consciousness in the last decade has led to a blurring of conventions
even in India but more and more feminist thinkers argue that the
universal objectives of the women's movements are to be specially
defined within a specific sociological context and that desirable social
change has to be strategically introduced within the system. The
slowness of the process is preferable to the instant rejection often
activated by an obvious infiltration of new ideas.
The ideas that one witnesses in some of the stories dealing with
Indian life reveal that a woman once married is the man's property. The
other factor is that marriage is a bond for the purpose of procreation.
This proprietal air of man is extremely well brought out in the story
"Intrusion" (Leg). The aim is to please the man and women are whores
needed to appease men's physical desire. The total disregard of
women's need for sex and her body desires can be noted as already
pointed out in "The First Lady" (Leg), "A Valley in Shadow7'(Dark),
and "Why A Robin" (Leg). Irvine observes that "feminization, assumed
by the male writer in a colonial situation to be synonymous with
powerlessness, does not have the same political implication for women".
She further mentions that "although within gender divisions, femininity
connotes passivity", within political materialist structures it can assume
an entirely different approach to governance (1989: 11). Thus she thinks
that the story of feminization can at one level be a different version of
colonialism portraying the female voice. This factor is true of many of
the stories that are discussed under the section "Power Relationships".
Deshpande's stories are subverted in terms of theme while Munro's
stories foreground diverse range in terms of not only themes but also
language and structure. In Munro7s stories one becomes aware "that
stories are being told, sometimes by splitting and doubling, allowing
description and commentary to function together at other times by
didactic tones meant to help readers achieve a new perspective" (Irvine,
1989:12). Deshpande's stories play on the silence of women and reveal
the inner strength and awareness present within this silent, mute
framework (eg. "A Day Like Any Other" (Gale), "Why, A Robin"
(Leg), "Intrusion" (Leg) and "A Valley in Shadow" (Dark). Thus "the
reader is taught to take women's texts seriously, to recognise not just the
surface of the female body but its hidden meanings" (Irvine, 1989: 14).
Munro's women characters--Del and Rose are endowed with a total
lack of sexual inhibitions. In fact it assumes a clinical curiosity more
than a human desire. One good illustration of such a view is the way Del
sees Mr. Chamberlain's penis:
Raw and blunt, ugly coloured as a wound, it looked to me
vulnerable, playful and naive, like some strong-snouted
animal whose grotesque simple looks are some sort of
guarantee of good will. ( the opposite of what beauty usually
is.) It did not bring back any of my excitement though. It did
not seem to have anything to do with me.
Women also assume the role of the desirers and this is noticed in
the scene where Rose forces Patrick to have sex with her. Rose realises
that love is a fantasy, an illusion: She had always thought this would
happen, that somebody would look at her and love her totally and
helplessly. It was a miracle. It was a mistake. It was what she had
dreamed oE it was not what she wanted. (WDF8 1).
This awareness of what she actually wants makes her a symbol of
the new woman. The reader is also made aware that one should not get
attached and that the way to achieve fieedom and liberty and be whole
women is to be indifferent to men as well as others. Thus Roberta learns
that she has to distance herself from George in "Labor-Day Dinner"
(MOJ) while Joan abandons her children and husband in "Oh, What
Avails" (POL). Similarly Deshpande's "It Was The Nightingale" (Gale)
portrays this attitude .
Stories like "Dulse" and "Bardon Bus" (MOJ) also depict the
division between fact and fiction. Irvine commenting on "Dulse" states
that "the narrator uses Lydia's dilemma to describe the aesthetic tension
between creativity and experience, between living in an ivory tower and
living in the actual world". The character in Bardon Bus feels that "the
moment when you give yourself up, give yourself over, to the assault
which is guaranteed to finish off everything you've been before, a
stubborn virgin's belief, this belief in perfect mastery; any broken-down
wife could tell there is no such thing" ( M U111)
Yet the major drawback is that it is very difficult to achieve this
distance as women have been trained from ages to nurtured care for
others. Coral Ann Howells rightly points out:
Women are deeply implicated in the existing structures of the
social world as mothers, daughters, lovers and wives so that it
is a paradox of most women's position that any search for new
ways of restructuring their lives and their stories has to
acknowledge their genuine need for affective relations and
responsibilities at the same time as they register resistance to
such constructs (1990: 28).
This is validated when Irvine discusses the responsibility of the
women writers:
Because women tend to stress relationship over autonomy,
webs rather than hierarchies, women writers are faced with
establishing satisfactory ways of distancing themselves &om
the events of the story, of giving the narrative voice authority,
of separating the creating self from the characters in the text
(1 989: 110).
Thus, one notices that each of these stories reveal various facets of
the power that men wield. In "Intrusion" (Leg) one notices that the
newly married bride is unable to overcome the boundaries of society and
is only mutely able to share her agony with her readers. On the other
hand "First Lady" (Leg) depicts the misuse of political power and the
changes that it can wrought between a husband and a wife.
Munro's stories are more varied and endow women with more
power and independence. The two readings by the mother and daughter
depict the plurality of the readings in the story "Friend Of My Youth"
(FOY). The unsavoury nature of love and the need to be aware of one's
potential is the basis of the stories "Hold Me Fast, Don't Let Me Pass"
(FOY), "Labour Day Dinner", "Bardon Bus" (MOJ), "Oranges And
Apples" (POL) and "Dulse" (MOJ), while "Five Points" (FOY) reveals
the power that women too can display.
CHAPTER III
PROVIDENCE
The problem, the only problem, is my mother.
And she is the one of course that I am trying
to get; it is to reach her that this whole
journey has been undertaken. With what
purpose? To mark her off, to describe, to
illumine, to celebrate, to get rid,of her; and it
did not work, for she looms too close, just as
she always did.
--SIB (246).
The bond between a mother25 and daughter is primordial. The
mother is reborn with the child and grows along with her. They grow
and experience each other and at times, their experience converges but it
could diverge also, leading to communication gaps. The mother figure
can assume a number of variations--she could be dead and yet hold a
strong aura of her self over the child; or she may be dead and therefore a
deadlabsent mother to the child. Sometimes the child may try to revoke
25It is good to be reminded of Adrienne Rich's words in this
context: "Motherhood--unmentioned in the histories of conquest and
serfdom, wars and treaties, exploration and imperialism--has a history, it
has an ideology, it is more fbndamental than tribalism or nationalism"
(1 976:34).
the mother. At other times, the mother may be the power figure, namely
the strong dominant mother who may makeibreak the child; or in some
cases a weak, submissive, powerless mother whom the child may
sympathise witwdislike. She could also be an independent woman
asserting herself and the child may realise that she is different from
other mothers.
In the fiction of contemporary world, however, the mother has been
portrayed as a monster. Such a situation arises because the daughter
begins to see her own self reflected in the mother. Karen Elias-Button in
The Lost Tradition uses the metaphor of the evil mother as the symbol
of the Medusa. She feels that the "Medusa is the dark side of the mother,
the grasping mother, representative of the entanglements mothers and
daughters encounter" but she states that this figure could also become "a
metaphor for powers previously hidden and denigrated, collective
powers that we are finally beginning to reaffirm and claim for
ourselves" (1 980: 194). Hindu mythology too portrays such an image in
the depiction of the Goddess KaliiDurga. The Hindu Goddess, the
energetic mother can become a symbol of either benevolence or
malevolence26. Mother, especially in Hindu society is acknowledged
26 This
division can also be seen in a different way in the perception
of the institution of motherhood by society--women are considered
impure, cormpt, the site of discharges, bleedings, dangerous to
masculinity, a source of moral and physical contamination" but another
LC'
great importance. In fact, the purpose of marriage is procreation which
is illustrated by stories such as 'The First Lady" (Leg), and "The Valley
in Shadow" (Dark). The initial reaction, thus, in many stories is a
negation of the mother which changes later into a recognition of the
mother and a reconciliation with the mother. It is this fluidity existing
between them and the centring of the mother as a subject that is the
focus of this chapter, which is sectioned as follows :
* The deadabsent mothers.
* The dominant /passive mothers
* The distanced rnothersidaughters
* The independent mothers.
The Dead/Absent Mothers
Women are perpetually attempting to establish their identities.
Identity can be defined as the "stable, consistent and reliable sense of
who one is and what one stands for in the world. It integrates one's
meaning to oneself and one's meaning to others; it provides a match
between what one regards as central to oneself and how one is viewed
by significant others in one's life (Josselson, 1987:10). Deshphande's
aspect that society projects is the image of them as "beneficient, sacred,
pure, asexual, nourishing" beings well suited for being benevolent and
nurturing mothers (Rich, 1976: 34).
"Lucid Moments" (Int) is one such story that discusses the identity crisis
experienced by an ailing mother. It portrays the anxiety of the mother to
know herself and in her quest for identity she tries to connect her own
dead mother with a name. Sujatha, the daughter is able to acknowledge
her mother's struggle to know herself, and she connects her mother's
quest with her own identity.
Sujatha initially identifies herself with her father whom she
perceives as the nearest symbol of power and authority. She recollects
that "To be admitted to his companionship had been the greatest
honour" and she had "pitied Akka her mother and Shilpa her sister for
being left outside the magic circle" (Int: 72). Sujatha's perception of her
father changes when she notices that he is unable to cope with his wife's
illness and instead of being strong and independent he becomes a weak,
helpless person. She perceives that he is a self-centred man when she
discovers that he does not know anything about his wife, and that she
has always been just a wife, and nothing more to him. Sujatha's
conversation during lunch illustrates this apathy of his:
"One of her better days actually". I tell him, during our lunch
when his question comes up. "She's been talking today ..."
"Of what?"
"Her dead mother. She was asking me for her name. Isn't it
odd? Baba is pushing his food about on his plate; he seems
disinterested not only in his food but in my talk as well.
"Baba, do you know it?"
"What?"
' 'Akka's mother's name?"
Irritably he says, "No, how could I?" It sounds as if he is
saying-why should I? (Int: 73).
Sujatha as a woman can now understand the need of her mother
and she is in empathy with her. Her mother's echoing question makes
her aware for the need to know one's self. She, as the daughter, is also to
be blamed as she has subverted her mother's image by calling her
"Akka" (sister) instead of "Amma" (mother). She knows that her mother
is troubled as she wants to know who she is. Her mother is anxious and
grieved because she is not able to recollect her mother's name. Added to
this misery she is also troubled by her own double identity for she does
not know if she is Sumati or Girija--possibly two identities thrust on
her--one by her father and another by her husband, thereby erasing her
true inner being. This loss of identity is equated with her degenerating
body: "Since the metastasis, there seems to be almost nothing of her old
self left. The shadows that began under her eyes have captured the
whole of her face, the lower portion has caved in, her eyes have sunk
into two deep, dark wells" (Int: 72). Yet, there is a point of
identification, interestingly enough, the "bindi" that adorns an Indian
woman's forehead. This mark of tradition is seen here as foregrounding
the self.
Sujatha can now realise her mother's silence and she realises that
women are continually erased by society. She remembers the prewedding rite when the names of the fore 'fathers' are uttered but not of
the mothers or their ancestors who are just forgotten. She thus gains
identity experiencing and sharing her mother's pain and suffering. She
feels that she shares her mother's death as she had once shared her birth
with her. Dale Spender's remarks about the process of naming are valid
in this context:
Practically it means that women's family names do not count
and that there is one more device for making women invisible.
Fathers pass their names on to their sons and the existence of
daughters can be denied when in the absence of a male heir it
is said that a family 'dies out'. One other direct result of this
practice of only taking cognisance of the male line, because it
becomes almost impossible to trace the ancestry of women particularly if they do not come into the male defined
categories of importance (1980: 24).
Sujatha's final act of hanging up the framed and enlarged
photograph of her mother bestows not only an identity on her mother
" .
but also attempts to locate the centralit
fortified by her when she makes her little
name as well as her own. Thus the final linking of the
names with oneself decolonizes women and re-frames them; this act can
be recognised by the words of Daphne Marlatt:
Like the mother's body, language is larger than us and carries
along with it. it bears us. it births us. insofar as we bear it. if
we are poets we spend our lives discovering not just what we
have to say but what language is saying as it carries us with it
in etymology we discover a history of verbal relations (A
family tree, if you will) that has preceded us and given us the
world we live in. the given, the immediately presented, as at
birth-a given name a given word ...here we are truly contained
within the body of our mother tongue (1987: 224).
Mothers pass on their sense of guilt, weakness, and helplessness to
their daugbkrs. "Peace of Utrecht" (DHS) is an autobiographical story
as Munro herself admits in her interview with Geoff Hancock, that the
illness of a parent changes the relationship and it gets to become
27Dale Spender states that not only males name their experiences
but also insist that those who don't share that experience use those
names. When women are endowed with the power to name then there
may arise a more "accurate classification of the world" (1989: 189-99).
significant: "And so her illness and death and the whole tension between
us ...was very important. The first story I think of as a real story was
"Peace of Utrecht". It's about the death of a mother'' (1987: 215). The
daughter's visit to her mother's house after her death reminds her -ofthe
cry of her mother which had been "shamehlly undisguised and raw and
supplicating" (DM: 198). The narrator, Helen and her sister, Maddy
had learnt to deal with these cries of helplessness by growing cunning
and cold. They took away fiom her, as Helen narrates, "our anger and
impatience and disgust, took all emotion away from our dealings with
her, you might take away meat from a prisoner to weaken him, till he
died" ( D m 199). She had demanded love from her daughters but they
had not enough reserves to draw from and had increased her sense of
isolation and imprisonment. She had, by her illness, changed into a
demanding ghoulish mother:
Our Gothic Mother, with the cold appalling mask of the
Shaking Palsy laid across her features, shuffling, weeping,
devouring attention wherever she can get it, eyes dead and
burning, fixed inward on herself; this is not all (DHS: 200).
The mother in this state shifts from normalcy to abnormality. Thus
if one day she has behaved like a housewife, taking care of the plants or
baking, another day she is demanding the daughters to dress her up and
get clothes stitched for her. Helen escapes this picture of the mother by
moving away and distancing herself. Maddy's letters now no longer
produce in her the "once-familiar frenzy and frustration which my
mother's demands could produce" (DHS: 200). The ordinariness of life
forces her to forget the "Gothic Mother" who had begun to be imaginary
to her. By revisiting her she tries to recapture her but she can't. Finally
the paper that she finds with the words "The Peace of Utrecht, 1713,
brought an end to the war of the Spanish Succession" creates the
necessary vision for her to reconcile not only with her mother's spirit
but also to recognise the fact that Maddy too has a life of her own.
The mother could also act as a spur influencing and enabling the
woman to change her lifestyle. Such a change is witnessed in
Deshpande's "it Was The Nightingale" (Gale). Jayu, the protagonist,
takes a bold step to further her career as she does not want to be like her
mother. Initially she feels " dislike and contempt" for her mother
because she had "tried to live her life through her husband and
daughters". To Jayu she seems like a woman "who had made her own
hell and gloried in it" (Gale: 14). Therefore, she battles and finally gets
her own self out from such an image. She changes from the selfsacrificing and self-effacing mother into an independent woman.
Dominant/Passive Mothers
The girl-child in Indian society is a marginal figure and it becomes
more evident if the child is born out of wedlock or to another man. This
differentiation is brought out in "The Awakening" (Mir). Though the
story deals not with a mother-daughter conflict it becomes significant to
examine it, as the narrative throws open the helplessness of the mother
and also reveals her attempts to shield the child. The child is treated in a
different manner from the others as she is not her father's daughter. She
is sent to a different school, and the father is distant and does not
communicate with her. He punishes the child for the dishonour that he
associates with the mother. She is excluded fiom all the activities that
the father and her siblings undertake. She thinks that by scoring good
marks in her tests she can please her father, but she finds out that the
father cannot be placated that way. She has learnt silently that her birth
itself is the cause of all the anger and punishment. Her final outcry,
"Whatever they say, I was born. And I am. I am" (Miv: 63) reveals that
she cannot be defeated and that she overcomes her alienation. Mukta
Atrey in "The Girl Child in the Fiction of Shashi Deshpande" notes:
Deshpande unveils the subtle processes of oppression and
gender differentiation at work in the family and in the malecentred Indian society. Her feminism does not uproot the girl
child from her given context, but tries to understand and
define her in the framework of the various factors that shape
her. These include cultural aspects like myths and legends,
rituals and ceremonies as well as social and psychological
factors such as the family structure, the woman's position in
it, female sexuality and the traumas of menstruation,
childbirth and abortion (1990: 246).
Another story that reveals the helplessness of the mother and
displays the mother as the passive onlooker is Deshpande's "It was
Dark" (Dark). The story reveals the ostracization by society that a
woman has to undergo. The girl in the story, a fourteen year old is raped
and the trauma of the parents is portrayed. The mother is blamed as the
father feels that she had not taken the responsibility to educate the child.
The mother, on the other hand, had faced so many restrictions and
boundaries that she had desired for her daughter's freedom:
I had been warned enough as a girl. "Don't, don't,
don't ...y ou're a female." They had taught me to build a wall
round myself with negatives from childhood. And then
suddenly, when I got married, they told me to break the wall
down. To behave as if it had never been. And my husband
too--how complete his disregard of that wall had been; I had
felt totally vulnerable, wholly defenceless. I won't let my
daughter live behind walls, I had thought (Dark: 23).
Mukta Atrey commenting on the story thinks that stories such as
"Why a Robin" (Leg) and "It was Dark" (Dark) reveal the changing
attitude of mothers towards their girl children. She thinks that the
understanding and sympathy between the daughters and the mothers
grow. She adds that "It was Dark" reveals the "young girl's
vulnerability which no amount of knowledge of the sexual act can erase.
The young girl cannot cope with the crisis and is numbed into a state of
indifference and withdrawal" (1990: 251). To the victim the whole
trauma is associated with a dark room and there is complete blankness
within her. The mother feels as if her daughter has witnessed a solar
eclipse with naked eyes and lost her vision. She understands that she is
the person who has to bring the daughter out of this darkness and lead
her towards light. She finally manages to draw her daughter out and
make her aware of the light around her: "Sunlight poured into the
room, ... And now at last her eyes moved from her spot to a glimmering,
moving circle... They rested on that shining light for a moment, then
moved to me. She saw me" (Dark: 25).
In the story the moment of the rape is not revealed to us and
Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan commenting on the depiction and happening
of rape28 thinks that "the fact that the enactment of rape takes place in
private and secret places requires the author to conduct his readers into
the innermost recesses of physical space" (1993: 76). She further points
out in this context that feminist texts of rape counter narrative
determinism, in different ways: namely by making the raped woman the
subject rather than as a victim of the act; by showing strategies of
survival instead of establishing the issue around myths of chastity; by
portraying and placing the raped woman in a system of heterosexual
love and oppression through rape; by presenting the literal facts of the
act rather than weaving a mystifying atmosphere around the whole issue
and finally by representing the cost of the act in complex perspectives
rather than displaying the extinction of the victim. (1993: 76)
Deshpande's "Can You Hear Silence" (Dark) sketches the hustle
and bustle of a metropolitan city. It also foregrounds the life that a
working mother undergoes. The story exemplifies the'dangr a girl-child
may encounter and the socialisation that the mother has initiated her
into. The daughter tries to link herself to the past of the mother and
savour the silence that her mother has talked about. The image of silence
can assume a number of symbols: "Silence as withheld communication
produces mystery and enigma" (Sunder Rajan, 1993: 87); it can also
reveal displeasure as noticed in "The Shadow" or it could display
For a more detailed discussion on the issue of rape see Sunder
Rajan's Real and Imagined Women.
28
secretiveness, (illustrated by "It Was Dark" (Dark) or "Red Dress
-
1946" (DHS)). In other instances it could be an index of heroism or can
show self-discipline or resistance.
We are once again made aware of the importance of names and the
significance of telling stories by Munro's "Progress of Love" (POL).
Unlike the daughter in "Lucid Moments" (Int) the daughter, Fame here
has always called her mother, 'mother' and to her the personal name that
her mother has seems strange. She also develops an identity with the
mother by becoming a part of her personality and is constantly reminded
of her: "But I had a sense of her all the time, and would be reminded of
her by the most unlikely things--an upright piano, or a tall white loaf of
bread" (POL: 9). Even though the idea seems a little exaggerated, what
is revealed here is the sense of space that the mother occupies in the
daughter's psyche. The mother's presence becomes a strong one as the
mother becomes apart of the daughter which is a feeling not felt by the
narrator's brothers:
I always had a feeling, with my mother's talk and stories, of
something swelling out behind. Like a cloud, a poison, that
had touched my mother's life. And when I grieved my mother,
I became part of it....It seemed as if she knew something about
me that was worse, far worse, than ordinary lies and tricks and
meanness; it was a really sickening shame (POL:13).
The daughter is here aware of the mother and her body and she
feels the bond breaks when she herself later on has only two sons and no
daughters. The story of the mother's suicide becomes a link to her
mother's past. Redekop remarks that Munro7sexploration of "maternal
ancestry is intimately related to language and to the process of
storytelling" (1992: 176). She adds that the naming of the mother and
the aunt constructs the subjects of the story and the two versions of the
story that Fame hears take up two positions, namely, the mother's story
is a story about the mother herself while the aunt's story loses the
matrilineal power and is a "challenge" issued by her (1992: 176).
The mother in "The Moon in the Orange Skating Rink" (POL) is
not the true mother yet she assumes a demonic form, for one finds that
the adopted daughter, Callie is always slaving away and finally gains the
title of slavery Kemaghan. She is a substitute mother about whom there
are lot of stories and the two boarders, Sam and Edgar think that the sex
act that they have with Callie might have taken place with Miss
Kemaghan. But the story that Miss. Kemaghan tells them about Callie's
birth is bizarre and unbelievable. The truth of the story is not what is
important, "What mattered was Miss Kemaghan7scold emphasis as she
told this, her veiled and surely unfriendly purpose, her random ferocity"
(POL: 151). The story questions the romantic notion of mother, her
love, affection and her sacrifice for the daughter. Munro achieves this
effect cleverly by positioning a mock mother and thus, makes a mockery
of the conventional notions of motherhood.
The questioning of conventionality and tradition is perceived in
"White Dump" (POL). It reveals the intricate story line filled with the
perceptions of the grandmother, Sophie; the daughter-in-law, Isabel and
Isabel's daughter, Denise. The grandmother, Sophie's naked appearance
displays the embarrassing performance of the mother to shame her son.
Redekop thinks that such exhibitionism "challenges our notions of
innate motherhood and this, at the same time, results in a transgression
of the boundaries between stories. Both stunts are necessary for
survival" (1992: 177).
The narrator in "Moons of Jupiter" (MUJ) is linked to the birth of
her daughters and the life she had with them when she comes to visit her
father who is in hospital. She knows that her daughters, Nichola and
Judith would have discussed her and tried to establish their connections
to her: "They would have talked about me. Judith and Nichola
comparing notes, relating anecdotes; analysing, regretting, blaming,
forgiving" (MOJ: 222). She thinks that daughters being women are
closely tied up with the mother and know all about the mother. She is
reminded that at Judith's age she had been in college discussing issues
with her friends and at Nichols's age she had been a mother. She
remembers the talks she would have with her neighbourhood friend,
Ruth Boudreau:
We talked about our parents, our childhood's, though for
some time we kept clear of our marriages. How thoroughly we
dealt with our fathers and mothers, deplored their marriages,
their mistaken ambitions or fear of ambition, how competently
we filed them away, defined them beyond any possibility of
change (MOJ: 222).
She had felt offended by her father when he had told her that he
could not remember the days when she grew up. She realises that the
same is true when she becomes the mother. All that she can remember
are "hanging out diapers, bringing in and folding diapers.. .I was sleepy
all the time then;...wives yawning, napping, visiting, drinking coffee and
folding diapers; ..." (MOJ: 223). She realises that they had become like
cartoons and had aged by the responsibilities. The story once again
points out the need for detachment and distancing oneself in order to
survive. The mother remembers that Nichola had been tested for
leukaemia and frightened that she may lose her, she had tried to attain a
distance: "There was a care--not a withdrawal exactly but a care--not to
feel anything much. I saw how the forms of love might be maintained
with a condemned person but with the love in fact measured and
disciplined, because you have to survive" (MOJ: 230). The whole issue
is always a secret to the person who is sentenced to death. The fact of
Nichola's life had stayed with her and by this secret the mother is
empowered as she gains a wider vision of what life and death means.
This
mental
picture that
she
sees is
a
"releasing
one"
(Redekop,1992:171) as she is able to reconcile to her father's death.
Carrington's conclusions about the story are valid:
Thus, the experience of withdrawal that Janet's father reads
about and that Janet actively seeks unifies the story both
thematically
and
psychologically
by
shaping
the
characterisation of the narrator whose experience embodies
the theme. Her split into two personae, the observer and the
participant, defines her double roles as her father's daughter
and as her daughter' mother. In participating in her own life,
Janet has been only the observer on the periphery of both her
father's life and her daughters' lives, and they have been
observers of hers (204).
The Parkinson's disease that we find is the cause of the mother's
death in "Peace of Utrecht" (DHS) is in "The Ottawa Valley" (SIB) here
in its initial stages. The story begins with a return home to the mother's
place, the Ottawa valley. The story reflects on the instance when the
mother sacrifices the safety pin to hold the daughter's panties. This very
feminine act reveals the mother's ability to uphold her daughter's
secrets forgetting her own troubles. Yet, the daughter is unable to tend
and care for her mother as already witnessed in "The Peace of Utrecht".
To illustrate this fact she remarks "I was very much relieved that she
had decided against strokes, and that I would not have to be the mother,
and wash and wipe and feed her lying in bed, as aunt Dodie had had to
do with mother" (SIB: 244).
The sense of power and dominance is depicted by the mother figure
Flo in the sequence stories WDY. Flo in "Royal Beatings" and the other
connected stories of WDY assumes the role of the story teller. Flo liked
to imagine and she liked "the details of a death: the things people said,
the way they protested or tried to get out of bed or swore or laughed..."
(WDY: 4). Even the way she tells Rose about the death of Rose's mother
is quite ridiculous.
There is from the beginning a dislike and a mongering for power
between Rose and Flo. As Rose points out: "There was a long truce
between Flo and Rose in the beginning. Rose's nature was growing like
a prickly pineapple, but slowly, and secretly, hard pride and scepticism"
developed in her. To Rose in the beginning her vision of Flo is one of
extraordinary softness and hardness; "The soft hair, the long, soft, pale
cheeks, soft almost invisible fuzz in front of her ears and above her
mouth. The sharpness of her knees, hardness of her lap, flatness of her
front" (WDY: 11). These images of hardness, flatness and sharpness
finally lead to the image being put into action. Flo uses her power and
authority, thus leading to the royal beatings that Rose receives fiom her
father. Even before the beatings the power of Flo is displayed by the
body image: "Her legs are long, white and muscular, marked all over
with blue veins as if somebody had been drawing rivers on them with an
indelible pencil". Flo's scrubbing is seen by Rose as endowed with "an
abnormal energy, a violent disgust ..." (WDY:15). All these images flow
finally into the question of who do you think you are:
Flo speaks of Rose's smart-aleck behaviour, rudeness and
sloppiness and conceit. Her willingness to make work for
othws, her lack of gratitude ....Oh, don't you think you're
somebody, says Flo, and a moment later, Who do you think
you are? (WDE 15).
Flo in the story not only exhibits theatricality and power but also
assumes the role of a martyr. She finally manages to rouse Rose's
father's ire and Rose is vanquished by the royal beatings her father
resorts to. Rose in her new state of the injured victim feels that "She has
passed into a state of calm, in which outrage is perceived as complete
and final". In such a state she finds that her choices are clear--"She will
never speak to them, she will never look at them with anything but
loathing, she will never forgive them. She will punish them; she will
finish them" (WDY: 20). These thoughts make her forget herself and her
responsibility. This drama of hatred and violence29 is then followed by
~ 1 0 ' bid
s to appease Rose. Flo, now sure of her power, tries to woo Rose
by getting her a jar of cold cream for her wounds and a tray of
appetising food--a large glass of chocolate milk, little sandwiches,
canned salmon, butter tarts, chocolate biscuits. Rose "will turn away,
refuse to look, but left alone with these eatables will be miserably
tempted, roused and troubled and drawn back from thoughts of suicide
or flight ..." (WDK 26 ) She finally decides to eat one for strength but,
unable to resist, finishes everything thus losing her advantage.
This whole picture changes and in "Spelling" (FDY) Rose is the
woman in control while Flo loses all her power. The story is a reversal
of "Royal Beatings" (WDY) and here Rose does not have to resort to
violence as Flo is already a victim because of her age. Her senility
makes her a child and there is one moment where mother and daughter
are reconciled. After Flo has been admitted into the aged home, Rose
cleans up their place only to discover a wig of Flo's. She takes the wig
and offers it to Flo, thus bridging the gap between them: "'A wig' , said
Rose, 'and Flo began to laugh. Rose laughed too"'. Rose then assumes
the role of the entertainer, sticks the wig on her head and continues the
The power relations that one notices in some of the stories are a
reflection of the physical power that women notice in men and which
they intemalise in their selves. This could explain the show of violence
and power by Flo in "Royal Beatings" ( WDYJ.
29
comedy making Flo laugh so that "she rocked back and forth in her
crib" ( T D E 191). Flo is once again able to tell her stories and she tells
Rose about the removal of gall stones from her body. This bond that is
established between Rose and Flo makes Rose think later in life of
telling her what she had heard about Hat Nettleton. But, Flo has lost her
power of speech which had given her the power of exhibitor and now
"She had removed herself, and spent most of her time sitting in a comer
of her crib, looking crafty and disagreeable, not answering anybody,
though she occasionally showed her feelings by biting a nurse" (WDY:
24). Redekop remarks that "the dialogue of stories that move back and
forth between Flo and Rose is a structural acting out of this strange face
to face experience of fool and nonfool, infant and mother (1992: 121).
This reconciliation between Rose and Flo helps Rose later to
understand the power of mothering in the story "Providence" (WDY).
Rose's relationship with Anna, her daughter, is one of love but for the
first time Rose realises the responsibilities of being a single parent. She
also understands that to the child, the parents are the most important
people. Anna's life revolves around her parents, as Rose remarks in her
narrative: "Yet for Anna this bloody fabric her parents had made, of
mistakes and mismatches, that anybody could see ought to be tom up
and thrown away, was still the true web of life, of father and mother, of
beginning and shelter" (VDY:138). Being with Anna she realises that
''For the first time in her life she understood domesticity, knew the
meaning of shelter, and laboured to manage it" (FDY: 145). She finally
gives up Anna because she learns that her independence cannot provide
the stability that a child needs:
She wanted to take Anna with her, set them up again in some
temporary shelter. It was just as Patrick said. She wanted to
come home to Anna, to fill her life with Anna. She didn't
think Anna would choose that life. Poor, picturesque, gypsing
childhoods are not much favoured by children, though they
will claim to value them, for all sorts of reasons, later on
(WDE 155).
Anna therefore is sent to live with her father, Patrick and his wife,
Elizabeth. Rose finally sees a photo of Anna where she looks demure
and satisfied.
The mother moves from the distance to become a friend in "Friend
of My Youth" (FOY). The story recaptures the mother figure, and her
power of entertaining the daughter. At the beginning of the story it is
made clear that the mother died in her fifties. The story begins with a
dream: "I used to dream about my mother, and though the details in the
dream varied, the surprise in it was always the same" (FOE 3). The
daughter is reminded of the mother's debilitating body which had been
afflicted by Parkinson's disease. The mother portrayed in the initial
stages of the disease in the story "The Ottawa Valley" (SIB) and the
mother who is dead due to the affliction in "The Peace of Utrecht"
(DHS) is once again revived here. The daughter is able to capture the
qualities of the mother that she had forgotten. She remembers the
"liveliness of face and voice", "the casual humour she had, not ironic
but merry, the lightness and impatience and confidence?" and her
"matter-of-fact reply" (FOE 4). The mother in the dream is not afflicted
by the disease and the daughter feels relieved and happy to see her like
that. She finally realises from the dream that her mother had exhibited
"options and powers
"
that she had not known she had possessed. The
mother thus turns into a ghost figure: "She changes the bitter lump of
love I have carried all this time into a phantom---something useless and
uncalled for, like a phantom pregnancy" (FOE 26). The story brings out
the idea of failure and the inability of the daughter's to know the mother
completely. This guilt30 of the daughter to represent the mother becomes
3oMagdalene Redekop's discussion of this story is very
enlightening. She feels that "Munro's exploration of the daughter's guilt
moves through levels of self-interrogation that are potentially
paralyzing" She adds that the title is "listed as one of several salutations
written by the mother". She further remarks that the continuing selfinterrogation employed by Munro is an "exploration of the workings of
our traditional notions about writing as they relate to lives of our
mothers". The reference to the mother is Munro's way of "insisting on
the fact of referentiality". Thus, the mother's narrative in the story and
the failure of the character Flora in theher's storycan be a reference for
the failure of the daughter's vision ofihe mother. Therefore Redekop
argues that "The thread of referentiality is deliberately blurred towards
a "phantom pregnancy" where the daughter is fated to cany the past of
the mother and is unable to give birth to it.
"Circle of Prayer" (POL) is a story told from the mother, Trudy's
point of view. The story begins by a violent act, namely Trudy hurling a
jug at her daughter, Robin. The violence begins when Trudy discovers
that the bead necklace given to her by her mother-in-law and which she
had forbidden Robin to wear, had been given by Robin to a friend. Her
questions directed at Robin are answered by silence, and in a fit of rage
she hurls the jug. But fortunately the jug falls on the rug. Robin had
given the necklace to her friend and though Robin displays a frightened
look she is according to Tmdy, "stubborn, calculating, disdainful"
(POL: 255). The story is interspersed by the death of a young girl in an
accident. When Trudy hears this she is concerned and is afraid to hear
that a girl might have been "dragged off a country road, raped in the
woods, strangled, beaten, left there" (POL: 256). Her concern is mainly
because she knows that her daughter goes running and her beauty may
cause her harm. Trudy begins to find love and wishes to reconcile with
her daughter. When she hears about the circle of prayer that her f?iend,
Janet believes in, she agrees to join them. What finally alters her view of
her daughter and bridges the gap between her and Robin is a vision she
has *hich portrays to her the importance of detachment. This helps her
the end of the story, it becomes difficult to tell Flora and the mother
apart" ( 1992: 21 1).
to be reconciled to the loss of the necklace. The vision she has also
reveals to her the importance of furthering oneself and placing oneself in
the role of a spectator:
She sees her young self looking in the window at the old
woman playing the piano. The dim room, with its oversize
beams and fireplace and the lonely leather chairs. The
clattering, faltering, persistent piano music. Trudy remembers
that so clearly and it seems she stood outside her own body,
which ached then from the punishing pleasures of love. She
stood outside her own happiness in atide of sadness. And the
opposite thing happened the morning Dan left. Then she stood
outside her own unhappiness in a tide of what seemed
unreasonably like love. But it was the same thing, really,
when you got outside. What are those times that stand out,
clear patches in your life--what do they have to do with it?
They aren't exactly promises. Breathing spaces (POL: 273).
The mother in "Oh, What Avails'? (POL) is a lively woman who is
not only independent but also exhibits a certain amount of eccentricity.
She is also pictured by the daughter as a proud woman and though she
does not have money, she does not think of herself as poor. This is
illustrated by the fact that she does not get a doctor's advice for her son'
Morris' eye accident. She treats Morris as a grown up and allows him to
smoke, drink and drive a car by the time he is twelve. The mother here
has a name for everyone in town. She also knows a lot of poetry and at
times "She looks out the window and says a bit of poetry and they h o w
who has gone by" (POL: 183). Joan, the daughter narrator later in life
realises that one needs to act in order to hide the things one sees "in
their temporary separateness, all connected underneath in such a
troubling, satisfying, necessary, indescribable way" (POL: 208). Finally
Joan realises that their mother had taught them to have a "delicate,
special regard for themselves" and because of this gift of hers she and
her brother, Morris had been able to get what they wanted. Joan quotes
the lines that her mother often used to say:
'Ah, what avails fhe sceptred race,
Ah, what the form divine!
m a t every virtue, every grace,
Rose Aylmer--Rose Matilda--all
were thine!' (POL: 2 15).
These lines indicate to Joan that power and beauty are all of no use
and every thing one day fmds its plaee. This global vision is what a
daughter can learn fiom the mother.
The Distanced MotherslDaughters
The distancing and reconciliation of the mother and daughter is
apparent in "Why a Robin" (Leg). The mother here feels that her
daughter is sophisticated and graceful compared to her. This feeling of
hers is also partially nurtured by the distance that has erupted between
her husband and herself. The other factor for her feeling of inferiority is
the difference in status between their two families. She is enamoured by
the beauty of her daughter but cannot reach out to her. She is afraid of
being repulsed and remarks: "I don't have the key to open up this
beautiful child, though she is mine. I don't have the key to her father,
either. It is as if I am, in my own house, confronted with two closed
rooms. I am condemned to sit outside and gaze helplessly at the closed
doors" (Leg: 51). In spite of the distance between the mother and
daughter, in this story there is reconciliation when the daughter finally
recognises the mother as another woman. She needs her mother's
assurance when she matures from a girl into a woman. Thus, the
distance is bridged by the recognition of the female body31 and the bond
31
It is relevant to note the words of Rich here:
The nurture of daughters in patriarchy calls for a strong sense
of self-nurture in the mother. The psychic interplay between
mother and daughter can be destructive, but there is no reason
why it is doomed to be. A woman who has respect and
affection for her own body, who does not view it as unclean or
as a sex-object, will wordlessly transmit to her daughter that a
that exists between women.
Munro in some of her stories depicts the gender divisions that
society and the family inflict on the girl. This is illustrated by stories
like "Walker Brothers Cowboy" (DHS) and "Boys and Girls". The tasks
that the parents perform are illustrations of these gender patterns. The
mother in "Walker Brothers Cowboy" (DHS) is busy sewing, cutting
and matching cleverly bits of cloth to stitch a dress for the daughter,
while the father takes the daughter out for a walk. The story reveals the
daughter's distance32 and dislike of the mother while she is drawn
towards her father. The mother tries to regain her gentility but the
daughter realises that trying to be a lady is enough. To be accepted one
has to possess status too. This realisation makes her hate her mother:
This is entirely different from going out for a walk with my
woman's body is a good and healthy place to live. A woman
who feels pride in being female will not visit her selfdepreciation upon her female child (1976:245).
32Munro herself has had this experience being a daughter and also
being a mother, she observes :
I think they go through a stage when they don't want a mother
who is not shocked by four-letter words; they don't want a
mother who reads the underground newspaper they bring
home; they want a mother bending over the ironing board
saying, " I don't know what this world is coming to", because
that's something to define themselves against.
father. We have not walked past two houses before I feel we
have become objects of universal ridicule. Even the dirty
words chalked on the side-walk are laughing at us. My mother
does not seem to notice. She walks serenely like a lady
shopping, past the housewives in loose beltless dresses tom
under the arms. With me her creation, wretched curls and
flaunting hair bow, scrubbed knees and white socks--all I do
not want to be. I loathe even my name when she says it in
public, in a voice so high, proud and ringing, deliberately
different from the voice of any other mother on the street
(rn:
5).
Magdalene Redekop in her study of the image of mothers feels that
in the story "Walker Brothers Cowboy" ( D mthe maternal action to be
self-sufficient needs the body of the daughter. She thinks that the father
and mother both give something to the daughter and the only
"difference is that while the mother sews a dress for her, the father
shows her, by example, how to construct a mask. Both parents ensure,
however, that the daughter's idea of reproduction will be one based on
thrift" (1992:38). What is apparent is that the daughter learns from
observing and is aware of the double life that the father leads. The
daughter thus, realises the reality and the illusion that can exist together
in life.
This observation and the awareness of truth is once again continued
in "Images" (DHS). The daughter feels that the nurse, Mary McQuade
has taken over their mother and has "let her power loose in the house"
(DHS: 32). Mary is no goddess but takes the role of the goddess by
making the daughter feel wicked and sinful: "every time she said
Mother I felt chilled, and a kind of wretchedness and shame spread
through me as it did at the name of Jesus" (DHS: 33). The daughter is
aware that "This Mother that my own real, warm-necked, irascible and
comforting human mother set up between us was an everlastingly
wounded phantom, sorrowing like Him over all the wickedness I did not
yet know I would commit" ( D M :33). The daughter finds that the
mother has changed from a story teller and an entertainer into a child
whimpering and crying for Mary's attention. The father once again dons
the role of a quester and a hunter, (who has changed from a roving
salesman in "Walker Brothers Cowboy" (DHS) into a trapper in this
story). Another similarity is that once again the daughter is allowed into
the father's circle and is empowered by his secrets. Thus the daughter at
the conclusion of the story is made aware that:
Like the children in fairy stories who have seen their parents
make pacts with terrifying strangers, who have discovered that
our fears are based on nothing but the truth, but who come
back fresh from marvellous escapes and take up their knives
and forks, with humility and good manners, prepared to live
happily ever after--like them, dazed and powerhi with secrets,
I never said a word (DHS:
43).
Munro's story, "Boys and Girls" (DHS) also depicts the theme of
gender differences, the identification with the father and the final shift
of the daughter from the father to mother. The mother as depicted by
many of Munro's stories is a story teller. The daughter is however
drawn to the father even though he hardly shares his thoughts with her.
She works for him willingly and is proud to be a part of his world as she
feels his authority. She is aware of the number of duties and chores that
her mother handles hanging out the wash, cooking , making jams and
jellies, etc., but the daughter feels that "work in house was endless,
dreary, and peculiarly depressing; work done out of doors and in my
father's service was ritualistically important" (DHS:
117). Though the
daughter knows that her mother loves her, she feels she cannot trust her.
She knows that she loved her yet she was also her enemy. She thought
that she was always plotting against her: "She was plotting now to get
me to stay in the house more, although she knew I hated it (because she
knew I hated it) and keep me from working for my father. It seemed to
me she would do this simply out of perversity, and to try her power"
(DHS: 118). She never thinks that her mother may have been lonely or
jealous of her. Slowly as she grows up it dawns on her that there is a
change in the perception of what a girl is:
The word girl had formerly seemed to me innocent and
unburdened, like the word child; now it appeared that there
was no such thing. A girl was not, as I had supposed, simply
what I was; it was what I had to become. It was a definition,
always touched with
emphasis, with reproach and
disappointment. Also it was a joke on me (DHS: 1 19).
She learns that "girls don't slam doors", that "girls keep their knees
together when they sit down" (DHS:118) and that girls can't ask some
questions. Finally when she allows a horse to escape and her father
dismisses her gesture by the words, "She's only a girl", she cannot
protest as she thinks maybe that it is the truth. This action of hers
bridges the gap between the mother and daughter as it does in
Deshpande's "Why a Robin" (Leg).
Munro's "Time of Death" (DHS) portrays a reversal in the role of
the mother and daughter. Patricia has caused the death of her brother
accidentally but she behaves like a mature adult by not becoming
hysterical like her mother, Leona. Leona develops a hatred for her
daughter and tells everyone she does not want to see her again. She does
finally reconcile to her because for her the daughter is the means of her
livelihood. Patricia is not upset by these remarks of her mother or by her
role as the earner but her composure is finally broken down by the sight
of the 'scissors man' whom her brother had loved to watch. The daily
facts of existence and how they can affect relationships are very well
illustrated by this story.
The mother in the "Red Dress --1946" (DHS) is portrayed as a
mother sewing dresses for the daughter oust as the mother in "Walker
Brothers Cowboy" (DHS) does). The daughter is aware of her body and
loathes the need to stand for fittings feeling "like a great raw lump,
clumsy and goose-pimpled" (DHS: 148). The daughter has begun to
distance herself from the mother and all her stories "which had once
interested me had begun to seem melodramatic, irrelevant, and
tiresome" (DHS: 149). She is like all adolescents insecure and doubtful
about her self, she doubts if she will be happy at the dance she has to
attend later. Her fears soon slip away when she goes to the dance, as she
finds a partner, and things work out well. While returning home she
finds that she had not only been to the dance, but walked home with a
boy had also been kissed by her. She realises that "life is once again
possible" (DHS: 160). Close to her home she sees her mother tiredly
waiting for her return and she realises how much the whole event had
meant to her mother. She herself may never, in her own life, have a
chance like the one the daughter has and to her this may have been a
dream, that the daughter had hlfilled:
She was just sitting and waiting for me to come home and tell
her everything that had happened. And I would not do it, I
never would. But when I saw the waiting kitchen, and my
mother in her faded, fuzzy Paisley kimono, with her sleepy
but doggedly expectant face, I understood what a mysterious
and oppressive obligation I had, to be happy, and how I had
almost failed it, and would be likely to fail it, every time, and
she would not know (DHS: 160).
Deshpande's "The Awakening" [Mir) portrays the daughter, Alka
despising her mother. The hatred is partly nurtured by the fact that the
mother is prejudiced and shows more affection towards her brother,
Shirish. Alka is angered also by their economic instability and by the
noisy, squalid lives that they live. When her mother admonishes her she
has thoughts that are very similar to Del's in "Princess Ida' (LGW) and
the daughter's in "Walker Brother's Cowboy" (DHS). She thinks that
her mother is a "woman with a heavy sullen face and a tongue like a
serrated knife". (Mir: 20). Though she equates her father with a saint,
she feels that he is a fool who does not wish to change his life. Her mind
is also embittered by the difference in status that she notes in the life
style of her maternal grandfather and that of their own. Deep inside she
can't understand how her mother could have given up all that to many
her father. She learns that in spite of status differences, love had brought
them together and that her father's position had not changed even after
the birth of three children. She dreams and weaves fantasies of existing
in luxury which end when her father dies. Her first thoughts are that he
is a failure as he could not even struggle with death. He had left behind
him incomplete duties, responsibilities and empty tears. Therefore she
remarks:
There was no pity in me for him. Only contempt. God, let me
not live like that. Let me not die like that, having achieved
nothing, been nothing. Not once that I could say...My Baba
said this. He said nothing that was not trivial, did nothing that
had any meaning. I searched and searched the whole of his life
for a meaning and didn't find it (Mi:
25).
Her perceptions of her father change when she notices the letters in
his briefcase and learns of the help he had tried to activate to help her.
This reconciles her to him. The story illuminates the distance between
daughter and mother but the focus shifts to the father and the reaction of
the daughter to the father's image.
The Independent Mothers
The mother in "Connection"
( M O is the link between the
daughter and her maternal ancestors. One confronts the mother who is
proud and thinks highly of herself as witnessed later in "Princess Ida".
The Mother in "Connection" (MOJ) thinks very highly of her family:
"people who thought so highly of themselves in Dalgleish would be
laughable to the leading families of Fork Mill" (MOJ: 6). The mother
and aunts of the narrator try to picture the grandfather and tell stories of
him. Her mother believed that "the grandfather had been a student at
Oxford and had lost all his money7' (MOJ: 7). This mother who is taken
up by her being from gentility is not the only picture presented to the
reader. The mother is also a businesswoman, a trader and dealer as
revealed in the subsequent story, "The Stone in The Field" (MOJ). The
mother here pities her husband's sisters and thinks that they could
change their lives. To her life is full of possibility and change. It is the
image of this mother that is portrayed to us more fully in the story
"Princess Ida" ( L O .
The eccentric mother who is at the same time also an independent
mother (whom one notices in glimpses in "Connection" and the
following story "The Stone in The Field" - MOJ) is encountered in
"Princess Ida" (LGW). The introductory sentence that introduces her is
the sentence "Now my mother was selling encyclopaedias" (LGK 54).
Though Del finds her mother an eccentric, she still feels the need to
shield her mother from the remarks made by her aunts. Del's mother is a
far-sighted woman. She sells encyclopaedias but she believes in selling
them as she thinks that knowledge is "warm and lovely" ( L G E 55). To
Del's aunts the knowledge of the mother is an oddity. Del's mother
knowing about the gathering of information by Del turns her into an
exhibit in order to promote her sales. She also takes courses such as
"Great Thinkers of History" ( L G F 662)and writes letters to newspapers.
Though Del is distanced;; from her mother, she finds that her mother
has lot of stories to tell her- stories of the past. She knew that her mother
had not left anything behind: "Inside that self we knew, which might at
times appear blurred a bit, or side-tracked, she kept her younger
selves...; scenes from the past were liable to pop up any time, ...against
the cluttered fabric of the present" ( L G K 62). On the day, she visits
Del's school, Del is ashamed because: "She was so different, that was
all, so brisk and hopeful and guileless in her maroon hat, making little
jokes, thinking herself a success". Del thinks that others pity and
sympathise with her because she has such a strange mother. Del could
not bear "the tone of her voice, the reckless, hunying way she moved,
her lively absurd gestures..., and most of all her innocence, her way'of
not knowing when people were laughing, of thinking she could get away
with this". This had caused her to hate. She, however, knows the fact
that she herself is not very different fiom her mother but tries to conceal
it (LGW 68).
33 Lorna
Irvine in her study "A Psychological Journey: Mothers and
Daughters in English-Canadian Fiction" notes:
The psychological journey that appears in so much of this
fiction reveals the ambivalence that characterizes the
daughter's feelings about her mother (1980: 243).
Del's mother remarks "There is a change coming I think in the
lives of girls and women. Yes. But it is up to us to make it come. All
women have had up till now has been their connection with men. All we
have had. No more lives of our own, really, than domestic animals"
(LGV: 146). She had learned from her mother the need for self-respect.
Initially she had rejected her mother's views but later in life she takes
her advice. Her own self-reflective words illustrate this point:
I would have had to resist anything she told me with such
earnestness, such stubborn hopefulness. Her concern about my
life, which I needed and took for granted, I could not bear to
have expressed. Also I felt that it was not so different from all
the advice handed out to women, to girls, advice that assumed
of carefulness and solemn fuss and self-protection were called
for, whereas men were supposed to be able to go out and take
on all kinds of experiences and shuck off what they didn't
want and come back proud. Without even thinking about it, I
had decided to do the same (LGK 147).
The stories discussed reveal a conflict existing between the
mothers and daughters. The daughter has to be distanced as noticed in
Munro's "Boys and Girls" (DHS), "Why a Robin" (Mir),and
"Providence"
(WDY)because she has to find a role model to imitate and
the father's image is a more powerful one. This distancing changes
when the daughter passes through the phases of becoming a woman,
namely passing through the phases of adolescence and puberty and thus,
she recognises the body of the mother and the meaning of femininity.
This recognition makes the daughter accept the mother as perceived in
stories such as "The Ottawa Valley", "The Peace of Utrecht" (DHS) ?
"Friend of My Youth" (FOY),and "Red Dress" (DEB).The daughter in
spite of having a dominantipassive mother recognises that there is a
knowledge flowing between them that is "subliminal, subversive" and
"preverbal" (Rich,1976: 220). This leads her to get reconciled with the .
mother as depicted in stories such as "Royal Beatings", "Spelling"
(WDY). Writing about the experience of mothering Adrienne Rich
states:
It is hard to write about my own mother. Whatever I do write,
it is my story I am telling, my version of the past. If she were
to tell her own story other landscapes would be revealed. But
in my landscape or hers, there would be old, smouldering
patches of deep-buming anger (1 977: 22 1).
It is this vision that one notices when the daughter becomes the
observer and the story teller but the past can also help to overcome guilt,
and achieve a wider view of the society and the connection between
things as witnessed in stories such as "Oh, What Avails" (POL) and "It
Was The Nightingale" (Gale). This recognition and relevance of life
finally leads to mothers who are able to move from being mothers into
whole women as illustrated by the growth of the characters--Rose
(WDY), Del (LGW),Jayu (Gale), and Alka (Leg). To sum up, it is
significant to recall words from Rich's Of Yoman Born:
We are, none of us, "either" mothers or daughters: to our
amazement, confusion, and greater complexity, we are both.
Women, mothers or not, who feel committed to other women,
are increasingly giving each other a quality of caring filled
with the difhse kinds of identification that exist between
mothers and daughters. Into the mere notion of "mothering"
we may carry, as daughters, negative echoes of our own
mothers' martyrdom, the burden of their valiant, necessarily
limited efforts on our behalf, the confusion of their double
messages (1976:253).
To achieve wholeness and reshape oneself it is necessary for
mothers and daughters to accept not only one another but also the
different selves that exist within them.
VOICES
Connection. That was what it was all about. The
cousins were a show in themselves, but they also
provided a connection. A connection with the real,
and prodigal, and dangerous world
-- MOJ (6).
These words indicate the need for connections to know oneself.
Women's identity is not shaped individually but in relation to others
around them. The gender pattern of socialisation adopted by society has
resulted in forming different patterns of identification among men and
women. Men learn self reliance, and self dependence while women learn
to take care of others and to thwart themselves. Women, thus, adopt a
lifestyle that bonds them with others. They are intimately linked to other
people and they do not realise the care-taker roles that they adopt. Many
psychologists like Chodorow and Gilligan feel that women are close to
their mothers and that they learn to connect themselves while men adopt
separation (1985, 1990). This may be seen as a disadvantage but the
argument is that one needs to think more positively about this attitude.
Commenting on this problem, Dana Crowley Jack states that "Aspects
of self-development such as creativity, autonomy, competence, maturity
and self-esteem develop within the context of one's closest ties to
others" (199 1:13).
Through the various relationships within family and outside it,
women begin to understand the split in themselves. They realise that
they have allowed other voices to nurture and grow within them, while
thrusting down their own true selves. This knowledge helps them to
develop their true selves, not in isolation but in connection with others
around them. The strength of their true identities is felt within women
when they connect with other women--their sisters or friends. Feminine
identity is partly nurtured by not only a bond of sisterhood but also in
relation to others in the family or society. It is observed that:
A woman forms images of self...that directly reflect her
interpersonal experiences--as able to give and receive love, or
as unable; as worthy of care and support from others, or as
unworthy; as free to be herself while maintaining connection,
or as unfree--a woman's social contexts, both in particular
relationships and in the wider world, fundamentally affect
these images of self (Jack, 1991:16).
This chapter recognises the latent identities present in women
characters and bases the reading of the stories on the various
relationships, such as family ties, sibling relationships, friends and other
various connections.
Family Ties
The two sections of the story "Chaddeleys and Flemings" (MOJ)
present the connections existing between women. The image of women
is portrayed in Connection very vividly when the narrator describes her
aunts. She narrates that the term Old Maids could not be used as "it
would not cover them". Their body contours were richer and they had to
be called Maiden Ladies for:
Their bosoms were heavy and intimidating-a single, armoured
bundle-and their stomachs and behinds h l l and corseted as
those of any married woman. In those days it seemed to be the
thing for women's bodies to swell and ripen to a good size
twenty, if they were getting anything out of life at all; then,
according to class and aspirations, they would either sag and
loosen, go wobbly as custard under pale print dresses and
damp aprons, or be girded into shapes whose firm curves and
proud slopes had nothing to do with sex, everything to do with
rights and power (MOJ: 1).
This picture portrays the sexual apect as well as the power of the
female body. The story deals with the fact that women unmarried and
living their own lives are not to be pitied but are to be appraised for the
free existence that they lead. These aunts are not the ordinary old
maidens restricted by society. On the other hand, they are women who
talk not only explicitly about sex but also indulge in unladylike
activities such as smoking. They discussed the shopkeepers in
Dalgleish, they went berry picking, drank coffee, fished, dressed up in
odd clothes and took pictures of themselves, and made cakes (MOJ : 4).
The narrator recalls that the cousins were "audience and performers" for
each other
( M N 5). They brought along with them a sense of drama
and in the larger world they had encountered "Accidents, proposals,
encounters with lunatics and enemies" (MOJ: 5). These women provide
a connection with the reality of the world. They were people who knew
how to get on in the world: "They could command a classroom, a
maternity ward, the public; they knew how to deal with taxi drivers and
train conductors" ( M U7).
The narrator also learns from the aunts' and her mother's
discussions about the maternal ancestry. Later in life she realises that
they belonged to a decent working class background. She speculates on
this knowledge and thinks that if she had known this earlier she would
be shocked and credulous about it. Or she would have been triumphant
if she had learnt of it at a time when she was trying to strip away all
illusion and false notions. But at the time when she gathered this
information she was past caring ( M U 1 10).
She becomes aware when Cousin Iris is going to visit her that she
wants to show off to Richard, her husband, the relation who is decently
educated, well spoken, and moderately well-bred (MQJ 11). She
wanted the visit to go well:
I wanted this for my own sake. My motives were not such as
would do me credit. I wanted Cousin iris to shine forth as a
relative nobody need be ashamed of, and I wanted Richard
and his money and our house to lift me forever, in Cousin
Iris's eyes, out of the category of poor relation. I wanted all
this accomplished with a decent subtlety and restraint and the
result to be a pleasant recognition of my own value, from both
sides (MOJ: 12).
She h e w that to Richard and his family the background of the
family was important. Richard and his people disliked poverty. They felt
it was like an affliction and since Richard had married a woman fiom
such a background it was advisable for the wife to be amputated fiom
such a past which was like a shabby baggage (MM12-13). The visit of
Aunt Iris does not go well as she is not very subtle and all the facade
that the niece has built up for the aunt tumbles when she notices that
Aunt Iris is different and cannot be the personshe has portrayed:
Nothing fazed her; she was right. Nothing deflected her from
the stories of herself; the amount of time she could spend time
not talking was limited.. .How many conversations she must
have ridden through like this--laughing, insisting, rambling,
recollecting. I wondered if this evening was something she
would describe as fun. She would describe it. The house, the
rugs, the dishes, the signs of money. It might not matter to her
that Richard snubbed her. Perhaps she would rather be
snubbed by a rich relative than welcomed by a poor one. But
she had always been like this; always brash and greedy and
scared; decent, maybe even admirable,...(MOJ: 16).
After the aunt's departure Richard comments on her talk and in a
fit of anger she throws a Pyrex plate at him. The plate misses him but
the pie in the plate catches him on his face and she is reminded of the
show, "I Love Lucy". At that point she realises that she had been
harbouring illusions and what is thought to be funny in drama is
shocking in reality. One cannot expect to cover up things and try to
change the pattern of life. She realises that life is like a dream and that it
is transformed "by these voices, by these presences, by their high spirits
and grand esteem, for themselves and each other (MOJ: 18).
"The Stone in the Field" (MOJ) reveals the patriarchal connection
of the narrator. The father's six sisters were seen as relics by other
people including the n m t o r ' s mother. The description varies here very
much when one compares it to the maternal aunts. The image here is
that of leanness, tallness, plainness, paleness, closeness as opposed to
the roundness, the voluptuousness, the colourfulness, and the openness
of the maternal aunts. While the maternal aunts had used words and
performances to control and manipulate the world, the paternal aunts are
forever immersed in work. To them, work is something that must go on
and that which is never ending. The narrator understands from these
connections that one can never make up stories because as she says,
"Now I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and
communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognise. I
don't believe so" (MOJ: 35). What can be concluded is that life has
connections and that each one draws something fi-om the connections
and the voices of others: "My mother's cousins behaved in another way;
they dressed up and took pictures of each other; they sallied forth.
However, they behaved they are all dead. I carry something of them
around in me" (MOJ: 35).
The mother as noticed in the previous chapter "Providence" (CVDY)
becomes a distinct identity for the child. The narrator in "The Progress
of Love" (POL) recounts her mother's life and the arrival of her
mother's sister, Beryl makes her aware of the name that her mother has.
This awareness results in her thinking : "Marietta, in my mind, was
separate, not swallowed up in my mother's grown up body" (POL: 9).
Later when the narrator recalls her mother's life and the relationship that
existed between her parents she realises the importance of a married life
where the husband and wife realise the importance of each other's
actions: "People doing something that seems to them natural and
necessary. At least, one of them is doing what seems natural and
necessary, and the other believe that the important thing is for that
person to be free, to go ahead" (POL: 30). This revelation makes her
aware of the "moments of kindness and reconciliation" that one must
have:
I wonder if those moments aren't more valued, and
deliberately gone after, in the set-ups some people like myself
have now, than they were in those old marriages, where; love
and grudges could be growing underground, so confused and
stubborn, it must have seemed they had forever (POL: 3 1 ) 3 4 .
The story "The Queer Streak" (POL) by Munro reveals the
34
Commenting on this conclusion E. D. Blodgett states:
No matter how fitting this comment is as closure for this story,
it does not permit us to forget the relation the narrator
establishes between the narration, tkuth and self, and the
degree to which narration detkrmines a truth of self, even if
its truth is at variance with "facts". The truth is perhaps all the
more compelling simply because it includes belief, awareness
of illusion, and the necessity to narrate one self at the expense
of another (1 989: 148).
'
sacrifice of the protagonist Violet for her family. The protectiveness of
Violet towards her sister breaks her marriage in "The Queer Streak"
(POL). She is engaged to be married to Trevor, a minister. The story
begins like a fairy tale with the words, "Violet's mother--Aunt Ivie--had
three little boys, three baby boys and she lost them. Then she had three
girls". The opening proceeds to narrate the names of the three sisters-Opal Violet, Dawn Rose and Bonnie Hope. The story has very close
links to the Cinderella myth. Though the mother is not cruel she is
embodied into the framework of the story not as a mother but as an aunt.
Violet's wanderings into the waste ground are reminiscent once again of
the story tale where the unhappy girl takes refuge in the wilderness, but
in this the myth is reverted by the rehge being a waste-land. The picture
of the king in their parlour promises to her the riches that the future
holds for her. "That seemed a promise to Violet; it was connected with
her future, her own life, in a way she couldn't explain or think abouty'
(POL: 209). This reference to a king and a rich future is once again
shaped in a different way in the narration as Violet does not get married
to the prince of her dreams, Trevor. The myth is structured into several
frameworks and one finds that the father is named King Billy Thomas
and there is also a horse called King Billy. The derivation of the title
'King Billy' is cloaked in mystery and is left without an explanation.
Munro by portraying the father as a red head and by highlighting the
fact of Aunt Ivie's long maidenhood and subsequent marriage with the
red head manages to clothe the story in a layer of mystery and credulity.
Aunt Ivie works outside and like Cinderella, Violet is left to take care of
the house and manage the sisters.
Violet later has changes in her life. Her move away from home for
further education changes not only Violet but also her relationship with
the family. She finds that she has lost power over them and can no
longer control them. Also the younger sisters share a secret between
them which finally changes the course of her life. The other change that
happens is in the love that develops between Trevor, a minister and
Violet. Trevor's style of life gives her a vision of a different world
besides her own. The engagement does not take place as Trevor learns
of the anonymous threatening notes written to King Billy by Violet's
sister, Dawn Rose. He thinks that as he was a minister it was not right
for him to marry a girl from a family, where lunacy may prevail. The
door to her future gets closed by this innocent yet evil action of her
sister. She remains unmarried and comes back home. Her sisters,
however, leave home, marry and settle while she gets stuck in the same
place. The myth of Cinderella thus reverses and instead of gaining
riches Violet is back at her place near the hearth.
Munro by freeing Violet from the bond of marriage seems to
endow a particular independence to Violet. In Dane's narration one
finds that Dane remembers her as a professional woman. Dane knows
that:
Nothing in her [Violet] wanted to be overtaken by a helpless
and distracted, dull and stubborn old woman, with a memory
or imagination out of control, bulging at random through the
present scene. Trying to keep that old woman in check was
bound to make her short-tempered. In fact, he had seen her-now he remembered, he had seen her tilt her head to the side
and give it a quick slap, as people do to get rid of a buzzing,
unwelcome presence (POL: 244).
Thus, one finds that Violet is not broken down by the events in her
life but is able to revive herself and emerge not only as a successful
professional but as also a protector of her family. The fairy tale ending
is changed to depict the freedom and determined spirit of the heroine.
Such a development is also noticed in the sequence stories WDY.
~ o s erelationship
'
with her father too is quite different. He attempts to
thwart her pride in "Royal Beatings" (WDY) by his violent beatings.
Rose understands that he is as much the actor in that as she herself is.
Rose when she is slightly grown up ("Half a Grapefruit") never replies
to his general remark, "'Look out you don't get too smart for your own
good"' (WDY: 47). Nevertheless she knows that her father was aware of
all her hopes, ambitions and desires. This knowledge that her father
knows her inner truths makes her feel guilty. "She felt that she disgraced
him, had disgraced him somehow from the time she was born and would
disgrace him still more thoroughly in the future" (WDE 47). The gender
expectations are pointed out by Munro in this context. To him Flo is the
illustration of what a woman is:
Flo was his idea of what a woman ought to be. Rose knew
that, and indeed he often said it. A woman ought to be
energetic, practical, clever at making and saving; she ought to
be shrewd, good at bargaining and bossing and seeing through
people's pretensions. At the same time she should be naive
intellectually, childlike, contemptuous of maps and long
words and anything in books, full, of charming jumbled
notions, superstitions, traditional beliefs (WDY:
47).
Thus, Rose realises that being female was a mistake. She also
realises that she had all the bad qualities that her father felt a woman
should not have. ~hi;?sthat her father had submerged in himself had
n
developed in Rose. She is unlike her father, in that she is unable to do
any skilful task with her hands , and is quite clumsy with her hands. She
also knows that in spite of all her father's ideas, her father is proud of
her.
The paternal and maternal aunts that we notice in "Chaddeleys and
Flemmings" (MOJ) are revived in "The Heirs of The Living Body"
(LGW)in the form of Aunt Elspeth and Aunt Grace. They have inherited
the characteristics of hard work as well as playing jokes and telling
stories. These aunts change colours when they are in Del's house. They
would become "sulky, sly, elderly, eager" when they were in Del's
house. Del notices that the relationship between her mother and her
aunts take different twists. They are shocked by Addie's (Del's mother)
"outrageousness", and her "directness". While Addie talked in straight
terms, the aunts talk had many layers to it. They recognised Addie's
ability but they disliked the way she displayed it:
They acknowledged it in their own family, our family. But it
seemed the thing to do was to keep it more or less a secret.
Ambition was what they were alarmed by, for to be ambitious
was to court failure and to risk making a fool of oneself. The
worst thing, I gathered,: the worst thing that could happen in
this life was to have people laughing at you (LGK 32).
The two aunts as they go older appear to Del like two constructed
pieces and appear quite inhuman as they are removed from men who
would have admired and given them life. From her uncle Craig, Del
inherits the tradition of chronicling the lives and being a writer.
"The Cruelty Game" ( k t ) and "And Then" (Int) are stories that
exhibit the relationship between children and their grandparents and
their own parents. Both the stories once again rake up a number of
questions pertaining to the power and the hierarchical structure existent
in Indian families. A widow, Aunt Pramila along with her daughter,
Sharu comes to live in her in-laws house after the death of her husband
in the story "The Cruelty Game" (Int). The story centres around two
happenings, namely the treatment that Aunt Pramila receives from the
other members in the house and the treatment meted out to the young
girl, Sharu by the other children in the house. The socialisation of the
woman is seen in the way Aunt Pramila is alienated and distanced from
all others. The narrator observes, "It was strange how all the women had
become friends since Pramila auntie came home. Prarnila auntie didn't
seem to mind that they rarely spoke to her. Her work done, she went to
her room and stayed there". Her powerless situation is revealed when
the narrator comments that "She never spoke even when she saw us
tormenting Sharu; she just looked at us" (Int: 125). The other children in
the house, too, torment the young Sharu by making her a butt and
tricking her. Their playfulness goes to the extent of making her jump
into a pit and causing physical harm to her. The day Sharu has her
birthday, all the children in the house gather for a simple party but this
is spoilt by not only the children's cruel pranks but by the abuses heaped
on Aunt Pramila by her mother-in-law. Finally unable to find any solace
in the house, Pramila aunt leaves the place along with Sharu.
The bond existing between parents and children and between
gandparents and grandchildren is the focus of "And Then" (Intj. The
grand daughter, Dipali and the grandmother share a bond of friendship
and love, but Dipali's mother, Asha feels that her mother-in-law spoils
her child. The old woman is aware that she is helpless and cannot
change her status in the house though it is her son's place. She realises
that her two children had never cared for her life and her wishes. Her
daughter, Anju leaves home to study in the states and she feels cheated
because she had expected her daughter to get married and have children.
She is unable to move herself out of this expectation and visualises her
own grandmother's life:
What about my life? And I had thought then of my
grandmother who had six sons and two daughters and of her
hard callused hands- . .stopped working. And of how she died,
as she had lived, in the midst of her children and
grandchildren (lnt: 151).
These expectations of hers make her conservative and rigid. She is
unable to move out of her son's house and even when one of her
daughter's fiiends requests her to rent her house for her stay, she
behaves snobbishly. Her behaviour i s moulded by the fact that Shaku
her daughter's friend is a woman who has walked out of her marriage
and left her husband. Her open outright behaviour causes anger in the
old woman and she thinks that she is being humiliated, exposed and
shamed by the request of Shaku for a place to stay (Int: 154). Her
"smug, narrow and self-righteous" attitude is reflected even by her son,
Vishwa who approves of her decision. His words reflect the attitude of
what society expects from a woman:
"I'm glad you think that way, Amrna. I didn't want to say
anything yesterday--I saw her speaking to you--but I didn't
like the way she forced herself in. I know she's Anju's fiiend,
but she's a woman who's left her husband. We don't know
why ...." (Int: 156).
Sibling Relationships
Munro's "Visitors" (MQJ) portrays a different sort of connection, a
sort of mysterious strain that exists between the brothers, Wilfred and
Albert and the sisters, Grace and Vera. Mildred, the narrator and the
wife of Wilfred comments that "Brothers and sisters were a mystery to
her. There were Grace and Vera, speaking like two mouths out of the
same head, and Wilfred and Albert without a thread of connection
between them" ( M U212). The story at one level portrays the reunion
of two brothers but at another level it displays the stories that people
weave and how the stories link up some hidden truths. Mildred becomes
aware when Albert narrates a story of the difference in storytelling
between Albert and Wilfied:
In Wilfked's stories you could always be sure that the gloomy
parts would give way to something better, and if somebody
behaved in a peculiar way there was an explanation for it. If
Wilfred figured in his own stories, as he usually did, there was
always a stroke of luck for him somewhere, a good meal or a
bottle of whiskey or some money. Neither luck nor money
played a part in this story. She wondered why Albert had told
it, what it meant to him (MOJ: 215).
E. D. Blodgett discussing this story thinks it is like a "comic
puzzle" and the difference in story telling reminds one of "Munro's own
practice in various modes" (1988: 121). The fact is that the story that
Albert narrates is what happens, not a story ( M U 215). Blodgett
emphasises in his commentary the story that "the story 'that happened',
is, of course, no truer than any other, but its telling is so designed,
wittingly or not , that it comes closer to the real than Wilfred's kind,
which has a more perceptible design" (1987:122). The reality strikes
home and the story concludes with Wilfred crying over the loss of the
connection between his brother and himself.
Munro's "Something I Have Been Meaning To Tell You" (SIB)is a
story that portrays the intricate bond that exists between sisters. One is
reminded of the fairy tales with the pattern of a good sister and a bad
sister. Et and Char cannot be thrust into these frameworks of a good
sister and a bad sister and yet the story points at two different
representations. One finds that while Char takes on the role of being a
lady of society, Et is the dressmaker weaving, patterning, and designing
clothes to make her sister the best dressed woman in society. Char is
always the cold, distanced actress whom no one can approach. She is
bent on grabbing attention. This is illustrated by her trying to kill
herself, by drinking blue ink when she hears that her lover, Blaikie
Noble marries a lady ventriloquist. To Et, her sister is a woman who has
the qualities of a legend and she felt that this personality contradicted
because Char and her ethereal beauty did not seem to be able to exist in
the reality of the world. Discussing the story, Carrington feels that Et is
the controller, the voyeur and Char is the controlled. She mentions that
Et controls Char by exposing her to public criticism. The manner in
which she dresses Char who is not just her sister but also the wife of a
school teacher motivates the town people to view her with hostility. The
story also falls upon the myth of Arthur and Guinevere and Arthur and
Char are seen as representations of these characters while Blaikie is
symbolised as Lancelot. E. D. Blodgett, too in his study of the story sees
Et as a manipu1ato1-35, and notes all Et's remarks however offhand are
35Martin, however, specifies a different outlook. He thinks that Et
alters and makes do and uses her dress making instincts to exist. He
made to fit into a design. The names of the characters and the town they
live in all signify a certain meaninglessness. The town is called Mock
Hill and it does seem as the story proceeds that Et is mocking Char for
her beauty. The title of Arthur links the teacher with the legendary
figure and in the story Arthur is the school teacher, the man who instead
of being magnificent and splendid looks like a fool. His adoration of
Char changes Char into a mysterious person and Et wishes to tell him of
her suicide attempt, but not wanting him to feel mocked, she does not do
so. Char, the word signifies something burnt and one feels that Char is
burnt and only symbolises a ghostly figure. Et's name in Latin signifies
the conjunction 'and'. One does find that the story has to be linked with
Et and cannot stand on its own. As pointed out by Blodgett, the story
reminds one of c'Mwm"s own preoccupation with the legendary
dwelling in the real, investing the real with qualities that make it
timeless. This again removes fiom the story a sense of time's urgency,
permitting the apparently real to reflect upon legend in both earnest and
game" (1988: 79).
The theme of differences between sisters forms part of the story,
further adds that while dressmaker, Char is the wearer of the dresses.
Therefore Et does not have to make do with that of Char's. He states,
"The disdainful, statuesque Char gets everything new and served up to
her on a 'plate-everything except happiness. Et makes her own things,
and achieves her own happiness, in spite of her handicaps" (1987: 120).
"Memorial" in SIB. June and Eileen display different characteristics. On
the death of her son, June does not display any grief but her body is
"humming as always with its separate power". It is Eileen who feels
edgy, and grief-stricken by the death of her nephew. June's kitchen is
organised and managed by "order and logic" while in Eileen's house the
garbage is thrown around and "her cupboards under their surface
tidiness bursting with chaos". Eileen lived irresponsibly. Eileen felt in
June's place "the weight of the world of objects". She thought they lived
a life buying and using which she feels is the "morality of
consumerism". Eileen, herself, not having much money was now a
"spendthrift, slipshod and content" (SIB: 210). June and her husband
having a great deal of money spent it as a "sense of responsibility" and
bought things which they thought were "necessary to the house" (SIB:
21 1). Thinking about their mother Eileen realises that June had got
around the problem of their mother by "majoring in psychology". Eileen
when she studied literature had discovered crazy mothers but she did not
know how to present such a mother to others. June, on the other hand,
"was able to present their mother to her friends with no apologies but
plenty of prior explanations and post-discussion. She made people feel
privileged" (SIB: 2 13). Eileen realises that "June had married Ewart and
set about establishing their life. While Eileen's life took any shape at all,
blown apart by crises, deflected by pleasures, June's life was built,
planned, lived deliberately, filled". In June's life there was "a lack of
drifting and moping" and occasions such as death were made the most
of (SIB: 214).
Eileen realises by the attitude of her sister that June has lost the
sense of values and has allowed herself to be changed. She has the
understanding that people die; they suffer, they die". Incidents such ass
illness and accidents have to be "respected, not explained". Just making
a show by "using words', she thought was shameful (SIB: 221). Finally
when June discusses her son's death with Eileen, Eileen has a
revelation:
In the mirror over the dresser Eileen could see her sister's
face, the downward profile, which was waiting, perhaps
embarrassed, now that this offering had been made. Also her
own face, surprising her with its wonderfully appropriate look
of tactfulness and concern. She felt cold and tired, she wanted
mostly to get away. It was an effort to put her hand out. Acts
done without faith may restore faith. She believed, with
whatever energy she could summon at the moment, she had to
believe and hope that was true (SIB: 226).
Friends
The slow development of friendship between Helen, the narrator
.
and Myra is the central idea of "The Day of The Butterfly" (DmMyra
is in the beginning the target of taunts and jeers by the school girls for in
the school she usually spends her time taking care of her younger
brother. One day, Helen on her way to school, notices Myra and her
brother walking ahead. Helen observes that Myra is glancing back and
feeling important she calls out to her and walks with her to school. From
that day there develops between them a silent understanding. Later,
Myra develops leukaemia and is admitted into hospital. Soon in school
Myra becomes "fashionable" because the girls think that she is fieed
from all the conditions imposed on them by school and life. When Helen
visits Myra in hospital, Myra offers her a small purse as a gift, but Helen
does not wish to take it as she thinks that Myra has lost her importance
for the present.
"Mrs Cross and Mrs Kidd" (MOJ) discusses the differences that
exist in individual lives even though two people may have remained
linked as friends all through life. The first part of the story stresses the
different lives that the two women have led. The narrator comments that
though younger people would think that their being close friends for a
long period of time, they may have everything in common. Yet the two
old women know that their lives are separate and this is illustrated by
the number of things that separates them (MOJ: 161). Martin in Paradox
and Parallels states "The differences seemed total--social, religious,
intellectual, in the way they spoke, in the games they played, and in
almost every conceivable aspect of life, even progressiveness"
(1979:150). Their stay at Hilltop Home brings them together but even
here their lives twist and separate. Mrs Cross takes over Jack, hoping to
control and use her power over him while Mrs. Kidd becomes friendly
with Charlotte who is willing to be mastered by Mrs. Kidd. The two old
women do not have any disagreements but they only resort to spending
less time together. The story reveals the different friendships both
women go through and how finally they are once again united. As
Martin comments, "The old ladies heal the slight breach between them,
and their second coming together reinforces the quite unsardonic irony
that there can be real affection even in old age, when the basis for it is
mutual need and loneiiness" (1987:150). The sisterly affection that
exists between the two women empowers them and enables them to
overcome their differences. Martin's concluding comments about this
story are valid in this context:
Mrs. Cross is a companion able and generous soul whose
goodwill is simple and patent but Mrs. Kidd is more
remarkable. Cultivated, tactful, self-critical--she checks
herself for tending to boss Charlotte--with a pride and dignity
that makes her unwilling to be an object of pity and yet do not
inhibit an uncondescending affection, she is a character of
convincing distinction. With her dignity, insight and reticence,
she might have been inclined to patronise or dismiss Mrs.
Cross as ignorant, prying, and indeed "common" but in the
final incident she unobtrusively risks her life for her,
demonstrating a full sense of sisterly affection (1 987: 151).
Munro's "Jesse and Meribeth" (POL) reflects on the feminine bond
that develops between two young girls. The nature of this friendship is
very well brought out by the narrator, Jesse. She thinks that two girls
bound in the web of friendship would never tell each other's secrets and
also would not hide anything from each other. Their bond would be
constant and they would not enter into friendships with others. Even
after marriage their loyalty to each other would remain. Their daughters
would be named after their friends and would be ready to help each
other out whenever they could. Believing in these romantic notions of
friendship, Jesse prevails upon MaryBeth to swear and promise and
confide to strengthen their bond (POL: 163). Their life meanders and
courses through school and then their lives part when they enter into
different courses of study. Jesse takes up graduate school and Marybeth
takes typing and bookkeeping course and begins working at an
insurance agent's shop. During their friendship, Jesse makes up stories
about the people for whom she works--the ,Cydermans. She romanticises
Mr. Cyderman's interest in her and tells MaryBeth about the growing
sexual intimacy between them. When they meet years later, Jesse is
reminded of her lies and her relationship with Mr. Cydeman. She then
realises as she leaves MaryBeth that there are changes as one grows up
from fifteen to seventeen and seventeen to nineteen. She thinks of
Marybeth and her growing sweeter and fatter, while she visualises the
Crydermans fixed in their life while she herself would be "shedding
dreams and lies and vows and errors". But she at that stage of life does
not realise that: "I didn't see that I was the same one, embracing,
repudiating. I thought I could turn myself inside out, over and over
again, and tumble through the world scot-fiee" (POL: 188).
In "Mischief' (WDY) Rose meets Jocelyn with whom she develops
a sisterly bond. Their friendship is like "one of those luxuriant
intimacies that spring up in institutions; in schools, at camp, in prison".
They behaved as in school disobeying and doing things that pleased
them. "They walked in the halls", "they annoyed and mystified the other
women" and "they became hysterical" from what they read. They did
not read any deep philosophical books but stuff like True Love and
Personal Romances (F!DY: 104). They discussed their childhood, their
adolescence, their youth and their marriages. Through Jocelyn she meets
Clifford and the final act of lovemaking with Clifford along with
Jocelyn reveals to her the true nature of her relationship with them.
The friendship of Del and Naomi in LGW is very much like the
friendship between Rose and Jocelyn in WDY. Del realises that having a
fiiend curbs one's freedom but it also extends and resonates life. They
did many things together in school but later they change paths. Del goes
on to higher studies while Naorni moves into the field of secretarial
practice. Another such friendship between two women is that of Del's
mother, Addie and Fern Dogherty. They were friends, in spite of
differences .
"Marrakesh" (SIB) conceptualises the role of a voyeur. Dorothy
and Viola, two old women live together. Dorothy and Viola find it
"economical" to live together, even though they were different types.
"They drew comfort .from each other's presence in the way young
quarrel some do, or long-married apparently uncogenal couples", the
comfort they felt was deep down and on the surface all that they
displayed was "wariness, irritation7' and "comfort for strategy" (SIB:
160). Dorothy is aware of the changing life style around her. She
observes that her grand-daughter, Jeanette's existence is very different
from her own. She is tolerant and takes a positive view of life. Even
when Jeanette thinks that the town is being destructed by all the
technology and new knowledge, she feels like pointing out that the
scientists had worked hard enough to root out diseases which had no
remedy some years back. She strongly feels that one must be thankful
for the life one has. This aspect about thankfulness is finally stressed in
the conclusion of the story when she sees Jeanette and the neighbour
copulating: "Strength is necessary, as well as something like gratitude, if
you are going to turn into a lady peeping Tom at the end of your life"
(SIB: 174).
Anita and Margot's fiiendship ("Wigtime") is another story where
the friendship is rooted in differences. They could not meet at each
other's places for Anita's mother disapproved of Margot and her family
and Margot's house was always in a state of "crowdedness and
confusion" and the presence of her violent father, forced the friends to
meet in the cold at a store on the highway. The store was managed by
Teresa who was married to Reuel, the bus driver. Anita and Margot
generally discussed Reuel and his looks. Margot having a father who
was violent and having noticed the family tensions had a great contempt
for men: "Margot called lovemaking "carrying on7'. .But it had occurred
to Anita that this very scorn of Margot's, her sullenness and disdain,
might be a thing that men could find attractive in a way that she herself
was not" (FOK 251). They also discussed and experienced many
happenings at school together and also went for walks to downtown
where they did window shopping. They thus, passed through a stage
when "they could never be unhappy, because they believed that
something remarkable was bound to happen to them. They could
become heroines; love and power of some sort were surely waiting"
(FOE 253). They also shared their ambitions and family; and also hid
some of their wishes. Anita, though she wanted to be an archaeologist or
a nurse never revealed this desire while Margot never talked of her
home and her father. Later their lives take different turns--Margot gets
married and has kids while Anita, becomes a nurse, gets married and
then divorced, earned money and completes her doctorate in
anthropology.
Anita is reminded of her appendicitis operation and her mother's
contemptuous remarks about Margot whom she believes is sneaky and
oversexed. She tells her that Margot had been having secretive
engagements with Reuel and had finally stayed back with him not going
home in the evening. "Her mother said that she had kept Anita in
ignorance. All this had happened and she had said nothing" (FOE 262).
The whole thing was proved as tmth as Teresa had tried to kill herself
and had now closed down the store. Hearing all this news Anita feels
what her mother wanted to convey is something quite different:
t
' ~ n i t ahad a feeling that her mother was angry at her not only
because she'd been friends with Margot, a girl who had disgraced
herself, but for another reason as well. She had the feeling that her
mother was seeing the same thing that she herself could see--Anita unfit,
passed over, disregarded, not just by Margot but by life. Didn't her
mother feel an angry disappointment that Anita was not the one chosen,
the one enfolded by drama and turned into a woman and swept out on
such a surge of life? She would never admit that. And Anita could not
admit that she felt a great failure. She was a child, a know-nothing,
betrayed by Margot, who had turned out to know a lo&RX 262).
Margot had managed to get hold of a house but this was because
she had a controlling power over Reuel. She had seen him with another
woman and had threatened him with exposure of the affair which he
thought had been a secretive one. Anita hearing this secret of her
gaining the house has her own conclusions about Margot:
Anita thought that Margot might have given up on vanity but
she probably hadn't given up on sex...
And what about Reuel--what had he given up on? Whatever he did,
it wouldn't be till he was ready. That was what all Margot's hard
bargaining would really be coming up against--whether Reuel was ready
or not. That was something he'd never feel obliged to tell her. So a
woman like Margot can still be fooled--this was what Anita thought,
with a momentary pleasure, a completely comfortable treachery- by a
man like Reuel (FOE 271).
Anita had herself divorced as she had the feeling one evening at a
restaurant that she cared more for a man she saw in the restaurant than
for her husband and decided that she can'tlive in such a marriage. This
revelation reminds one of "Differently" where the female character feels
she cannot exist in a make-believe marriage and that she cannot be
hypocritical. "Wigtime" (FOY) too has similar overtones, where Anita
gets out because she cannot pretend and the other, namely, Margot lives
a life where her husband may be cheating her.
Others
Munro's "The Office"
portrays the bond that develops
between the writer and the man who rents the place. The story has
intertextual relationships with Woolf s idea of A Room Of One's Own.
Just as Woolf states the problem of a woman being unable to have some
time and space for her to write, the story portrays the anxiety of a young
woman writer to find a space for herself. The relationship that develops
between the landlord and the writer reveals to her the impossibility of
trying to be serious. The landlord's help and his insistence on trying to
meet the writer reflects the society's attitude towards women who wish
to be isolated and alienated from others. Any such pattern is seen by
society as a deviance from the normal. Munro commenting on this story
feels:
It is the landlord's clamorous humanity, his dreadful
insistence, which has to get the better of that woman seeking
isolation. It is also, but rather incidentally, about a woman's
particular difficulties in backing off and doing something
lonely and egoistical (1993 : 194).
The fact that the writer is young, passive and docile made her the
victim of the man's patronising behaviour. His behaviour is summed up
by Munro when she discusses the writing of the story and the
autobiographical nature of the episode:
The landlord kept making suggestions for my comfort, and
bringing me things I didn't want, and telling me stories, ...My
being a woman, young and apparently docile, made me a
natural target for his heavy, wheedling, patronising, never
quite offensive attentions ... There was also in his conversation
a peculiarly enraging, sanctimonious smuttiness, and the
suggestion that maybe a writer wouldn't find these things he
related as shocking as he found them, because writers were
known to be broad- minded (1993: 193).
"The Turkey Season" (MOJ) sketches the working atmosphere and
the relationship prevalent among the workers. The narrator's working
world is filled with Lily, Marjorie, Gladys (gutters), Irene, Henry
(pluckers), Herb Abbott (foreman), Morgan Elliott, (owner), and his son.
The adolescent narrator for the first time is exposed to womenly talk.
Her talk with Gladys about appearances makes her realise that "there are
different ways women have of talking about their looks. Some women
make it clear that what they do to keep themselves up is for the sake of
sex, for men'. Others like Gladys think of it as a difficult job that they
are proud of (MOJ: 63). Marjorie's and Lily's discussion about Gladys
and Herb Abbott, "sprang from their belief that single people ought to
be teased and embarrassed whenever possible,..." (MIOJ: 64). Their
curiosity was founded wondering how he lived his life, why he did not
have a wife, children and a home. As the narrator unravels all these inter
personal relationships she recalls that at that time there had been no talk
of homosexuals as it was thought to be "rare and confined to
boundaries". She ironically states that any man doing women's work
was a homosexual: "they really seemed to believe --the women did--that
it was the penchant for baking or music that was the determining factor,
and it was the activity that made the man what he was--not any other
detours he might take, or wish to take" (MOL 65). By the talk o f Lily
and Marjorie she realises that all adults' talk is very illogical and she
wonders at how their hands could be so efficient. She queries, "How
could these women's hands be so gifted, so delicate and clever-...and
their thinking so slapdash, clumsy, infuriating?" (MOJ: 68). Later when
she attempts to recollect the looks of her fellow workers, she finds that
she has many versions of it and once again one realises that the surface
can hide many aspects of truth.
There are different people who make an impact on the protagonist
Rose in the set of sequence stories WDY and one finds that these
characters enrich Rose's feelings in different ways. Rose's first
encounter is with the grotesque figure of Becky Tide, the abnormal and
mutilated girl. She is later in school enamoured by three big girls of the
Entrance Class. Though they are like three queens, she feels as if there
was one queen (Cora) and two princesses. Rose is enchanted by Cora
and to please her, she steals candy fiom Flo's store to give Cora. But she
is unable to offer it to her and tries to place it in her desk. Cora's friend
Doma sights her and she drops the bag. Cora takes the bag to Flo and
she does this not to make trouble for her but to enjoy herself: "She
enjoyed her importance and respectability and the pleasure of grown-up
exchange" (WDY:37). Flo is shocked by Rose's action and asks her if
she was in love with Cora. Rose does not think of it in that way as she
feels that love is associated with "movie endings, kissing and getting
married. Her feelings were at the moment shocked and exposed, and
already, though she didn't know it, starting to wither and curl up at the
edges"
(WDY:38). In later years, she finds that Cora changes fiom a
queen into an ordinary personality: "Rose was not much bothered by
this loss, this transformation. Life was altogether a series of surprising
38). Flo, however, keeps
developments, as far as she could learn" (WDY:
reminding Rose about Cora and tries to change her not realising that
Rose had already become aware of feelings towards Cora.
"Who Do You Think You Are" (WDY) reflects a deviant figure,
Milton Homer who is taken care of, by his aunts, Hattie and
Mattie Milton. In school Rose meets Ralph Gillespie who does
imitations of Milton Homer. They share a number of traits and thus
become friends. Both Rose and Ralph lose their things--pencils, erasers,
rulers, compass, etc. Because of these regular features they help each
other out and share and learn to beg f?om others. "They developed the
comradeship of captives, of soldiers who have no heart for the
campaign, wishing only to survive and avoid action" (WDY: 203).
Ralph, later drops out of school and Rose meets him years later and has
a talk with him. She recollects her conversation with him in later days
and realises that it was bordered by sympathy, kindness and
understanding though they had not personally discussed any such
subjects. She realises that the shame she felt in herself had decreased,
and that she may have paid attention to the wrong things in her acting.
Her final reaction to his death is that she feels deep within her heart
there had been things that they both had shared very closely ( V D E 2092 10).
Though a number of Deshpande's stories deal with family ties and
relationships, only three stories distinctly discuss relationships other
than the marital conflicts or mother and daughter conflicts discussed in
the earlier sections. "A Liberated Woman" (Leg) attempts to express the
notion of liberation and the depths such a term can hide. It is an ironical
statement on the question of liberation. A man meets years later a
woman whose family were friends of his. As the narrator points out he
had not only been a friend of her family, but had also been a colleague
of his (i. e. the man she gets married to). She is encouraged to marry him
by the family friend as he thought that
, "It had seemed to me an
absurdity that two people so much in love should be kept apart because
of something so trivial as caste" (Leg: 23). Now twelve years later when
she meets this friend, she discusses with him her marriage and how it
has fallen apart. The friend is astonished to hear that her husband is
sadistic and abuses her. He wonders why she is still married to him, in
spite of the fact that she is a doctor. After she leaves him, he thinks of
her and is astonished:
Cc
But what really astonishes me is her feebleness, her attitude of
despairing indifference. Surely she, an educated, earning, cornpe-tent
woman, has no right to behave this way...to plug all her escape routes
herself and act like a rat in a trapl((leg: 29).
He is surprised because she refuses to divorce him as she thinks
that the children would know about the father. Thus, when he sees in an
article and her interview with her which has a very ironical heading:
I was idly turning over the pages, and suddenly, there she was,
her cool, poised face staring back at me almost arrogantly. It
gave me a little shock. I got a bigger one, though, when I saw
the title of the piece. It was, "A LIBERATED WOMAN".
Well! (Leg:29).
The stories discussed in this chapter reveal as to how stories can
become discoveries of underlying selves. The reader is made aware of
the existing conditions of women and is made to ponder on the
relationships that help women in understanding themselves.
CHAPTER V
SUMMIMG UP :
THE PHOTOG
Her [Munro's] art is stereotypic and also a
complex counterpointing of opposed truths in a
memorable model of life and reality. One form of
this doubleness, or reciprocation, might be put like
this: in vivid images and dramatic success she
presents, and makes real and convincing, concepts
that we usually couch in abstract terrns, cliches, and
wordy description. Conversely, she changes
common and familiar incidents with surprising
meanings and dimensions
--Martin (1 987: 1)
Munro and Deshpande in their fiction are similar to photographers
for they capture the life of women. The question is how can they be
'photographers'. What do they capture in terms of women's lives?
Photography according to Webster's dictionary is the art or process of
producing pictorial images on a surface sensitive to light or other radiant
energy. Both these writers produce images on a surface, that is, in this
case, the women's minds and bodies. The emotions that they experience
being women is, what is captured by these two writers. The writers
present to the readers a picture of normal, everyday incidents at a point
of time. In a vein similar to photography, only the presence is captured
but one finds' that behind the presence there is a larger reality that is
hidden and can be unravelled only when one attempts to draw out the
reality that is lurking beneath the surface.
The photographer as an artist needs to record and reproduce reality
as closely as possible. This aspect is witnessed in the writing of Munro
and Deshpande. Stories that illustrate these are the town and people
descriptions in Munro's LGW and WDY. Deshpande, too, in stories such
as "The Valley in Shadow" (Dark), "The IntrusionV(Leg)and "A Wall is
Safer" (Dark) attempts to capture the reality of truth. But unlike Munro
she does not draw out the details of the settings and the colourings that
seep into the setting. This is not, however, a fault for a black and white
photograph depicts to us only the shades and does not tell us anything
more of the surroundings. Discussing this aspect of photography one is
reminded of John Berger and Jean Bohr's statement:
A photograph arrests the flow of time in which the event
existed. All photographs are of the past, yet in them an instant
of the past is arrested so that, a lived past, it can never lead to
the present. Every photograph presents us with two messages:
a message concerning the event photographed and another
concerning a shock of discontinuity (1982:86).
Del in LGW too makes this point when she writes about the
photographer in her story:
People saw that in his pictures they had aged twenty or thirty
years. Middle aged people saw in their own features the
terrible, growing, inescapable likeness of their dead parents;
young fresh girls and men showed what gaunt or dulled or
stupid
faces
they
would
have
when
they
were
fifty (205).
Thus what one does notice in the work of these two short story
writers is the depiction of being able to look at the oddity of life and
their ability to comment on the life of the people. This is also the power
of the camera. Susan Sontag remarks that the camera has the power to
catch so-called normal people in such a way as to make them look
abnormal. "The photographer chooses oddity, chases it, frames it,
develops it, titles it ..." (1977: 131). The photographer is able to reveal
the emotions and the feelings of the personality by a carehl and artisic
use of the camera. Munro and Deshpande, too, in their works display
such artistic abilities.
Munro also shares similar concerns about photography. In an
interview she comments: "I like looking at people's lives over a number
of years, without continuity. Like catching them in snapshots ...." She
further emphasises "I don't see that people develop and arrive
somewhere. I just see people living in flashes. From time to time. And
this is something you do become aware of as you go into middle
age....Mostly in my stories I like to look at what people don't
understand" (Interview, Hancock, 89-90).
It is to be understood that women have hidden lives and stories that
are never highlighted. Borenschen in an article, "Is there a Feminine
Aesthetic" (ed. Gisela Ecker) affirms that women's stories have been
thrust away. Women's activities, their pasts, their lives are not to be
forgotten. Women's sufferings, their subjugations, their oppressions, are
part of a darkened cultural history. In this cultural lineage women artists
and their works just become shadows that are thrustaway ultimately
(1985: 3 1).
Munro commenting on the gendered roles perceived in some of her
stories states that until a girl is twelve or thirteen a girl feels fiee and
uninhibited. She is able to visualise life in terms of action, adventure,
heroism, power but this changes when she becomes aware of her sexual
nature. This transformation can be witnessed by a reader in the lives of
the characters such as Violet ("Queer Streak"), Del (LGW), Rose (FDT)
and the narrator in "Boys and Girls" (DHS). Munro further adds the girl
"understands that for her, participation in the world of action is not
impossible, but does hold great dangers, the greatest danger being that it
will make her not splendid, but grotesque" (186). Thus, the girl realises
that she has to wait and instead of being courageous, learn to be
beautiful. The full human powers are illusory and not as she expects it to
be. She is forced to accept this definition or will have to compromise
and Munro feels that this is where women have an advantage:
But this very denial of action, of full responsibility to the girl,
gives her a kind of freedom the young male in most societies
must give up. To be accepted, to be fully male, h e cannot
criticise, he must sometimes participate in, whatever
bloodstained practices his society believes necessary to itself;
that, or become a revolutionary (Munro, 1972: 186).
Feminine Identity:
Questioning women's subjectivity and the idea of identity one
finds that there are a number of factors that make their impact on this
subject. The woman heroine in these stories does not undergo struggle
but realises that there are factors that she has to consider in order to
develop herself. She does finally regain her self by accepting the
connections of life and accepting life in many of the stories instead of
trying to be a mythical, heroic character.
It is generally true that women are exploited, oppressed and
degraded in many societies but Munro and Deshpande instead of just
pointing and reaffirming these characteristics present women characters
with a future. One notices such characters in stories such as Jayu in "It
Was The Nightingale", Lalita in "A Man and A Woman" (Gale) and Del
These
in "Baptising7' (LGW) and Rose in "The Beggar's Maid" (WDY).
characters understand that it is up to them to make their lives and they
make use of the openings whenever they can.
In the West the relationship of marriage and family is voluntary
and is in principle a contract that can be terminated when individuals
agree upon it. On the other hand, Indians regard the family as a strong
bond and as an upholder of cultural values and tradition. This makes it
difficult for any dissolution of marriage, once it is solemnized according
to traditional rites and rituals. Therefore, many women also reject
feminisim which they feel promotes individualistic attitude, egoism,
selfishness, sexual liberty and above all a destroyer of the family.
The number of women writing in India not only in English but also
in regional languages is a revelation of the changing phase of Indian
womanhood. Most of the writing is fundamentally a quest, within the
Indian context to know the true identity of women. The subjection and
oppression that women face is the major theme of women's writing and
yet these works differ as the perception of women's problems is based
on a complex social structure which does not enable an easy
understanding of the women's dilemma. The social structure in India
consists of various hierarchical levels and it is very difficult for a
woman to find her space and articulate as she is thrust into various roles
from her birth. It is relevant to know that most Indian women from the
middle classes have become aware of their problems due to an increase
in education. What Parikh and Garg thus state is true of Indian women:
Contemporary Indian women experience their life space a
battle ground between the prescriptive roles based on
idealised models of a bygone era and the emerging cognitive
map of modern society which pulls them towards wider
horizons. Caught between the traditional past and a future
inspired by their own dreams and aspirations, Indian women
walk a tight rope. They cany the burden of both traditional
and modem role expectations, yet are denied the privileges of
both (1989: 109).
One notices in such a discussion of identity that Munro's fiction is
more autobiographical and she uses events such as marriage, children,
lovers that have occurred in her life as the base for the stories. Catherine
Sheldrick Ross feels that she leads a double life, only pretending to be
like everyone else. "The idea of a hidden identity appears in many early
stories in the form of a watchful child observer, where watching is
associated with shame, betrayal, and exposure". Ross also points out
that in her later books, "the idea of a hidden identity appears as a
fascination with the theme of adultery" and the "double life it creates,
especially for a married wife and mother who is expected to live her life
for other people. Instead she can be living this secret, exploratory life"
(1990: 24). One notices such stories in her later collections, namely,
MQJ and FOX
Feminine identity one notices has created the myth of the 'super
woman'. Women are faced with the uphill tasks of standing upto men's
standards. They "face the nearly impossible task of breaking through the
glass ceiling of invisible barriers to achieve like men, while
simultaneously curbing the self to fit into the traditional glass slipper
that promises blissful relationship". It is such a crisis that has led to the
fact that women forget their own inner selves. Therefore it is difficult
for them to draw on any resources. Moreover even, "cultural myths or
images offer little guidance on how to be strong, or on how to be
authentic in relationships, or on how to combine self-development with
intimacy" (Jack, 1991: 26-27). This is very true in Indian society where
one finds that stories from the epics are used to inspire women. A girl
child is always told to emulate characters such as Sita and Savitri, even
though many stories in the epics feature strong, rebellious women such
as Draupadi. Thus, instead of being a supporting structure, culture has
prepared and taught women to immerse themselves in self sacrifice. To
create a strong self one needs to explore differences and stick firmly to
one's own point of view. They must understand that it is not necessary
to abdicate their own perspectives and values. Women have through the
process of accommodating to cultural standards and practices, absorbed
the "male practice of discounting femininity itself--its knowledge, its
perspectives, its values" (Jack, 1991: 33).
The conventional, traditional route is a myth and an illusion that
creates not emanicipated but women who lose their identities. It has
been drilled into women's minds that the traditional route offers a safe
and secure future. But as a girl matures and adopts such a life-stye, she
notices that there is a "reduction of confidence, of possibilities" and of
her own true self (Jack, 1991: 44). When women try to fit themselves
into the ideas and notions of others, they realise that they deny their own
needs which causes dis-satisfaction and dis-iilusionment. No wonder
many women undergo traumatic, agonised lives not knowing how to get
out of it. Such instances are noticed in stories such as "My Beloved
Charioteer" (Dark), "Intrusion" (Leg) Bardon Bus (MQJ) and "A Man
and A Woman" (Gale).
Relationships, the locus of women's vulnerability to depression,
also take place within a historical and cultural context. Depression is
both individual and social; it combines the personal and the political.
The relational perspective asserts that the self is social. Mind and self
come into being through communication with others. One cannot heal
the self in isolation. Since "the individual is in the deepest sense
relational, and because women's vulnerability to depression lies in the
quality of their relationships, it is the self-in-relation that begs for
healing" (Jack, 199 1: 20 5).
The roles of wife and mother bring together society's expectations
about the roles and importance of women with a woman's own personal
history, self-perception, and hopes. One also finds that such notions act
upon women's physical bodies: "women's bodies and nature have been
simultaneously defined, exalted, and devalued by a male-dominated
culture. This legacy of thought, and the long history of gendered
patterns of interaction, profoundly shapes women's self-perceptions".
Women have seen themselves as men perceived them and have
developed negative images of themselves: "a fear of the rounded female
form, evidenced by the rise in eating disorders; a devaluation of
feminine biological events such as menstruation, childbirth, and
menopause; a dismissal of feminine modes of knowing as intuitive,
irrational, or scattered" (Jack, 1991: 85). Such factors are illustrated by
the feelings of the women characters in stories such as "The Valley In
Shadow"
(Dark),
"Chaddeleys
"Connections" (MUJ).
and
Flemings"
(MOJ), and
Women's orientation to relationships holds potential as well as
danger. Besides imposing a threat to identity, relationships often help in
restoring one's lost self. Some women who are damaged by
subordinating themselves to the images and needs of more powerful
others later recover their lost selves through relationships with others-people who help them to express themselves as full and equal partners.
By exposing both the vicissitudes and the developmental potential of
relationships, women are able to know and value their identities and
they are thus, able to re-shape themselves.
The questions that arise at this point are: How can woman realise
herself? Where can she locate her self? What is one to do with the roles
that she carries. Woman thinks of freeing herself but it is difficult,
because even when holding a career, she still dons the role of nurturer,
provider. Even when she is employed at the so-called professional level,
if she belongs to one of the occupations traditionally held by women
such as teaching or nursing she "replicates the selflessness of
motherhood by focusing on the needs of pupils, patients, or clients
rather than by making her own mark" (1989: 21). Munro's story
"Eskimo" (POL) is an illustration of such an aspect.
Each woman's identity--the identity that each feels is authentic,
real, and true to who and what she is becomes obscure as she leads a life
based on the expectation that the female should focus on relationships
and tend to the needs of others. In many of Munro's and Deshpande's
stories one finds that the women have problem in sustaining the sense of
self and thinking of themselves as subject. Often we notice that their
"subordination to impossible feminine ideals imposed by a patriarchal
culture" interferes with the "development of the natural self' (Parikh,
1989: 234).
Short Story Genre:
Reviewing the short story form one notices that both the writers,
Munro and Deshpande have successfblly used the form in an innovative
manner to highlight the predicament and dilemma of women.
Commenting on the sequence stories, it is relevent to know what Tim
Struthers states:
Lives of Girls and Women has been called another collection
of short stories, a story-sequence, or a story-cycle; however, it
may be best be described as one of a fairly wide-ranging
variety of "open-forms", organised books of prose fiction
made up of autonomous units which take on extra resonance
and significance when combined with other related units.
Such "open forms" are ones to which short story writers are
especially attracted and which are usually created by the
revising and the structuring of separately composed, and
sometime previously published, short stories. Each organic
whole which results has a greater effect than one might expect
a simple combination of its parts to have, since an "open
form" is more unified than any miscellaneous collection of
short stories by a single author, and as unified as, though
formally different fiom, anything clearly describable as a
novel (1978: 123).
Catherine Sheldrick Ross talking about SIB says that the stories
deal with urban life, "adult experience, the complications of marriage,
and the barriers to communication between men and women, old and
young". This statement is true of Munro's other collections, too. She
adds that Munro's narrative technique convey what the characters
themselves despair of communicating, namely "the layers of meaning;
the implications in the lies, deceptions, and silences; the gap between
what the characters mean and what they are able to tell" (1992: 73).
LGW has been seen as a complex enactment of storytelling
processes by Prentice. He mentions that throughout the novel characters
not only share stories, but characters also become stories. The stories
received from literary, scientific, religious and many other traditions
influence and shape characters' lives. Through Del Jordan's narrative,
one notices that these story making processes help to build the world in
which she lives. At the same time, the narrative is also able to construct
her as part of that world. Within this set of sequence stories, the plot and
the subplot lose contexts as the narrative is arranged in such a way that
the traditional hierarchy of value is displaced. Del, does form the centre
of conflict in all the stories and yet the presentation of the stories occurs
in such a way that it is difficult to trace a linear traditional consecutive
narrative sequence:
The text becomes fabric which exists only in the inter-relation
of warp and weft. It can continue to be woven in any
direction, as the stories can continue to be told. There are
stories present in the text only as beginnings, and there are
statements of conclusion, alluding back to untold stories. All
can be likened to loose ends of story that have the potential to
be woven into the fabric but always resisting final closure
(1992: 30).
Postcolonialism and Feminism:
The appropriation of women is a theme persistent in the stories of
both Munro and Deshpande. One does find that the stories take a lot
from the colonial outlook, namely the appropriation of space and the
allusion to the imperial powers. It is to be pointed out that Munro's
stories do not tell us that "womanhood is a colonized tenito~ywhose
inhabitants are enslaved7'.As Helaine Ventura points out "she does not
level her accusation at the male species in particular since she does not
portray the father as a bullying oppressor out to dispossess his wife and
daughter". She further emphasises that the father too is harassed and
oppressed: "Like her, he is enslaved by his f a , harassed by his work
and undoubtedly underpaid for his foxes...The narrator's mother and
father are equally exploited without sex discrimination and they,
nevertheless, conform to gender roles as a further proof of their
subservience to a more powerful law" (1992:85). Such instances are also
seen in Deshpande's stories. Two good examples are that of the fathers
in "The Awakening" (Mir)and "The Intrusion" (Leg).
Postcolonial writing and reading thus display the strategies
necessary to survey the colonising processess. Therefore one notices in
the present context of writings that these two writers persistently search
for a 'voice'. One also notices that the writers modify the social
conditions to portray pictures of empowerment and of adoption of
subversive values to reveal the reality existent in women's life. They are
"subject to the historicising imperative, such that their strategies address
the impact of colonising processes on the present and the future"
(Prentice, 1992: 28 1).
Moreover, in Indian colonial period, it is perceived that the nation
had been linked to the mother image. As Sen comments the country had
become "the arena in which agreements and conflicts between the
colonial bureaucracy and the colonised middle class were played out".
She further adds that the country was not only the captive to be freed by
her morally inspired children but the central figure who created and
protected the sanctuary of the home, where the colonised intelligentsia,
besieged by the colonial ruler, could take refuge. In this process the
home was demarcated as a rehge and the separation of the 'home' and
the 'world' hardened in the dominant ideology. (1993: 233)
In this context the home becomes a private space where the
colonised could take refuge from their masters. This demarcation of the
'domestic' as a private space gave rise to the development of a separate
private space which was safe and secure from colonial intervention. In
such a situation women became bound to the home. It was inculcated in
them that while men were the fighters of the outer realm, it was the duty
of the women to provide the fighters. Thus, one notices that the
women's reproductive power was given more importance and
"housework and childrearing" became their only "legitimate concerns".
The assumption that men's and women's roles were complimentary
justified the designation of the home as the proper context for women's
activities. The moral health of the 'nation' was felt to depend on
conformity to these different but 'equal' roles" (1993 : 233). Within such
an environment the ideology of motherhood became stronger. Women
were told that as they were the carriers of the future generation, they had
to revere their roles as mothers and give birth to children who were
strong and healthy in order to fight for the country. Also, the women to
build up the nation had to provide their children with a good educational
background. Women were, therefore, educated and taught to be good,
strong mothers. The whole theme of motherhood, thus, existed within
this framework.
Susie Tharu in an article in Recasting Women (ed. Kumkum
Sangari) tracing women's literature feels that:
This nationalist colour to what is really a common trend-glorifying women who fulfil their wife and mother roles with
exceptional ardour--placed an enormous burden on the women
who came within its defining scope. It was the women, their
commitment, their purity, their sacrifice, who were to ensure
the moral, even spiritual power of the nation and hold it
together. But even as we point this, we must not forget that
this phase also made for a positive evaluation of femininity
that did not allow for a limited growth. And no parallel
phenomenon exists in the West (1980: 26).
Mother-Daughter Relationships:
This consciousness of motherhood and colonialism is replaced by
another ideology in the post-colonial context, namely, the mother-child
relationship. Women experience pregnancy as a splitting of their selves.
In other words, it is a "separation and coexistence of the self and of an
other, of nature and consciousness, of physiology and speech". This
identity crisis is boosted in an institutional, socialised manner indicating
to women that motherhood is the essence of womenhood. The fantasy
developes to indicate that the mother and child are one and there is no
existence of the self. The mother is asked to forget herself by being
responsible towards the child. There is an unconscious association of
women to the birth of children. A woman, unable to bear children is
viewed with sympathy and pity, especially so in Indian society. Such a
situation is witnessed in Deshpande's story "And, What's A Son"
(Gale).
This patterned, negative behaviour is taught by mothers to
daughters as the mothers are the exemplaries for the daughters. It is also
perceived that the mothers fear their daughters will meet with rejection,
isolation, and danger if they stray too far outside social norms that
govern gender interactions. In their attempt to save their daughters from
pain and loss, mothers unconsciously teach them methods of relating to
the male world. This leads to the development of women who are selfeffacing, self-sacrificing and highly accommodative.
Social and cultural values create a paradox in which the motherchild relationship is intensified at the same time it is rendered impotent.
A mother exerts a powerful influence on the development of her child as
an individual while she is relegated to a powerless position in society.
She passes along the culture's devaluation of the feminine to her
daughter. Thus, weakness, submissiveness, power-lessness, not only
become associated with females, it also passes as essential trades fkom
mothers to daughters. Daughters thus, cannot overcome this inheritance
which disables and curbs them.
Mothers do not attempt to victimise their daughters. Daughters
themselves, inherit the quality of powerlessness that their mothers had
themselves acquired. Thus the daughters in these stories of MUKOand
Deshpande respond not only to the biological relationship between them
and their mother's, but also to the cultural/social context that
perpetuates this relationship. This cultural/social perspective of women
devalues their personalities. A daughter only sees a reflection of
dependence and weakness regardless of her mother's individual
strengths. Tne daughters as one notices in these stories in order to
negate the image of the mothers attempt to break away from them. But
this action is not easy. Thus women not only promote the dilemma but
also get entrapped. One way out of such a predicament is for women to
sustain relationships and to draw from it, thereby empowering
themselves.
A more sophisticated and complex response would take into
account women's wish to sustain relationships as well as to empower
themselves. By acknowledging the patriarchal traditions that frame and
give form to female powerlessness, daughters and mothers can give the
lie to the weakens and dependence the culture attributes to women. By
sympathising with the desperate position of a woman of whom both
husband and culture demand perfection, a daughter whose mother
demands perfection of her can temper her anger toward her mother. By
recognising the cultural pressures that set the borders of her own life, a
mother can temper her demands on her daughter. Mothers and daughters
together can resolve the common predicament of mother blame by
building on womanly strengths--a sense of connection with others, an
investment in sustaining relationships, mutual empathy, a commitment
to co-operation and mutual care--important qualities, often trivialised
and demeaned by the culture (Parikh, 1989: 189- 190).
To conclude, one has to understand and evaluate women's lives
within the social and cultural perspectives. The future of such a study
lies in developing and enriching cross-cultural understanding which can
be understood in the words of Catherine Stimpson :
Such processes enhance, no matter how internally, a person's
sense of power and freedom. Reinforcing this is the
probability that reading is an indeterminate act. Because of its
very nature, a text can invite us to help create its meaning. As
we decide what it is all about, we are cognitively alert,
responsible, fecund, capable. We gain a sense of strength.
Simultaneously, we enter into what we have left of the world
of the text. We vicariously experience events and personalities
we might not meet in ordinary life--including dramas of
insubordination. We gain, then, a sense of possibility. If we
empathise with a character, we may also mitigate some
crippling illness, a self-perception of weird singularity. We
gain, finally, a sense of community (1988: 159).
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