Patriarchal domination in literary works
Today every
corner of the world some of the women are denied basic human rights, beaten,
raped and killed by men. Why does this inequality and oppression
persist?.Through this paper we will deal the theoretical position that violence
against women in India is due in part to the patriarchal nature of that
society. In India police figures indicates that in New Delhi, 2755 women died
as a result of dowry burning between 1979 and 1983.In the state of Karnataka,
there were 792 dowry deaths in 1987 and 922 in 1988.
India is a society governed by a
system where males hold the power include feticide, the disproportionate gender
ratio, the fact the most women are not allowed to be employed and the belief
that from the birth until death a women’s role is to serve men. It is recognized
that patriarchy and the control and dominance of women by men have significant
roles to play in the violence against women. The patriarchal ideal is that a
woman’s duty is to serve her father, brothers and husband for the entirety of
her life. It is a sentiment lived out in many societies where women are
subjected to spousal abuse daily.
For that I have chosen two novels which
has the theme of patriarchal oppression .They are Arundhati Roy’s “The God of
Small Things” and R.K.Narayan’s “The Dark Room”. In these novels strongly
indicates the pathetic situation of women in India. “The God of Small Things”
is a semi-autobiographical novel of Arundhati Roy.She was born on November
24,1961 in Ayamanam, a village in western India. The novel takes place in
Ayamanam. Roy’s mother, Mary was a Chirstian woman from Kerala and her father
Hindu tea planter . She says ,”I don’t
want to discuss my father”. Because her mother was very much affected by her father. At age
of sixteen Roy, who was raised by her mother, left home and lived in a
squatter’s colony in Delhi, where she earned a meagre living by selling empty
beer bottles. Eventually, Roy enrolled in the Delhi school of Architecture,
where in 1984 she met fellow student Gerard Da Cunha, who she wed and later
divorced after four years of marriage.
These are the main reason to tempt
Arundhati Roy to write. Through her writing she reproduced her anger on the
patriarchal society. In that case on April 4, 1997 Roy launched her debut
novel, “The God of Small Things” a semi-autobiographical story that central
around a pair of fraternal twins. In this delves deep to expose the patriarchal
ideology, so that they hardly have a space of their own bodies. Therefore
,the generational dialects portrayed in
the novel, featuring Mammachi, her daughter Ammu and granddaughter Rahel, gets
reflected in the form of the different degrees of control over their respective
bodies that these women enjoy and aspire for.
Mammachi’s life seems to be controlled by
Manu’s dictum “In childhood a woman
should be under her father’s control, in youth under her husband’s, and when
her husband is dead under her sons. She should not have independence”
Though we have no idea about the
condition of her life under her father ,her husband and her son proved to match
each other in their domination over Mammatchi. The more painful aspect of this
torment is Pappachi’s hideous double-faced attitude. Whereas he keeps a very
respectable social posture by being honey-tongued to visitors, donating money
to the orphanages and leprosy clinics, the “cold, calculating cruelty” of the
schizophrenic maniac towards his wife and daughter left them dumbfounded.
Pappachi’s cruelty increased manifold
with his retirement. His wife‘s success in the locality as a pickle and jam
maker made him envious of his wife’s
vigour:
“Pappachi, for his part, was having trouble coping with the ignominy
of
retirement. He was seventeen years older than mammachi ,and realized with a shock that he was an old man
when his wife was still in her prime”.(Roy 47)
Mammachi finally
escapes the escapes the physical torments when her son return from England and
sees his father beating her. Chacko is physically stronger than his father. so
he warned his father and to say ,”I never want this to happen again”. But what Mammachi earns is not freedom from
her servility; she can only exchange her master. Now it is her son to whom she
must serve instead of her husband. And this she accepts without a grudge.
“ The day that chacko prevented Pappachi from beating her.., Mammachi
packed her wife luggage and committed it to chacko’s care. From then onwards he
became the repository of all her womanly feelings. Her Man, her only Love”.(Roy
168)
Mammachi has suffered immensely at the hands
of the patriarchal forces. She only barters one form of slavery for another;
her slavery towards her husband is replaced by her unquestioning to her son.
She has indeed picked up the voice of patriarchy in her relationship with her
children. She is madly support her son but not Ammu. She is even supportive of
Chacko’s view about the family property: What’s
yours is mine and what’s mine is also mine”
The only escape for Ammu, from the
oppressive atmosphere was through marriage. While taking a break at an Aunt’s
place in Calcutta, she chanced upon a sober-looking Hindu Bengali from the tea
estates in Assam, and without looking back stepped into matrimony. Simon De
Beauvior remarks:
“There
is a unanimous agreement that getting a husband or in some cases a ‘protector’
is for her the most important underlaking. She will free herself from the
parental home; from her mother’s hold, she will open up her future not only by
active conquest but by delivering herself up,passive and docile in the hands of
a new master”
She marries a man who assists
managing a tea estate whom she later discovers to be a heavy alcoholic who
physically abuses her and attempts to prostitute to his boss for keep his job. She gives birth
to Rahel and Estha, yet ultimately leaves her husband and returns to live with
her father, mother and brother, Chacko, in Ayamanam. She returned to parental
home. It is a great irony that a daughter estranged from the husband is
tortured and tyrannized in the parent’s house. But on the other hand an
estranged son, chacko, not only receives warm welcome but also remains the
rightful inheritor of the family wealth and fortune, when he flirts with a
lower class women. He is encouraged by Mammachi in the name of “man’s needs”.
Where he love of Ammu with Velutha, a Paravan is termed as illicit,
untraditional and sinful. In this place we can able to know Arundhati Roy is a
feministic writer. This is shows gender conflicts in this novel.
Another novel is R.K.Narayan’s The
dark Room. Savitri strives to be an ideal, submissive wife to her cruel husband
Ramani and endures years of abuse before running away, but eventually realizes
she can't change her circumstances and comes back to protect her children and
accept her only real option in life. This is one of Narayan's definitely darker
novels and one of the few where he seriously examines the gender inequalities
of traditional Indian society in the mid-twentieth century. I always thought it
was very progressive coming from a male upper-caste author who comes from a
background of privilege. And while all of Narayan's characters are upper-caste,
he also tries to explore social inequity in his own way. In ‘The Dark Room’, he
does this through the lens of domestic violence.
The Dark Room
offers a feminist view of the contemporary south Indian society. ‘The Dark
Room’ is used as a symbol of a tormented, helpless Indian wife. The female
protagonist Savitri is shown as a victim of the existing patriarchal society.
The central female character of the novel Savitri is a typical Indian middle
class submissive housewife married to a very insensitive man Ramani, who was
working in an insurance company. Savitri was very much dominated and neglected
by her husband. But as a true Indian Hindu wife, she accepts and swallows all
demands of her husband. But her marriage life becomes a living hell when she
came to know about his affair with another woman. Because of such depression that
she finally decides to retreat into a dark room. The dark room is a room used
to store the junk of the house. When she is deeply wounded she takes shelter in
the dark room. She thinks herself with useless domestic junks. The dark room is
not only a room but also a metaphor which highlights the pitiable condition of
a woman and the oppression upon them by men. This is the symbolism of the
novel. Ramani started spending nights with Shanta Bai. Because She reacts in a
very unusual manner. Savitri leaves her house with disappointment and anger. In
the following lines she aptly expresses women’s position in this society;
“ Do you think that I will stay in your, breath the air of your
property, drink the water here and eat food you buy with your money? No, I will
starve to die in the open under the sky a roof for which we need not be obliged
to no men”.
It is the voice
of the suppressed voice, who is the victims of the male dominated world. She
tries to commit suicide. She is saved by poni, wife of maru, a blacksmith. She
decides to take shelter in a temple and earn a little money to become
financially independent. But here also she is exploited by the temple priest.
Is there no safe place for a woman in this male chauvinistic society? In her early days she has to be in the
custody of her father, then in her youth she is in the care of her husband, and
in the old age she is in the custody of her son. It is the irony of life of
women in Indian society. Savitri’s agony is well expressed in the following lines;
I’m a human being” she said...you men
will never grant that. For you we are playthings when you feel like hugging and
slaves other times. Don’t think that you can fondle us when you like and kick
us when you choose”
But finally she comes back to her
husband’s house. The action of Savitri in returning to her husband after
pathetically trying in vain to stand on her own legs is rather unconvincing.
This novel talks about the position of
women in the life of Malgudi. R.K.Narayan laments the pitiable condition of
women (savitri) and this has perhaps led him to formulate the women’s life
movement. Savitri’s whole life with her father and husband has been doll-life
in which her own personality has been suppressed and her worth as an individual
ignored.
From
these two novels we can able to see how Indian women are oppressed by
patriarchal society through the character Ammu and Mammachi in Roy’s “The God
of Small things” and R.K.Narayan’s Savitri in “The Dark Room”. So patriarchal oppression
is one of the major theme of Arundhati Roy and R.K.Narayan’s Novel. Now itself
patriarchal oppression is in existence because of superstitious belief and
unawareness. But it has to be eradicated for welfare of not only women but also
world. Through my paper, I wish to give awareness to all the women who are all
oppressed by patriarchal societyillustrated by sangavi tamil
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