Dr. P. Rebecca
Maithon, Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India
Feminism is a much used word today and everyone seems to know exactly what it means. To try to define feminism therefore would seem redundant. The article therefore attempts to take three writers of feminist writings and concentrate on very specific works by them. Feminism has been differently described by the three feminist writers Elaine Showalter, Shashi Despande and C S Lakshmi also known as Ambai. Studying through the three specific works of these renowned authors we are able to draw some conclusions. The three works under consideration here are Elaine Showalter’s ‘Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness’, Shashi Deshpande’s ‘Why I am a Feminist’ and C S Lakshmi’s ‘Dealing with Silence, Space and Everyday Life’.
Shashi Deshpande was born in 1936 in Dharwad and writes about Indian women in Indian context belonging to the middle and upper middle class. She does not address the international forum. She questions established traditions in her works which include eleven novels, children's books, two long stories and many short stories. The Dark Holds no Terrors (1986), The Binding Vine (1992) and Shadow Play (2013) are only some of her famous works. Deshpande's novel That Long Silence (1988) is her most autobiographical one and has for its theme the silencing of women by the family and society. It is, as she has said, a loud shriek of despair.
C S Laksmi was born in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu in 1944. Andhi Maalai (lit. Twilight), Siragukalmuriyum (lit. Wings will be broken), The Face behind the Mask, Veetinmulaiyilorusamaiyalarai (lit. A kitchen in the corner of the house), A Purple Sea (1992) and In A Forest, A Deer are some of her renown works. Most of her stories explore relationships and modern life. She explores themes like space, silence, accepting one’s sexuality and the need for communication. Her stories are well knit and she leaves a lot to the readers to explore and interpret. She is an author to whom readers can easily relate because she talks about the daily act of living.
Elaine Showalter was born on 21st January 1941.‘ A Literature of Their Own: Women Writers from Bronte to Lessing is her most famous work. Her works are very women-centric and in the particular essay the article takes up she tries to convey her idea that all feminist criticism is in the wilderness because there is no coherence in their speculations. She cites a reason for her belief. She tells us that feminist criticism has been an ‘empirical orphan’1.She talks of two distinct modes of feminist criticism, one as author and the other as reader. She also tells us the flaws of feminist criticism that most of it is revisionist in nature because feminists tend to take up old texts and try to re-examine it from the feminist stand point. The problem that comes out is that feminist criticism learns nothing new in this process. Feminist criticism needs to find ‘its own subject, its own system, its own theory, and its own voice’.2
There is need to decide where or what is the premises we are talking about. She invented the term gynocriticism to describe what exactly she meant by feminist criticism .Her essay analyses French feminist criticism as well as American feminist criticism. All are making an effort to save feminist criticism from its association with inferiority. In the essay she also brings out the Victorian belief of heavier frontal lobes of men which proved them superior in intelligence. She even gives references to certain authors who talked about man being a father in the literal sense and hence the right to father texts as well since he is endowed by nature for the purpose. Showalter differs here and asks that a woman also has a womb and so she might be creating texts in the metaphorical womb. The biological differences of the sexes have been made a pretext to justify the power of one over the other.
She tells us about the oppressor’s language and the language of the muted group. She says that women are not given access to language or vocabulary as men are. She discusses Ardenner’s diagram which clarifies what she is speaking of the language of the muted group and the oppressor’s language. Somehow, language of women was kept secret even in ancient times. The need arose because there were aspects of daily life which denied women a say. So, they talked among themselves in their own language, a language perhaps whose existence men were unaware of.
She even talks about mother-child relationship where the boy learns about his identity as not-female or negative and the girl learns of herself as female, same as her mother and hence her upbringing is positive. Several hypotheses about women’s culture have been developed in the past decades to understand them apart from the hierarchical setup. History has always been written and interpreted from the masculine stand point. No one considered the view and experiences of women. Perhaps if this had been done, a different aspect of history would have come out. Writing should be a double voiced discourse where social, literary and cultural heritage of both the genders should be discussed with equal enthusiasm. If a man’s text is fathered by him, a woman’s text is mothered and parented by her.3
Only male writers can tryto mute half parentage of a female writer. Female writers must stop imitating their men counterparts and also revising old texts from the feminine standpoint. She considers a cultural model of feminist writings a goal to strive for. There is no promised land to go to; there is a vast area of differentiation that lies ahead for feminist criticism ‘the tumultuous and intriguing wilderness of difference itself’.4
C S Laksmi in ‘Dealing with Silence, Space and Everyday Life’ raises a very pertinent question about what is the space we occupy, the physical place or the space of the mind. She talks about space women occupy using the works of three writers: Saroja Ramamurthy’s Meenakshi’s Veena, Gowri Ammal’s Paazhum Panam or Wretched Money and Sugandhi Subramanian’s poems. Saroja Ramamurthy talks about the Veena that belonged to Meenakshi which was made to collect dust because of the flawed and biased judgment of her father-in-law. Festivals continued to be celebrated even as Meenakshi suffered because of her father- in-law’s command and the inability of her husband to stand up for her cause. The story hides more than it reveals. The outsider becomes a confidante to inner thoughts. The silence of Meenakshi shows the space she occupies in her household.
Similarly, Gowri Ammal’s Paazhum Paanam is not about what is visible. What is visible is a family which includes an irritable husband, a grumbling and complaining wife and a young son preparing for exams. It seems to be a simple story, a story about a family that has a cat and gets rid of it by giving it away to a gypsy who roasts and eats it up. The cat is sold for 4 annas. The cat was brought into the household by the wife perhaps to bring a change in the space allotted to her in the household. How could the cat be sent out without her consent? Radhai had tried to redefine, recast and reorder her household in a manner which would allow her more breathing space but it was not to be. The story invariably gives rise to a question that is it only the cat that died at the end or did a part of the woman die with the cat? Outsiders are drawn into the workings of the household and reveal hidden thoughts and desires. The importance of the ‘sakhi’ or friend is highlighted in Tamil literature. The outsider is drawn into a silent area of the woman’s space.
Similarly, Sugandhi Subramanian, a contemporary poet, focuses on the lived space, a space which negates for its occupants any detail of that space, a space that makes memory and recall impossible. Her poem has phrases like ‘I have forgotten, I don’t remember’. The poem shows how the silence of a woman’s life smothers language, makes memory vague. C S Lakshmi thus emphasizes that language is made impossible by the silence women are assigned to in the limited physical and mental space of a household. She tries to explain what silence we are talking of , what is the space we mean women occupy.
Shashi Deshpande’s essay ‘Why I am A Feminist?’ talks about an activist who refuses to be called a feminist because she considers it a Western concept, an actress who refuses to be called a feminist because she has no intention of deserting her family, a columnist who says she is not a feminist because she is not anti-men. A really bad effect of women in position of influence coming up with these kinds of statements is that those who idolise them tend to start thinking in the same manner. Shashi Deshpande’s views of feminism are very simple, laid out in some very simple, impressive statements. She says that for her feminism means that women have equal rights as men to be born and survive, to live their life as they desire. She says ‘Women are neither inferior nor subordinate human beings, but one half of the human race.’5
Nature does not differentiate between males and females in bestowing her gifts except in the process of procreation. It is due to the women’s movement that the voice of women is being heard today which might have been dismissed earlier as mere women’s stuff. She contradicts the view that feminism means a desire to be like a man, on the contrary it emphasizes woman’s quest to accept her womanhood as a positive thing and not as a drawback. It talks about the significance of the relationship between man and woman as companions rather than as tyrant and oppressed. Women must not be the ones to sacrifice all the time because that will turn them into what Deshpande calls ‘monsters of selfishness’.6
She shows her disapproval with women calling themselves ‘only a housewife’ in spite of working 24 into 7, having no schedule, no definite time. One must not tolerate injustice meted out to housewives because they are dependent on someone. ‘To be silent is to abet it’7 Deshpande says. Every human who is adapting to the modern world is somewhere practicing feminism. The world will be better off without frightened, exploited and undermined women.
We see a point of similarity among the three writers and a point of difference. The similarity is the need for language which each emphasises, a woman’s language, an ease of expression available to them just as it is to the males. Secondly, each of them is very clear about what feminism means to them. So, if to Elaine Showalter it is lost in a wilderness and needs to be set in order, to C S Lakshmi it is a struggle to find one’s own space and get rid of the silences. At the same time feminism to Shashi Deshpande stands for equal rights, liberty and freedom of expression, the fight to be considered equals and not lesser than men.
The dissimilarity too is very strong when we find Showalter trying to tell us what feminist criticism is doing these days. It is lost in the wilderness because there are some critics who end up revaluating texts or trying to interpret it from the female standpoint. She even tells us about the language of the oppressors and the muted group. The need is to evolve a language appropriate to women and their expression. C S Lakshmi also emphasizes the need for such a language but to her the silences in a woman’s life force her to keep quiet, there is no language to express the unexpressed. The woman to her is bound up by limitations, social and otherwise. The restraints are so long imposed that she forgets her identity and all the attempts at changing circumstances in her life, tend to fall flat. Shashi Deshpande has a very positive approach as she believes that when a person refuses to say that his/her daughter should be assigned to the kitchen, have no dreams or desires, there feminism is at play although one does not realize it. Feminism is just a word to many which they seemingly abhor but when it comes to their own wives and daughters, there are many who would not relish the idea of seeing them tortured at the hands of a society that imposes restrictions and restraints.
From these three essays there are certain things which we can conclude about feminism. Feminism is definitely not a western concept and even if it is as some wish to claim, it has been wonderfully adapted into the Indian context and made relevant in this perspective. Feminism is very essential in the Indian scenario given the multiple problems women in India face at home, in the workplace, as daughters, wives, sisters and mothers. In India a woman has no personality of her own. She has to stand in relation to someone as wife, daughter or mother. Her face is blurred, her hand multi-tasking, her voice muffled, her eyes blinded by tears of helplessness. Aggression is male and comes in the form of husband, father and brother in a woman’s life.
Women in India are not very well-treated. Society portrays them as goddesses and therefore demand sacrifices from them. They are made to feel that they are the embodiment of goodness and compassion right from the time they attain the ability of expression.
When a woman fails to render this, she is branded as a feminist who cannot tolerate subordination to men, she fights for her rights so she is manly, she disapproves of injustice so she is ‘bad’ by nature. Society has tried to reign in women by a variety of ways. She is a daughter, so she must let her brother have the best. Her birth is welcomed as the coming of goddess Lakshmi, goddess of wealth. As she grows bigger, society is keeps an eye on her movements, her friends, her coming in and going out, eager to brand her if she shows the least deviation from the so-called set path of righteousness laid down by society. She is married away without her consent, to any groom found suitable to the pocket of the parents. Her in-laws may treat her as they will, her husband will never stand by her, and he will be with his parents. She was born alone and remains alone. If she fights the injustice done to her, she is a feminist. A feminist is understood to be a woman who hates men, leaves family for empty ideals and is up in arms against all rules, traditions and customs. Much education is generally associated with ‘feminist’ views in ladies. If you educate your girls too much, they tend to become rebels, elders teach. The truth is that when you allow ladies to be exposed to education, Western or Indian, they are able to realize how much they have been denied and demand for it. In case their demands are not fulfilled, they ask for it in their own style. What is their style? They write about it, they speak about it from public platforms, they take out processions, they have NGOs to make women aware of their rights but most of all they set by example, their own example Like C S Laksmi did, setting up SPARROW (Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women) an NGO that keeps safe the writings, manuscripts, videos and interviews of women writers only.
We thus find that the three feminist writers Elaine Showalter, Sashi Deshpande and C S Lakshmi have their own definitions of what feminism stands for and what feminists ought to do. These writers are respected world over for their untiring devotion to the cause of feminism and hence have been included even in the syllabus of higher education. As more and more people get to know about these writings, they are exposed to the problems women face inside the four walls of their homes as well as outside the four walls. Society has tried to restrain women; feminists have tried to teach women to break the chains. Feminists have given women wings to fly, the same wings which society ruthlessly clamped and chained in an attempt to sabotage forever. Thankfully, the wings have learnt to spread out and cross barriers of meaningless impositions.
References:
- 1-4: Showalter, Elaine: Critical Enquiry,Vol8, No.2,Writing and Sexual Difference(Winter,1981) pp.179-205 The University of Chicago Press
- Shashi Deshpande: Writing from the Margin: And other Essays Why I am Feminist Pg. No. 83 (Viking, 2003)
- Shashi Deshpande: Writing from the Margin: And other Essays Why I am Feminist Pg. No. 84 (Viking, 2003)
- Deshpande, Sashi: Writing from the Margin: And other Essays (Viking 2003) Why I am Feminist Pg. No. 85
