CHAPTER 1V

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE

Writers use different techniques and styles in order to describe their

experience. As Jasbir Jain notes while discussing this in her article Gender
and Narrative Strateby:
Women writers while evolving narrative strategies
are faced with a double problem: how to step out of
the framework defined by men and patriarchal values;
and how to identify and create a tradition of their
own. ( 32.)
Wornen writers are faced with a double bind situation when writing
out their stories - the fact that they are writers, wrifing about unique experiences
and feelings different &om that of o r d i n q men, as well as the fact that they
are women. When they aspire to succeed in their writing, they have to rise
above their feelings of gender inequality. This is more applicable to a
feminist writer who tries to give expression to the strong feelings of anger
and intolerance against the injustice and oppression of women she sees around
her. In order to render such observations authentically the woman writer
resorts to various narrative strategies. Jasbir Jain continues:
When the experience which is being narrated moves
against the current, is unconventional or unusual,
is radical in its stand point, or displays a
stren@h which may be best muted for the time being,
strategy is resorted to. There is no hesitation in
laying a false trail or employing subterfuge. More

over, it is never the same, for then it would become

a theory. It may be imagery, or landscape, or
scriptural references or character, or subplot, or
structure which is being used for this purpose - and
waiting to be decoded. (30)
The women writers use various techniques in order to create spaces
for themselves at various levels. How far they differ from the writing of men
is a question that is difficult to answer. But Jasbir Jain says;
It is not a difference of form - one cannot say that men
write about external facts and women about
internal life; one cannot also say that men write about
thickly inhabited worlds and women about solitary
figures - but women do write about the responses of
womerl of the shadows which they alone can see and
the anguish they alone can feel. It is a difference
of perspective ... (36.)
Satire and Irony
A technique commonly used by the four women writers is satire

and irony. The satire used could be that of situation or plot or it could be in
the expression of feelings in a monolo~weor dialogue. Irony is also used
situatioanlly or verbally. Satire could be biting and sarcastic, it could be gentle
and humorous. Irony is used to give rise an unexpected twist at the end of
some stories. Subtle satire and irony are used by Kamla Das, while forceFul
satire is used in an outspoken manner by Saraswathi Amma. She also makes
use of biting sarcasrn and wit in her fiction, as well as irony of coincidence

and fate. Shashi Deshpande is so seriously satirical that she sometimes

becomes cynical, without any humour. She also uses withering sarcasm when
she conlments on traditional Indian customs. Bharathi Mukharji uses plenty
of irony and satire, more in a gentle manner with wry humour.
Satire is used by these wrters as a weapon of social criticism, in
order to reveal the sufferings of women in a male dominated world. They
often ridicule existing practices against women. Saraswathy Arnma is referred
to as the angry satirist of her times. She has exposed the weaknesses of men as
well as women in her stories.
A typical example of Saraswathy Amma's forcefully satiric narrative

is the short story, 'Ellam Thikanjha Bharya' (The Perfect wife). An analysis
of this story can make us familiar with the strategy used by Saraswathy Amma
to drive home her points. She exposes the incalculable harm that can happen
to a rrlan when he nurses impossible, typically chauvinistic ideals about a
'perfect wife' whom he expects to many some day.
Divakarm Nair has been 'seeing girls' by the dozen when he comes
to be of marriageable age of 25 years which is prevalent in his times. But he
reject:; every girl he sees, as he wants a beautiful girl of:
"Fourteen years, with the complexion of gold,
long, curly, knee-length hair, downcast eyes,
with an attractive face even in the shy pose, less than
five feet high and with a slim body... (ETB; p. 7.)
This ideal concept is nowhere to be found, so Mr. Nair remains an
'eligible bachelor' till he attains his thirties. In one such occassion, he has
rejected a woman who is perfect in all other respects, except her lack of

shyness. She dares to look at him boldly. He prefers a wife not to be too
educated, as he wants the pleasure of educating her, he desires a woman to
remain unseen and unheard.
Saraswathy Amma satirically exposes the traditional ideas of
Mr. Divakaran Nair when he advises one of his friends, Mr. Ramakurup, about
the latter's approaching wedding to a well educated, job oriented girt:
"See, how can married life be special if the wife
does not believe, like Sitadevi and Shilavathy, that
the husband is God? Do you think your wife would
believe whatever you say as a divine utterance? She
will quote three hundred examples from America,
Europe and even Russia to prove you wrong. Alas!
How will you tolerate that? Even otherwise, infront
of a knowledgeable woman, you can never exist for a
moment as a creator of an attractive and wonderful
world. On the other hand, how much pleasure would
be there to experience the feelings ol'a shy and ignorant
woman who would be thrilled at your first touch and
would become excited to the point of ecstasy. Oh God,
you are giving up that bliss. How can you feel affectionate
love for a woman who mingles with other men and
boldly stands in front of your friends. This mamage
will soon make you indifferent to life" (Ibid; pp.9-10.)
Saraswathy Amma, through these words of Divakaran Nair, reveals
the conventional expectations of men who abhor thinking women as wives.

Divakaran Nair does not attend his friend's wedding as a gesture of

protest. He busies himself with preparing his own bed coffee, which is one
job about which he has sweet dreams: of his future wife serving him. He
keeps himself celibate for his 'perfect wife.'
When he approaches middle age with greying hair, he becomes
desperate. He has faithfully interested himself in fashions and jewellery in
order to adorn his future bride.
One of his distant cousins, Pankajakshi, his well wisher, whom he
had rejected earlier due to her dark complexion and overweight body,
approaches him with a new proposal. He goes to see the woman Kamala,
approves her wholeheartedly. She seems to epitomise everything he has
yearned for in his future wife.
But while he is about to have tea, the girl's mother spots him and
bursts out in anger.
"Oh! 1s this the fellow? Good, are you still
engaged in just drinking tea and seeing girls
withnqt yet manying ?... Even if we get showers of
gold we do not need this relationship. Atrocious!
The man who had come to propose to the mother has
now come to see the daughter! Who would ever give
their daughter to this fellow? I would not have
agreed to this shameful act if I had known from
Pankajakshi that this is his habit

(Ibid; pp. 17-18).

For, the woman is none other than the woman whom he had
rejected long back for daring to look at his face boldly. This bitingly sarcastic
rebuke withers Ilivakaran Nair with its scorn, who walks away ~hamefacedly.

Saraswathy Amma then ends the story with a typical ironic twist,
much in the manner of 0.Henry. Divakaran Nair, from the next day
onwartls, accepts his bed coffee with the hint of a new relationship from
Pankajakshi, his distarit cousin who is now a widow with children. All that he
has dreamt about in a future wife seems to dissolve into the image of the
dark, fat figure of Pankajakshi.
There is a similar story, 'Roopamichanthi' (Figure as Desired) where
Saraswathy Amma satirizes similar impossible ideals of beauty in the imagination
of a woman. Here the women dreams of a handsome man with dark, curly
hair as her bridegroom. When her mamage is fixed, she feels that she really
does get her 'man of dreams'. But she is homfied to discover, soon after the
marriage, that the attractive dark tresses she has so admired in him is not his,
but belongs to a wig that he very cleverly and habitually wears !
In these artistically perfect short stories Saraswathy Amma satirises
not only chauvinistic ideas of men like Divakaran Nair but also romantic
impossible or unrealistic dreams of young, impressionable woman. Satiric
pictures of women, duped by their bridegrooms, women falling a prey to
unscrupulous men who sexually exploit them and discard them, women who
are economically and sexually exploited by their own families, abound in her
short !stories like 'Vivahavyavasayam' (Marriage Business), 'Orukkathinte
Oduvil' (End of Preparations), 'Mudakku Muthal' (Capital Investment), and
'Ratnarn Vilayurn Bhumi' (Soil that Nurtures Gems) etc.
In 'Vivahavyavasayarn' we are introduced to a man who revels in

thc thought that marriage for him, is a business arrangement. He keeps manying
women, takes dowry from them in hefty sums, and divorces them soon after,
~ ~ r c p a r ihimself
l~g
for the next marriage.

In Orukkathinte Oduvil, the would be bridegroom, by cheating the

bride of her jewellery and money, runs away after all the preparations of
marriage are over. He abandons the would-be bride without marrying her,
leaving her to her fate.
In "Ore Oru Rathrin(Just one Night) the expectations of an old
woman and her daughter are built up by the visit of a young man to their
house at night one day. The mother encourages the daughter to behave in an
intimate fashion with him, hoping for a possible marriage alliance. Their
hopcs are dashed when, the next day, the young man reveals that he has to
rush home for his son's birthday. He thus turns out to be already married.
Saraswathy Amma here unleashes her fury at the expectations of
society that women have no other existence except that of a married woman
or that of a wife and mother. This traditional unwritten norm ofsociety drives
women on to make a match in marriage at any cost, with any eligible man
available to them. 'Ihe women become hurt in the process if the man is
already married like in "Ore Oru Rathri" or if the man becomes infatuated
with the girl he loves in spite of being married. Here the family suffers as
well as the abandoned wife suffers as seen in "Vaividhyam Vende ?" (Should
there not be Variety). Here the wife has to put up with a womanizer husband who
justifies his actions. I3e feels that the wife should not complain as long as he
is a good provider. The double standards of morality encouraged by society
with one set of values for the husband, and a different set of values for the

wife are exposed.

In order to counter this hypocritical attitude of society, in the story
"Vilakkapetta Vazhi" (The Forbidden Path) Saraswathi Amma gives the

picture of a woman who chooses a career to marriage., She is initially driven

to take up a career in medicine due to her rejection by the man who is to have
married her. Ite abandons her when her father dies and her fortunes change
for the worse. His image is satirised here. He had earlier preferred a woman
of better financial prospects. Later due to an irony of fate, he finds himself
burdened with poverty and a large family of daughters. Whereas he finds the
girl whom he had rejected enjoying a much better, independent social status.
In stories like " Mudakku Muthal" and "Ratnam Vilayum Bhumi"
women are exploited economically by their own family members. They are
married off to rich men, who bring prosperity to their families. But the women
are no better than prostitutes, comments Saraswathy Amma. The only difference
between them and professional prostitutes is that in the case of the former
they need to please only their wedded husbands.
Saraswathy Amma makes fun of the attitudes of men who do not
valuc education in their wives. In "Sammanachakram" (The Rolling Trophy)
there is the satiric portrayal of a woman gold medallist who laments that the
gold medal she obtained in her college, became useless to her when she gets
marr~ed.Later the very same medal which won her accolades at college for
her scholarship, is sold for financial gains by her husband, who is insensitive
to the value she gave it.
The same idea is repeated in "Peubudhi" (Women's Wit), where
the heroine laments that a sharper intelligence turns out to be a curse for
women. She complains of the 'ennui' she sufTers in her marriage when she
finds her mind is not taxed enough. She sadly comments: (quotation repeated
from Ch.11) "For housekeeping, decorating oneself, gossiping, how much

brains does a woman need ?" (132). A woman's intelligence is not really put

to use for these three jobs in fact, men seem to prefer dumb, ignorant women
to brighter ones. The usual tendency to see them as objects of decorative
value is criticised sharply by Saraswathy Amma.
There is a story, "Bahumanapetta Amma" (Respected Mother) where
the husband, less educated than the wife, mistakes the abbreviation 'B.A',
which denotes his wife as a graduate, for "Bahumanappetta Amma", and he
explains thus to his kids.
In short stories like "Veettilum Purathum" (Inside and Outside the
House), and "Aadarshavum Jeevithavum" (Ideals and Real Life), the author
ridicules the great gulf between the idealised image of a progressive outlook
presented by the men outside, and their real conventional selves at home.
Saraswathy Amma bursts the bubble of romantic concepts of love
in many of her stories, some of them parodying the sentimental romantic

feelings of the persons involved, like in "Premathinte Pravarthimandalam"

(fie Practical Side of Love), "Avarude Kathayehzuthu" (Their Story Writing),
"Visramamuri" (The Waiting Room), "Stree Janmam" (The Life of a Woman).
Women who suffer endlessly due to unrequited love are satirised in "Bhagyavathi"
(111~
1,ucky one), "Janmaavakasam" (Birth Right), "Chola Marangal" (The
Shady Trees) and "Pithru Droham" (Cruelty to Father).
Saraswathy Amma identifies women as the worst enemies of women
in the short story, 'Ammayude Papam' (The Sin of the Mother). The story
concerns the daughter of a dancer. The mother who is a professional dancer
has to bear the brunt of society's ridicule as a woman of loose morals. The
daughter is also not sparetl.

Though the daughter tries to remain insignificant in college,

underplaying her talents, the gossip in the teacher's staff rooms does not let
her alone. The scandal mongers try to stamp her as promiscuous. The main
character who voices the satiric opinions of Saraswathy Amma reflects thus

upon the situation:

i
Alas! it is considered bad, if she is cheerful:,.'$
,

. .
.' ,r'
>

,,

, ,

is also bad if she is silent. She is not allowed to

continue studies and go for a job, whatever marriage
prospects come her way are also destroyed. What a
wicked crowd! They are deliberately trying to
defame her. Even if somebody tries to propose to
her willingly, they would say she baited him. Can
we not refrain from speaking ill of her, even if
we do not sing her virtues? Can we not stop
behaving cruelly towards her, even if we cannot help
her? (CP; p. 126.)
Thus Saraswathi Arnma expresses her righteous indignation and
ar1g-y sarcasm at the unsympathetic treatment meted out to another woman
by her women colleagues .
In "Vivahatrgal" (Marriages), Saraswathy Amma deals with the
problem of a demanding mother-in-law, who is not satisfied by the dowry
brought by her daughter-in-law. The marriage is on the verge of a break up,
but the sheer guts, intelligence and memory power of the newly wedded
bride, succeeds in shaming her in-laws, and thus the younger girl averts the
catastrophe. She saves her marriage when her in-laws come and demand a
settlement by cleverly arguing with them. One of the men who have come for

,../

the purpose finally comments satirically that the younggirl would have fared
better, had she been educated instead o f being married into such an unworthy
family.
Saraswathy Amma does not spare, with the thrust of her forceful
satire, those women who consider themselves fit only for procreation. In
order to reveal her dislike of such women, she makes Booni, the heroine of

her only novel, m a b h a i a n a m send contraceptives as presents to newly

weds. In "Premathinte Pravarthi Mandalam" she makes the heroine sarcastically
ask a filly pregnant woman, who already had a number of babies, which yearly
editiorl the present one is. "Chila chitrangal" satirises the plight of abandoned
wives and sexually exploited women.
Irony is used along with satire in many of Saraswathy Amma's short
storics and her other works. There are ironical endings and unexpected
conclusions to stones much in the manner of 0. Henry. Most of the time it is
situational irony. There is verbal irony when characters are seen to say things
just the reverse of what has happened. Examples of irony of situations are
seer1 in "Ellam Thikanjha Bharya", "Ore Oru Rathri", and "Orukkathinte
Oduvil" and others. Most of her stories parodying the romantic concept of
love are ironical.
In her prose work, Purushanmarillatha Lokam (World without men)
she uses satire and irony profusely. When highlighting the weakness of women
for sensual love, she makes this satiric statement:
"If there is only women left without men, there is no
necessity for love. Just imagine. what would happen
to literature if there is no 'love'. What would

remain if literature is bereft of sweet romances and

descriptions of passionate sexual exploits and
thrilling poems ofdivine love?" (PL; p. 12.)
About the difference o f perspective between husband and wife as
regards a beautifi~llydressed woman they see on the road, Saraswathi Amma
has this to say:
"Imagine a wife and husband observing a beautifully
dressed woman on the road. The wife does not see
anything else except the ornaments, sari, blouse and
the new hairstyle o f the beautiful woman, but the
husband imagines her nude, shapely, without any
ornamentation, and becomes attracted towards
her...." (PL; pp. 13-14)
Saraswathy Amma here sarcastically assures the readers that the
fashion industry would h v e better if the viewers were only women. This is
because women are naturally more bothered about dressing up and showing
off before other women, whereas a man is inclined to prefer a woman in a
state o f undress!
In the humourously ironical essay, "Jnanoru Bharthavayirunnenkil"
(If l wcre a Husband) she imagines herself to be an ideal husband, who in her
view would never oppress his wife. The husband narrator speaks:

"... When we blame women for opportunism by resorting

to tears, and indulging in envious gossip o f
neighbours, and wallowing in sentiments, do we
remember that we have created the circumstances for
this? We have never permitted them to be courageous

in enterprise or develop their intelligence; have we

not considered such qualities inferior in them?
After explicitly encouraging emotionalism in women,
transforming her brains into a receptacle o f
feelings only, calling her, denigrating her into a plaything
or a dummy, does the sarcasm directed against
her have any meaning?'(PL; p. 28)
Saraswathy Amma holds men responsible for turning women into
doorniats or sentimental fools. By imagining herself as a man, a husband,
she exposes by self ridicule the superior attitude o f men in their relations with
women, and that of a husband towards his wife.
Elsewhere, in the same essay, she speaks about Sree Rama from
the epic Ramavana, as adhering to "Ekapatnivrita" ( Vow to have only one
Wife) It is an austere 'vrita' (custom or rite that requires enormous self discipline)
second only to 'Brahmacharya' (the vow o f celibacy). Saraswathy Amma
comments tongue-in-cheek, that it must have required so much self-denial and
moral discipline for a man to have only one wife, when the usual practice o f
the times was, for a king, to have as many wives as possible. Here again she
ridicules the double standard o f morality that is practised by men in
society down the ages. I f a woman is found barren, the man is permitted to
tnarry again, to take as many wives as possible for ensuring children for his
family. This practice is satirised in a short story ,"Pakalum Ravum", where
the younger sister is forced to marry the elder sister's husband when her elder
sister could not bear children. The feelings of the abandoned wife is not
given

much importance, though in this case she prefers that the husband should

marry her younger sister, than an outsider.

In one of her prose pieces, "Jeevitha Rahasyangal" (Secrets of Life),

she sardonically describes a film she went to see for the purpose of sex education.
Being a childless and unmanied woman, Saraswathi Amma is naturally curlous
to learn about the 'secrets' of pregnancy and childbirth to which shc is alien,
and which the film promises to reveal. But the film is shown so censored that
she is disappointed: "...Those open secrets of life were shown in such a mist
of vagueness ..." (43) that she returns from the show more ibmorant about the
'secrets' than before, and much more confused.
In most of the essays in Purushanmarillatha Lokam, she has made
fun of the weak willed nature of women whose sensuous nature makes thern
fall a prey to flattery from men, and so are trapped into affairs that are mostly
based on mere sexual attraction. She mocks at women who use 'tears' and
'smiles' as their weapons to win over men in "Streekalude Randayudhangal
Kannuneerum, Punchiriyum" (The Two Weapons of Women - Tears and
Smiles). Such women are found to use these 'womanly wiles' more than their
intelligence to get their way in the world of men. She quotes examples of
women from the Indian epics and Greek myths like Kaikeye, Draupadi,
Eve,Pandora, Helen of Troy and Cleopatra who make men do whatever
they want to by resorting to either tears or smiles. On this wily nature of weaker
women, she has this to say:
"As the first step to obtain what they destre - even
when they are being blamed - smiles are made use of
first. When this is of no avail, she brings out her tears.
In shod, when coaxing fails pleading takes over.
I do not know why one drop of tear from the eyes of a

tender hearted, helpless woman is said to have more

horse power than the Niagra water falls. As every
quality is relat~velydetermined and as the supporting
edifice is less strong, so the fall of the tear seems
much more forceful". (PL; pp. 54 - 55.)
Here Saraswathy Amma is seen to employ exaggeration in order to
make her satire more effective.
She gives great importance to restricting the family by having lesser
children. She has not spared from her sarcastic ire, women who keep on
trying for male babies, and in the process give birth to more daughters, as in
"Vilakkapetta Vazhi", " Pretnathinte Pravarthimandalam", and "Chila Chitrangal".
In "Kudiss~kayumKoodi" (With Added Interest) she describes the
comic but sad plight of a couple who decide to call it quits after having three
daughters in three consecutive years. They try just once more after a gap of
two years, for a male child. But to their extreme disappointment, this time
they are 'blessed' with twin daughters! Almost as if god is paying them back
with interest for having practised self control for two years.
In "Chila Chitrangal", where Saraswathy Amma describes the phght of
three women who suffer due to male neglect, violence and rape and two of them
end up as prostitutes, she anbyily comments: "Women and feminity have been
thus honoured by man who considers himself emperor of the world!" (124).

She has written many stories which satirise the romantic concept
of love. She hits out at women who willingly become enslaved to men in the
name of love:
"lnspite of seeing all this, is there any decrease
in the numbers of women who wish to believe that all

their happiness lies in the anns o f men? Is it then

a wonder that she has been titled with adjectives
like weak, flirtatious and the like, and laughingly
ridiculed by men? ... This must be nature's clever
way o f maintaining the universe." (SJ; p. 124)
Here her satiric pen becomes vitriolic when she scornfully finds
fault with women, who, inspite of being sexually exploited sufferers, still
masochistically and willingly fall victims to men and their selfish intentions.
There are many short stories that deal with different aspects of love,
like thc child's yearning for the absent father in "Achanevidae?" (Where
is Father?),where the child dies without the father returning and the silently

suffering mother becomes a mute witness to the child's agony. Though the
story is a serious one, the thoughtlessness o f fathers who do not bother about
t h e ~ rwlves and the children they leave behind, is satirised here.
Saraswathy Amrna portrays men as so self centred that they do not
evcn hesitate from having incestuous relations with their own daughters, in
sotnc cases not being aware o f the relationship. The hint is, that men do not
thir~htwice before having physical relations within marriage or outside it with
girls young enough to be their daughters. In "Prathamarathri" (First Night),
the fisther who realises i n time, that he has married and is about to have
relations with his own daughter

~.

undergoes a change of heart. llis shameful

plight is satirically depicted.

In 'Kalamandiram' we have the example o f a committed dance
master with whom one of his girl students becomes infatuated. Hut he is interested
only in hcr art and when she ~ i n e sfor him and dies, he coolly replaces her

with another woman. Her rentimental feelings, which have no power over
him, are dramatised and satirised. Women who are interested only in
impersonal relationships are seen to be maligned by society. In 'Ramani' we
have the example of Saraswathy Amma's spirited defence of Chandrika, the
heroine who is considered selfish by all the conventional readers of
Changampuzha's Rananan. Here the plight of Ramanan is satirised and
ridiculed, even parodied in the story of 'Ramani'.
We see thus that Saraswathy Amma has very effectively used her
pen as an instrument of satire, irony and social criticism.
In Kamala Das, we come across subtle satire and irony. As she is a
much travelled writer, there are satiric descriptions of different regions in
India in her poetry and fiction. She mostly satirises the life of urban middle
class men and women. She describes women and men who have reached
their middle ages and find no real interest in their domestic situations. They
tend to seek change and excitement in extramarital affairs which turn out
sordid due to their own inhibitions and the need for maintaining secrecy as
seen in 'Varalakshmi puja' (The Religious Rite for Goddess Varalakshmi),
'Pattangal' (IOtes), 'Gyanchand', 'Chat? (Cheating) 'Swathanthrajeevikal' (The
Free Birds) 'Arunayude Salkaram' (The Hospitality of Aruna) 'Edanazhikalile
Kannadikal' (The Mirrors in the Corridor) and 'Chaturangam' (Chess).
There is a typical short story, 'Lokam Oru Kavayithriye
Srishtikkunnu' (The World Creates a Poetess) that exposes the hollowness of
the life of a poetess who yearns for love from her husband who could never
provide her with that love. So she takes to having numerous short lived
affi~irswith her admirers during parties that she conducts exclusively for

artists. She comes to realise that her husband could never respect her for her
creative talents. He prefers ignorant but decorative women to an intellectual
thinking wife.
Women, in Karnala Das's stories, even if married, desperately go
from one relationship to another in search of an elusive love and warmth that
they are denied at home from their wedded husbands. A similar theme, in an
autobiographical manner is repeated in Mv Story. There the poetess has
numerous extramarital affairs in search of a loving partner. Her husband,
who is interested only in her body who could never understand the longings
of her mind, has no sympathy for her. The unrequited feelings of love of such
wives are satirised in her works. Realistic, objective portrayals of frustrated
women are seen in her fiction and poetry. She seems to subtly ridicule such
women who uncomplainingly accept their situations in life, not making even
the slightest move to either assert themselves or change their approach to
life.
A representative short story, a perfect example of her subtle satiric

pictures of women, is seen in 'Ammu'. Ammu is the perfect, ideal, uncomplaining

submissive wife, a woman who could win the wholehearted approval of her
husband. Though he has had his flings before marriage, he is afiaid she would
come to hate him if she comes to know of them. So he decides to confess
about his past. But to his great relief and surprise, Ammu is such a loving
woman, she is ready to forgive him for his earlier philandering. She believes
that it is of no consequence if men flirted or had affairs before marriage, just
like conventional women.

This ironic po~lrayalof an ided wife is the dream of cvey convcntionril

man. Kamala Das, by making Amtnu conform to the ideal, but unrealistic
concept, seems to subtly point out the impracticality and improbability of
such a behaviour in a real woman. She makes fun of all men for nursing such
ideals about women, which make it difficult for ordinary thinking women to
live upto these ideals.
We get situational and verbal irony in the short stories of Kamala
Das. In 'A Doll for the Child Prostitute', there is an Inspector who visits the
brothel of Ayee who owns it. He is always courteous to her, and solicitious
about the 'welfare' of the whores. While he has lustful feelings towards
Rukmani, the child prostitute, she considers and even addresses him as 'Papa'.
m Samasya'
There is situational irony in the short story, ' ~ a t h i k a t h ~ aEnna

(Chastity:A Riddle)

where the husband is a despicable man, diseased

and old, with drinking habits, who cheats his young wife of all her property.
He forces her to have illicit relations with his senior officers. But finally
blames her for her loose morals and tells her about a friend's opinion: "He is
thinking of presenting me with a gold medal for thus maintaining a wife like
you who has no moral sense..." (EC;II. 119) at which his wife sarcastically
retorts: "Let Vasupresent it. We can sell it for money next month." (EC;II. 119)
Here 'it' stands not only for the gold mzdal, but also her sense of
moral values that had already been and is now being exchanged for financial
gains by the unscrupulous husband.
There are many instances when young impressionable women are
trapped by lustful men and cheated by them, who refuse to believe that they
have been fooled by these very men, as in 'Janu Paranjha Katha' (The Story

Told by Janu) 'Snehikkapetta Stree' (The Women who was Loved) and the
like. '[he attitudes of blind loyalty to their chosen mates are satirised by
Kamala Das here. A slightly different version is seen in 'Sanathan
Chaudhariyude Bharya' (Sanatan Chaudhari's Wife). Here the husband
suspects his wife's fidelity when he sees in her possession expensive silk
sarees which he could never have afforded to buy her. He follows her to a
rich man's house. She disappears inside. He rings the bell, and is introuduced
to the owner, Sanatan Choudhari, who is a prosperous businessman. Mr.
Choudhari in turn calls his wife, who definitely looks like the hero's wife.
The hero sees them having breakfast together, behaving very naturally as
husband and wife. The woman shows no recognition of her husband who hss
followed her. Inspite of this conclusive evidence against her, the man refuses
to believe that his wife has been cheating him all these five years that they
have been married. Here Kamala Das is satirising the blind faith some have
in their spouses which can lead to disaster in their personal lives.
We get an example of verbal irony in the short story 'The Tattered
Blanket' from her collection Padmavati The Harlot And Other Stories, where
the mother who is old and senile enquires after her son who has been away
for long. He has come to visit her. She does not recognise him, and asks him
about her son, and the new biarket she wishes he would bring her. Xere the
son is a character who distances himself from his mother and neglects her
whereas her affectionate daughter looks after her well.
In the story 'Princess of Avanti', we get a homfj;ing satire on an
old mad woman who is raped by four young shamelessly wicked men. She
believes that she is the princess of Avanti, the youngsters humour her till they

manage to sexually exploit her. That older women arc helpless against
neglect and sexual onslaught is an unpalatable truth exposed by Kamala Das here.
In ' A Little Kitten', Kamala Das describes the cooling off of passion
between a man and wife soon after their marriage. The wife is neglected by
her busy husband and she becomes restless. The husband takes up an affair
with his secrtary, and the wife quarrels with him about this. She asks him to
bring her a kitten for company, and he forgets all about it. A few days later he
notices a great improvement, a glow in her cheek. He also observes a scratch
above her breasts, and asks her whether she has got herself a kitten. She
gives him the impression that she has. As Radha. K. in her ~ a m a l Das,
a
an
analysis says: "There is subtle irony in the husband's failure to understand
how his wife regained her health" (48). Here the incident of the wife fooling
the husband by taking a lover and paying him back in the same coin has been
described.
In 'Coroner'. a tax collector recounts the story of his only son who
has died recently, to a sympathetic client. He is able to recover the body due
to his influence over the coroner after the inquest. The irony lies in the father's
undue pride about his 'influence' than in the death and grief for the loss of
his son.
In stories like 'Chithabbam' (Neurosis), 'Gyanchand, 'Chaturangam'
(Chess) she satirises the fate of married women who have to put up an appearence
of happy conjugality in Front of the world, though their mamiages are failures.
The mask that they habitually wear for society is ripped apart scornfully by
Kamala Das.

In her fictional autobiography, Mv Stow, she exposes with satire

the silent suffering of her family women, who are only seen, but never heard.
They are old fashioned prudes who never mention sex.
Kamala Das describes her own plight ironically. Manied to a merely
lustful man many years her senior, she misses the warmth of an understanding
and considerate partner. Her marriage becomes a near failure, though she
tries her best to love him. Mv Stow contains many sarcastic comments about
the incompatibility Setween the husband and wife. There is self mockery in the
use of a powerful metaphor like the 'national flag' when she speaks of the
'exalted' state of wifehood:

"I would be a middle class house wife, and

walk along the vegetable shop carrying a string
bag and wearing faded chappals on my feet. I would
beat my thin children when they asked for expensive
toys, and make them scream out for mercy. I would
wash my husband's cheap underwear and hang it out
to dry in the balcony like some kind of a national
flag, with wifely pride ..." (MS; p. 85.)
The picture of an average bored middle class house wife which she
hated, comes through in this description. She has described the experience
on her first night after marriage as an unsuccessful attempt at rape. She
carries out her duties as a wife with a mere sense of obligation as she gives
up hope of ever getting real warmth and love from her insensitive lustful
husband.
Kamala Das speaks out satirically, in loud and bold words against
her husband - im'tant in her poetry and comments that after marrying her he

walked more erect. According to K.R. Ramachandran Nair, in his article

"Nair Ethos" in The Poetry of Kamala Das, it is:

... only an ironic prelude to the husband's

"

despicableness in surrendering to every fair

skinned maid servant. He is erect
only physically and not morally.

...Irony is a civilised way of protest in

poetry. Kamala Das makes use of it tellingly." (91)
This comment can be applied to her fictional and other prose works
also. A sarcastic or satiric manner is unavoidable in ironic statements.
Vcrbal Irony is implicit in these words in her poem 'Herons', "my ragdoll
limps adjust better to his versatile lust. (9.10. BOKD. 52)
Here she mocks the uncontiollable sexual nature of her husband:
even when she is sick and on drugs, she is not spared, in fact, he thinks that
her li~rtbsare more pliable then.
An ironic content and structure are seen in poems fiom her collection
'The Best of Kamala Das like 'Composion', 'The Inheritance', 'Nani', 'An
Introduction" and other poems. Rarnachandran Nair, in his essay 'Words' says
that the irony in her poetry has four purposes:
"...it clarifies the theme and deepens the impact;
it functions as a comment on social practices,
situations and persons; it channelises
rebelliousness and despair along civilised pathways
of protest and finally it expresses a mature sense
of resignation and compromise with the sorrows of
the world." (1 18)

Almost all these intentions can be seen in her use pf irony and satire
in her fictional and other works. Instead of the bold bald statements of
Saraswathy Amma, Kamala Das has succeeded in presenting issues in a more
refined and indirect manner.
Kamala Das (Madhavikutty) has written exquisitely ironic stories
like "Naipayasam" (Ghee Dessert), "Koladu" (Goat), "Madhaviyude Makal"
(Madhavi's Daughter)and "Raktharbudam" (Blood Cancer), and we get
satiric pictures o f women who suffer neglect and of those who
neglect their own families for the sake of others. In "Naipayasam", she
describes the death of a mother who has been all the time involved in the well
being of the famiiy. Even on the day she dies she has prepared with great
love some ghee dessert, a favourite dish of her children. She dies suddenly
after her duties at home; her husband realises her value only after her death.
His attitude is satirised here, when he gets irritated at the thought that his
wife has burdened him with her responsibilities also. He allows the innocent
children, as yet unaware of her death and burial, to eat the Naipayasam
prepared by her for the last time, which is ironic, as it is against tradition to
eat food prepared before death, in a house where death has just occurred.
In 'Koladu' a woman looks after her family so much that she
is indifferent to her health a;ld looks as emaciated as a lean goat. She is
ridiculed by her husband and children for looking like a 'Koladu', they never
realise her true worth. Even on her deathbed, she is bothered about the dal
burning in the kitchen. It is at the moment of the untimely demise of his
home bound wife, that the husband comes to understand her value, which is
extremely ironic.

In "Madhaviyude Makal", we have the example of a servant maid,

in dire economic need, who has to leave her ailing child in order to take up
her duty of looking after the master's child. The extreme irony of fate, when
she knows her own child is dying of disease, and she may never see her alive,
does not deter her from going away, saying: "I shall go in the earliest bus
tomorrow morning. The child there will not drink milk if I am not present
there," (194) reveals the blind sense of loyalty she has for her employer's
child, much as she grieves over her own child's fate.
In 'Raktharbudam' (Blood Cancer) we get a reprehensibly satiric

picture of a mother who sends her olily child to a boarding school in order to
give her modem, anglicised education. The child as well as the father, is
dead against the arrangement. Finally when the child is known to be suffering
from blood cancer, the mother decides to keep her at home. The irony of fate

is evident here when the child was alive and healthy, the mother denied it an
existence at home, but only when she was dying, was she allowed to stay at
home.
"Mathilukal" (Walls) expresses the ironic predicament of a middle
aged man who feels alienated from his family, the very family whose fortunes
he has built up with great effort and loving care.
There are many stories that describe sentimentally ironic scenes
at hospitals, where patients, usually the wives, are on their deathbed. Their
husbands are seen waiting upon them, either with sympathy and love, or with
relief as in "Pachappattu Sari" (Green Silk Sari) and "Abharanangal" (Jewels).
Those husbands who desire the death of their spouses, for their own selfish
reasons, go to the extent of even getting their wives murdered, making use of

professional killers as in, "Rohini". Here the wife Rohini is mentally disturbed
and childless, who is unaware of her husband's intentions of wanting to rid
himself of her. He arranges amurderer on rent, who has sexual relations with
her and finally kills her.
In 'Neettivacha Madhuvidhu' (Postponed Honeymoon) the writer
makes the ending even more ironic, with a twist in 0. Henry fashion. Here
both the husband and wife are fed up with each other, carrying on affairs
behind their backs. They try to keep up appearances, and decide to go on a
belated honeymoon trip. The husband arranges a professional killer to get rid
of his wife during their train journey. The wife is strangled to death, and her
cries die down amidst the deafening sounds of the running train. The murderer
reports to the husband, demanding his wages which is thousand rupees. The
husband gives him the money and asks him to get down at the next
station.
It is then that the murderer smiles and informs him that he has one
more duty to accomplish. The dead wife's lover has already given him two
thousand rupees for murdering the husband. Before the shocked husband
can register what the fellow means, the murderer finishes him off too. Here
we have a perfect example of situational and verbal irony: when the killer
says: "Sengupta Sahib has also @venme money, two thousand ... what'? (391).
There is a story, 'Sahrudayar' (Admirers) in which Ms. Das satirises
the lack of appreciation in people who can never enjoy good poetry. A poet
neglects his wife, children and home due to his involvement in poetry, but
finally realises that it is not worth it. There is nobody who welcomes him or
his poetq except his wife. Even she cannot understand his talent in creativity, so
he decides to mend his ways at least on the home fiont.

In 'Chandanachita' (Sandalwood Pyre) sht: makes fun of the feelings

of a son who always neglects his mother when she was alive. 13e is a prosperous
businessman. On her death, he decides to cremate her in all grandeur, using
expensive sandalwood logs for the pyre. Just like him, the hypocritical
emotions displayed by her other sons and daughters-in-law are also ridiculed
by Kamala Das. They argue over who will inherit her diamond earnings,
which are to be found nowhere.
In her Mv Story and a few short stories, which can be considered

autobiographical, she hits back at people who have found fault with her life,
her relations with her husband, and other friends. She speaks with derision
of those who never bother to help her when she is sick, but always interfere
in her personal affairs, spreading scandals about her.
In 'Emennum Tara' (Always Tara), a satire on mechanisation, she
speaks about a woman, who is so attuned to her husband's desires that
she loses her thinking power and actually turns into a robot of her scientist
husband.
Shashi Deshpande uses satire and irony to reveal the attitudes of
society towards women. Her writings are a scathing critique of our Indian
society and its values, that have always accorded only a secondary status to
its women, down the ages. In Deshpande we get women in a state of flux,
undergoing mental conflicts and in the process, trying to establish a new identity

as strong ind~viduals.In many of her short stories, she highlights the weaknesses
of Indian women who are unable to protest, either due to their conditioning
or for the sake of safety, security and harmony in their married lives. They
are mostly presented as objects of derision. There is very little of humour or

wit in Ms. Deshpande. She is mostly serious even when she uses the satiric
tone. At the most she can be intensely sarcastic.
In Roots and Shadows , she makes fun of the usual practice of
Hindu women who hesitate to mention their husband's names.

"... That's just to fiighten the women. To keep them

in their places. And poor fools, we do just that. What
connection can there be between a man's longevity and
the wife's calling him by name? It's as bad as praying
to the tulsi to increase his life span" (RS; p. 35)
At one stroke, she undermines the custom of Hindu women who
circumambulate the tulsi plant, light a lamp near it, and pray to it for the
longevity of their husbands. Indu the heroine, through whom Deshpande
speaks, not given to such customs, considers herself above such superstitious
beliefs.
She is aware that the traditional ideal of a perfect wife is one who
is so self-effacing that she has no identity of her own, but that which she
gains through serving her husband. She is afraid of such a change in her life:

"Am I on my way to becoming an ideal woman? A woman who sheds her 'I'
who loses her identity in her husband's?" (54) Though she is fearhl and
scornhl of such an image of herself, at times, by habit, she behaves thus with
her husband :
... This is my real sorrow that I can never be complete in

"

myself. .. that there was, somewhere outside me, a part

of me without which I remained incomplete. Then I
met Jayant, And lost the ability to be alone." (RS; p. 34)

Her questioning attitude and cleverness put off others in her family.
She bitterly, satirically agrees with Old Uncle who tells her: "For a woman,
intelligence is always a burden, Indu. We like our women not to think." (36)
Her marriage has taught her, she claims, the 'gift of silence.' Not
to open her mouth if she feels that she would embarrass others by doing so.
Indu hesitates to have a cup of tea before washing and brushing;it
is a wmpulsion in her. Jayant laughingly calls it her "natural fastidiousness"(38).
She feels, with a touch of sarcasm, that underneath, she is still the same
traditional woman.
"Same taboos, same fetishes, under a different name.
Sometimes I have the sneaking suspicion that our
ancestors are going to have the last laugh on us after
all". (RS; p. 38)
Yet by honestly writing about her past life, she has voiced her
resentment about being tradition bound.
When her niece Minu's maniage is fixed, she remembers an aunt
telling an earlier bride: "Now your punishment begins, Narmada. You have
to pay for all those saris and jewels."(77) Though spoken in a bantering tone,
the idea comes through that, for a woman, the price she has to pay for all the
luxury she craves for is a 'punishment', that it :.3 an enslavement to the husband.
With great scorn and sarcasm, she feels that marriage makes her

wear a mask:
"I had found in myself an immense capacity for

deception. I had learnt to reveal to Jayant nothing but

what he wanted to see, to say to him nothing but what

he wanted to hear. I hid my responses and emotions

as if they were bits of garbage." (RS; p. 41)

The hypocrisy she practised in her marriage makes her act dishonest
to herself. Wheq they decide not to have children, they make numerous
excuses like, they cannot afford it, and they cannot get a servant, who is
reliable. In truth, she does not want a child that is not really welcome - she
has to face taunts from women of her family for not having children.
lndu has a revulsion for her womanhood. This is because, when
she came of age the ladies of the house reminded her. "... for four days now
you are unclean. You can't touch anyone or anythg'. And that had been m y
introduction to the beautiful world of being a woman. I was unclean. (87)
She reflects on the state of womanliness with bitter sarcasm.
She becomes bitingly satirical about the general fate of woman in
accordance with the traditions and conventions in India:
"To get married, to beat children, to have sons and
then grandchildren ... they were still for them the only
successes a woman could have I had almost forgotten
this breed of woman since I had left home!' (RS; p. 128)
The irony lies in the fact that Indu is talking about her own people.
They are least impressed about her academic qualifications. They have
disqualified her from their purview as they consider her barren.
At times Indu seems to be having a superiority complex when she
looks down upon her relations, especially the women.
"These women ... they are called Kaku and Kaki, Atya
and Vahini, Ajji and Mami. As if they have to be

recognised by a relationship, because they have no

independent identity of their own at all." (RS; p. 128).
She resents the fact that they surrender their real names very lightly.
When she advises Mini to think well before plunging into the marriage
arranged for her, she replies: "What choice have I, Indu?" (137). She reveals
the irony of fate that makes her have no choice in taking the most important
decision in her life and Ms. Deshpande, through Indu, comments:
"Millions of girls had asked this question millions of
times in the country. Surely it was time they stopped
asking it ?. What choice have I? Surely it is this, this
fact that I can choose, that differentiates me from
the arimals. But years of blind folding can obscure
your vision so that you no more see the choices ..."

(RS;pp. 137-138).
And Mini's retort is typical: "I don't care what kind of a man he is.
Once we are married, and he becomes my husband, none of his faults will
matter" (139). To this Indu reacts thus: "The Indian way. The husband. A
definite article. Permanent. Not only for now, but for ever. To be accepted".
( 139-140) - She has packed a lot of satire in this punch at ideal Indian wifehood.

In her encounter with Naren, though he is the black sheep of the

family, he dislikes her advice and speaks back. "...All women are reformers at
heart. Look at you now... all out to reform Indian womanhood." (165). He is

a cynical man aud does not believe in Indu's efforts to modernize Indian
women including herself. His words are sardonic.
Naren wants to bathe in the pond literally, "to wash away my sins...",
and continues, "I must say our ancestors were a complacent lot. They obviously

thought their sins went only skin deep" (189 - 190). This is a purposeful, lighthearted
dig at the conventional Brahmin's habit of taking a ritual bath every day.
When reflecting on her own condition, which is the condition of an
average female, she comments satirically.
"As a child, they had told me 1 must be obedient and
unquestioning. As a girl they had told me I must be
meek and submissive. Why? I had asked. Because
you zre a female. You must accept everything, even
defeat with grace because you are a girl, they said. It
is the only way, they said, for a h a l e to live and sunive."
(RS; p. 174)
She has initially laughed at them, but later has to acquiesce when
she meets and mames Jayant. She has lost her identity with it:
"... that I had clung tenaciously to Jayant, to my
maniage, not for love alone, but because I was afraid
of failure. I had to show them that my marriage, that

I, was a success. Show whom ? The world. The

family, of course." (RS; pp. 174 - 175)
This is the reason she gives for her pretence of harmony in
marriage, though really she has become cynical about love and lost faith in it:
"It's a big fraud, a hoax, that's what it is. They tell
you it's the greatest thing, the only thing in life. And
you helieve them and fall into the trap ... And become
humble and dependent." (RS; P. 173)
She believes only in the sexual and maternal instinct from her own
experience.

In her novel The Dark Holds No Terrors, Ms. Deshpande is even

more bitier and cynical in her statements. They are 1 1 1 of a biting and scornful
satire. Most of the comments by the author voiced through the main character
Sarita, a lady doctor, are reflections upon her own conditions in life as well as
generalised statements about the life of women in Indian society.
When she muses upon her difficulty to take decisions due to
various pressures of her family and career, she feels:
"If only she had belonged to another time, where a
woman had no choice but go on ... It was so much
easier for women in those days to accept, not to
struggle, because they believed, they knew, there was
nothing else for them. And they called that Fate."
(DH NT; p. 70)
When Sarita returns to her parental home, more as an escape fkom
the sadistic intentions of her husband, he writes letters showing his concern.
He is not aware of why she has left home. She muses with satiric anger :
"What right had he to blithely assume that all was well
between them, that her feelings for him were
unchanged, that whatever was wrong had nothing to
do wi+.hhim? The ego of the male ... unwilling to
believe that he had lost the art of pleasing, assuming
that marriage, possession, gave him a life long right to
affection, love and respect." (DHNT; p. 72)
Thus she sums up the general attitudes of egoistic, chauvinistic
Indian males in their marriages and their possessiveness over their family
members, especially the wives.

Like Indu, Sarita also has contracted a love m.arriage. But the ardour
of love soon fades. leaving behind a sense of disillusionment:
"Love... how she scorned the word now. There was no
such thing between man and woman. There was only
a need which both fought against, futilely, the very
futility turning into the thing they called 'love'. It's
only a word, she thought. Take away the word, the
idea, and the concept will wither away." (DHNT; p. 72)
Here again love has been equated to mere physical need.
Saru, the lady doctor calls herself mockingly a "ventriloquist's
durnmyV(22),the 'ventriloquist' being her profession. She feels that she:
"...smiles, laughs, and talks only because of the ventriloquist"(22) without
which she would regress to being a 'lifeless puppetf(22). There is a speech she
has to give about the career of a doctor, whether it is suitable for girls. Instead of
the prepared speech, she imagines telling the girls with great sarcasm:
"A wife must always be a few feet behmd her husband.

If he is an MA, you should be a BA. If he is 5 feet 4

inches tall, you shouln't be more than 5' 3" tall. If he
is earning five hundred rupees, you should never earn
more than four hundred and ninety nine rupees. That's
the only rule to follow if you want a happy marriage.
Don't ever try to reverse the doctor - nurse, executive

- secretary, principal - teacher role.

It can be traumatic,

disastrous. ... Women's magazines will tell you that a

marriage should be an equal partnership. That's
nonsense. Rubbish. No partnership can ever be equal.

I t will always be unequal, but take care that it's

unequal in favour o f your husband." (DHNT; p. 137).

She continues satirically:
"And so you must pretend that you're not as smart as
you really are, not as competent as you are, not as
rational as you are and not as strong either. You can
nag, complain, henpeck, whine, moan, but you can
never be strong. That's a wrong which will never be
forgiven."

(DHNT; p. 137)

She thus blasts the general unwritten rules regarding the social conduct
of woman, and man's superior ego which prevents him from accepting a woman
who is cleverer than him or earns better than him or is more educated than
him. Saru feels, reflecting on her own life, that :
"Everything in a girl's life, it seemed, was shaped to
that single purpose o f pleasing a male. But what did
you d o when you failed to please? There was no
answer to that." (DHNT; p. 163)
When Manu objects to her better job and pay subconsciously, he
always supports it outwardly. With his pay alone they can never afford the
luxury they now have in life. S o he becomes an intolerable sadist at night,
torturing Santa physically during sex. He cannot remember anything in the
mornings, so she hesitates to talk it out with him. She therefore puts up with
everything silently, for the sake o f the children. This, inspite o f being an
independent career woman.
The sar-c. theme is repeated in one o f Shashi Deshpande's short
stories, ' 4 Liberated Woman'. Through these two fictional dramatizations of

the predicament oS career women, Ms. Deshpllnde makes clear the irony in
the lives of so called 'liberated' women who are financially indeperident.
Indian society places such a high value on family relations and relations
between couples, that even if they are unhappy, they dare not express it. We
see the use of situational irony in these stones.
In the case of Sarita, it is ironic that it is the father, whom she
always considers a negative man, incapable of strong feelings, being always
dominated by her mother, and therefore always avoiding confrontation, who
finally helps her. He urges her to confront her troubled situation in life and to
talk things out with Manohar with more courage and openness.
In the novel That Long Silence, we meet Jaya who undergoes mental
conflicts. She goes through an introspection of her own self, analysing her
actions and situations in life; not only of her past but also of her present
married status. She considers herself an exemplary wife to Mohan. When a
crisis occurs and he has to remain under cover, she goes with him. She
reflects satirically: "... Sita following her husband into exile, Savithri dogging

Death to reclaim her husband, Draupadi stoically sharing her husband's travails..."
(1 1). She compares herself to these mythical heroines, but finds herself wanting
as she has started to question her husband's expectations about her. She no
longer concedes him any authority. She rejects the image of those mythical
women. She is not prepared to take on the burden of her husband's liability
now, though her earlier self might have done so. She looks back with wry
amusement at the figure she has presented earlier: "... the Suhasini who was
distinct fiom Jaya, a soft, smiling, placid, motherly woman. A woman who lovingly

numaed her family. A woman who coped."(quotation repeated; TLS; 15-16)

Jaya is renamed Suhasini, as is the usual,practice among some

communities, after her marriage. Jaya considers Suhasini as her 'other' self,
who represents just an average, unthinking woman, different from her
critical, analytical self she presents to the world as Jaya. About Suhasini, she
speaks derogatively and satirically, who believes in the motto :
"Stay at home, look after your babies, keep out the
rest of the world, and you're safe. That poor idiotic
woman Suhasini believed in this. I know better now.
I know that safety is always unattainable." (TLS; p. 17)

With great self contempt for the ideal and traditional picture of a
woman she has represented in the image of Suhasini, Jaya satirises herself.
She contrasts both these images: Suhasini, who "had scrubbed and cleaned
and taken an inordinate pride in her achievements, even in a toilet free from
stains and smells." (13) Jaya enjoys the comparative freedom, when they
take refuge in the Dadar flat:

"1 was free, after years, of all those monsters that had
ruled my life, gadgets that had to be kept in order, the
glassware that had to sparkle, the furniture and curios
that had to be kept spotless and dust free, and those
clothes, God, all those never - ending piles of clothes
that had to be washed and ironed, so that they could
be worn and washed and ironed once again." (TLS; p. 25)
Here Ms. Deshpande, through Jaya is satirising the endless routine
jobs that take up the major part of an average woman's life. As Simone De
I3eauvoir has said in her book, The Second Sex:

"In domestic work, with or without the aid of servants,

woman makes her home her own, finds socialjustification,
and provides herself with an occupation, an activity,
that deals usefully and satisfyingly with material
objects

- shining stores, fresh, clean clothes, bright

copper, polished fiuniture - but provides no escape from

immanence and little atfirmation of individuality." (470)

She continues:
"Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than
housework, with its endless repetition: 'the clean
becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over,
day after day. The house wife wears herself out marking
time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the
present." (470)
Shashi Deshpande's satiric description echoes the sentiments
expressed by Simone De Beauvoir. These activities are the practically necessary
ones which are not recognised and provide no real identity to the housewife,
though she may imagine herself as De Beauvoir says: "Only independent work
of her own can assure woman's genuine independence" (493). If a woman
tries to live only through her husband and children, she will soon suffer an
ennui.
Jaya's husband Mohan considers silent suffering of women as a
strenb$h. His mother, Jaya's mother-in-law, used to put up with the unreasonable
denlands of her domineering husband, Mohan's father, without a word of protest.
When Mohan sees strength in this attitude, Jaya sees "a despair so great that
it would not voice itself. I saw a struggle so bitter that silence was the only

weapon. Silence and surrender." (36)

Her sister-in-law Vimala, tormented by her in laws for not begetting

a child, dies of ovarian turnour, bleeding to death but silently safeguarding
her secret till her death. The photos of both these women, after their death
are put up and worshipped. Here Jaya comments sarcastically of the Indian
habit of revering the dead, though they may have been neglected during their
life time.
Jaya's fiiend and well wisher Kamat, finds fault with her concern
about her 'duties' of a wife, that she performs well in the role of Suhasini:
"Making others dependent on you. It increases your sense of power. And
that's what you really want, all you bloody looking - after - others, caring for- others women". (84). Here Kamat is stating a truth that is real for many
housewives like Jaya. By catering to the demands of their family with servility,
the woman makes them so dependent on her that they become helpless, and
she feels that they are in her power. In contrastto this attitude of conventionalwomen,
the modem liberated woman seeks power and equality in relations by means
of bold self-assertion. Both such conventional women and modem women
thus seek empowerment in relations with men, though the means adopted are
different.
Earlier, in the self of 'Suhasini', she has religiously followed the
ethics of women's magazines about which she speaks with great sarcasm .
"Don't let yourself go. How to keep your husband in love with you. Keep
romance alive in a marriage..." (96). She reflects on these misleading statements
and satirically comments.:
"...it was rid~culous,he would have slept with me fithfully
twice a week whether 1 brushed by face or not whether I
brushed m
y hair a hundred times or not, whether 1 wanted
him to or not - yes, there had been that too". (TLS; p 56)

This is a criticism about the general duty bound, faithful nature of

the average, conventional Indian male. He is not bothered about how his
wife 'makes up' for him, as long as she is a home maker.
Ms. Deshpande, through these comments also bursts the bubble of
vanity and frivolousness that an average middle class woman, or for that matter
any woman who bothered too much over her appearance, cultivates, in order
to 'catch' and 'keep' their chosen men. x i s e & a t W O m e n & o m a k e
marriage their only goal or career in life, and have no identity other than that
of being wives and mothers.
Ms. Deshpande even makes fun of the Marxian statement, ' that
the relation of man to woman is the most natural of one person to another",

applying it to 3aya's own predicament and her estrangement with Mohan.

She comments : "Natural? there's only treachely ,only deceit, only betrayal".
(158) But when she finally realises her true self, at the end of her introspection,
she realises her mistake. In providing a satire of herself she says ironically:
"I'm Mohan's wife, I had thought, and cut off the bits of me that had refused
to be Mohan's wife. Now I know that kind of a fragmentation is not
possible." (191) She has to be accepted as a whole personality with her good
as well as her bad points.
Ms. Deshpande comes out as a serious satirist in her works, with
very little of humour or gentleness. This is seen in her shorter fiction also. In
'Death of Child' we see a mother grieving over the death of an aborted,
unborn child, she has become pregnant with. The irony of the situation, which
is attitudinal, is that this abortion was initiated by the mother herself who
feels guilty about it later on.

In the s h i t story 'A Man and a Woman', we see verbal and situational
irony in a situation where a cripple proposes to a widow, thlnking that she
also is handicapped being a widow and she objects to the proposal saying.
"What will people say?" (ITN; p. 39) Actually she ismasking, in these words,
her own reluctance to marry a cripple.
'The Sweet Antidote' is comparable to Kamala Das's 'A Little
Kitten'. Here an important character is a housewife who depends too much
on the maidservant who suddenly takes ill, showing signs of fatigue, and is
laid up. The housewife becomes frantic and calls in a doctor, from whose
view point the story is written. The doctor examines the servant, finds nothing
wrong with her, except that she needs a 'man', her illness is the result of
sexual frustration
Later, the doctor and his wife are invited for a party at the
housewife's place, who is in fact, the wife of his boss. The doctor finds the
house wife quite cheerful, and the maid servant glowing with health, attending to
her job efficiently. Only, his boss did not seem to be pleased, glaring at him
angrily at times. The doctor understands the reason, telling hls wife who did
not quite get it: "You fool, she's made him do it!" (ITN; p. 77) which means
that his boss has been forced by the housewife to substitute for the servant
girl's sexual partner, which he must have done unwillingly. The doctor and
his wife have a good laugh over the irony of the situation. This is the only
short story of the kind in Shashi Deshpande that has a hint of humour in it.
The moral depravity of the so called respectable men is satirised in
the story. 'And what's a Son?' also. In both 'A Sweet Antidote', and in 'And
What's a son?' the men become immoral with the full knowledge and
'concurrence of their wives.

In 'And what's a son?' the stov is about a grandfather and grandmother

living alone because, their only son has died in an accident. The grandmother
welcomes a pregnant girl into the house, whom the hero, who is their family
friend, mistakes to be her daughter-in-law. This girl performs the task of a
servant in the house. Soon after delivery she is no longer to be seen. They
bring up the child. It is only after the death of the grandfather, the hero understands
that the child being brought up is none other than the old man's. As the
grandmother explains. "I've had trouble before, ... With servant women. It
was his weakness." (ITN; p.23) Here the irony of the situation is in the fact
that the old woman understands her husband's,weakness and acts accordingly.
There are many stories that repeatedly reveal the sufferings of

wanan due to the tyranny of their lovers or husbands, and of the women
stoically putting up with everything in silence. By opening up and writing
about such women satirically, Ms. Deshpande has succeeded in at least
voicing her resentment towards life that treats them thus.
She has also satirised the empty show of pomp and revelry of
persons in high positions and the loneliness in the lives of such women like in
"171e First Lady". Here, a day in the life of a President's wife, ils utter futility
as far as she is concerned, is described.
About hrr first novel, The Tiger's Dauhter, in an interview with Alison
B. Carb in The Massachusetts Review, Bharathi Mukherjee says : "My first

novel, The Tiger's Daughter, has a rather British feel to it. I used the omniscient
point of view and plenty of irony". (649) Satire and gentle irony are used
profusely by Ms. Mukhej e e when describing the experiences of Indian women
abroad either as immigrants, or when they return to India for visit, as is seen
in The Tiger's Dauhter.

'I'ara's father has searched for a suitable bridegroom while she has
been studying abroad ? h e boy they have first approved of, turns out to be
unworthy of.fara. Meanwhile Tara falls in love with and marries a foreibmer,
David Cartwright. .4fter a few years in America she comes to India on a visit
and finds a change in her homeland. She starts viewing, everything with a
perspective coloured by her stay abroad. She scorns and abhors the dirt and
poverty, the manners o f her former friends, the laziness that cornes o f
opulence and the luxury in her home, in fact, almost everything that she has
been used to formerly. The houses on the Marine Drive, which she has
admired earlier, now shocks her with their shabbines. Ms. PJlukerjee seerns
to satirically speak about the sudden change o f Tara's ideas on India.
The return to India has been what she has dreamt about tor years,
but now she finds it most hurtful.
'First the corrosive hours on the Marine Drive, then
the deformed beggars in the railway station, and now
the inexorable train ride steadily undid what strength
she had held in reserve.' (TTU; p. 25)
She has even started thinking like an American, getting embittered
and cynical about the apathetic conditions in India. She wants to share her
experiences with her tiiends, especially the unpleasant ones which she could
not talk to David about, as he would never understand. But she senses that
her fiiends want t o know only about the glarnoul- and good things of.4merican
lire:
.''I.hey werc racial purists. thought 'lira dcsperatcly.
.l'hey liked torcigners in t n o ~ i c magazines ... They

loved Enghshmen like Winthington at the British Council.

>>

But they did not approve of foreign maniage partners...

(TTD; p. 86)

Though she has yearned for the admiration of her Giends as well as
the sense of beingemancipated in daring to marry a foreigner, but she did not
get it. She expects that at least David would appreciate her efforts at cleaning the
toilet or bathtub, which was usually done by servants at her home in Calcutta.
As she reflects :
'There was no heroism for her in New York. It
appeared there would be no romance, no admiration
in Calcutta either. It had been foolish, she knew, to
expect admiration. (TTD; p. 86)
The irony of her situation is that Tara really belongs neither to New
York nor to her home land India. She has become rootless: "The years away
from India had made her self-centered. She took eve-ng,

the heat, the

beggars, as personal insults and challenges." (86)

There is yet another incident that she describes with poignant irony.
She goes for a visit to her Aunt Jharna and her club-footed daughter. In an
effort to reach out to them, she enquires solicitiously whether they had tried
plaster casts for the disabled legs. The Aunt feels offended, and mislmderstands
her intentions:
"You think you are too educated for this, don't you?"
Aunt Jharna laughed with a quiet violence. "You have
come back to make fun of us, haven't you? What gives
you the right? Your American nroney? Your mleccha
husband?

(ITD; p. 36)

b r a ' s syrr~pathie!;and overv;helniing love ate thus wasted on them,

Scrim after the \ ~ S I I :her ~notlierdismisses the whole incident which has shaken

the scnsitivc b r a and proposes to go on a shopping spree. This apparent

capacity to livc in contradictions surprises and amuses Yara
I'lrerc is a chance meeting with TunTunwala, a petty politician, who
on a later occasion rapes her. The author's comment on the incident is
extre~nelysatirical. " l h e seduction o f Tara had been tastefully executed by
l'unl'unwala. .." ( 199)
'l'here

it;

a description o f a picnic party that goes haywire

Icls. blukhc~jee,through ari ironic description of the picnic which includes a

Sashlon show, exposes the frivolous pursuits of upper middle class people.
The women g o o m their daughters for the show. 'They regard this opportunity as
a good one to brighten the marriage prospects of their young daughters.
Con~mentingon the selection of marriage partners, which is solely
a husiness arrangement n India, Ms. Mukherjee says thus in ironic tones.
"When the choice is made and the bargaining over
furniture, ornaments, nulnbcr o f towels to be giverl,
sheets and pillowcases, underwear for the groom,
clothes Sbr the female relatives, all settled with
n~aximunldiscontent, then the Brahmin priest appears
with thc tools 3f his trade. And aftcr a tire has been
lit. and the gods appealed to. and the bridal couple's
clothes joirled in a knot amidst applause ttom
wjtr....... ,\<s,
...

when the guests haye beet1 Ced, and the

servants tipped and scolded, when the children have

fallen asleep in their party dresses, then the groom

takes his bride, a total stranger, and rapes her on a
brand new, flower - decked bed." (TTD; p. 125)
When Tara marries David, she has many doubts about foreigners,
but she dare not speak them aloud.
"But a husband is a creature from whom one hides
one's most precious secrets. Tara had been dutifully
devious in her marriage. She had not divulged her fears
of mleccha men. Did they bathe twice a day? Did
they eat raw beef! Did they too have to hiccup and
belch?" (lTD; p. 125)
As foreigners were considered special. Tara was assailed with such
questions, as if they were not human like others in India. The author's satire
comes through about the unrealistic Indian ideas about foreigners and vice
versa. Tara saw herself as a "victim of a love match". (125)
Before Tara gets married to David, her parents, mainly her father
has gone to great lengths in securing her a worthy bridegroom. She is asked
to safe guard her complexion and be careful about her diet inorder to look
glowing and healthy before marriage. "...her parents wanted her to give up
her studies for at least two months in case it ruined her perfect wrinkle-free
complexion." (128)
In many Indian cities, misery and squalor grow side by side with
luxury and plenty. Tara knows this, but she can not explain it to David, who is
outraged at thls contradiction, as something that Indians took in their stride.
". ..Tara knew

she could never tell David that the misery

of her city was too immense and blurred to be listed

and assailed one by one. That it was fatal to fight for

injustice; that it was better to remain passive and
absorb all shocks as they came." (TTD; p. 13 1)
The contrasting pictures of India and America presented through
the perspective of Taramani are all satiric and at times ironic.
Verbal irony is implicit in the worried outbursts of Reena's mother,
when she reveals her displeasure of the foreigner that Reena falls in love with
Reena being Tara's friend: "I love all things American, yes. But I don't like that
day!" (152). She continues, "I suspect hanky - panky business between that
boy and my girl What if she's prematurely pregnant?" The use of Idanisms
like 'prematurely pregnant' (1 53) makes her attitude look ridiculous.
When David shows his embarrassment at Tara's mother's obsession
with her insurance policies and her habit of having three baths a day, Tara is
quick to discourage his disparaging, satiric westernized outlook. In fact, Tara's
attitude is ambivalent. She still has a yearning for the safety and comparative
security of an Indian family background, with the strong Bengal Tiger, her
father, as its head. Yet the irony lies in the fact that she wants to feel liberated and
influenced by the progressive ideas ofthe west. She is always bothered about
how David would react if he is put in the same situation as that of her's. She
is afraid of his scorn and ridicule about Indian customs, though at times she
also feels intolerant of certain traditions. During parties held in honour of

Tara, she is hesitant and unsettled:

"She was not an unpatriotic person, but she felt very
distant from the passiol~sthat quickened or outraged
her class in Calcutta. Her fiends let slip their disapproval
of her, they suggested her marriage had been imprudent,

that the seven years abroad had eroded all that was
fine and sensitive in her Bengali nature. They felt that
she deserved chores like washing her own dishes and
putting out the garbage. The best that could be said
for David, she sensed, was that he was, nominally at

least, a Christian and not a Muslim," ('ITD; pp. 55 56)

When Pronob, the leader of her group of friends said,
"...but I'd hate to be a nobody in America. How do they
treat Indians, Tara? Tara started guiltily as if
something she had hoped to hide had suddenly been
forced out into the open.

She envied the self

confidence of these people, their passionate conviction

that they were always right." (TTD; p. 59)
It is the loss of identity and rootlessness that Tara suffers in America
as well as in India, on her return as David's wife, that becomes the ironic
content of the novel. The tone of irony continues to the very end, when Tara,
after being subjected to suffering TunTunwala's rape, decides to leave the
country for U.S. But it is once again extremely ironic that Tara fails to reach
the airport, as she is caught in one of the periodic flare ups that are usual in
Calcutta at that time.
It is even more ironic that Mr. Joyonto Roy Chowdhury, who functions

more or less like a chorus in the human drama enacted, who has sympathies
for Tara which she reciprocates, is manhandled by the crowd, but finally saved;
whereas Pronob, a defiantly patriotic man, patronising towards Tara, but
sympathetic to Roy Chowdhury is brutally killed by the mob when he tries to
save Joyonto.

In her novel Wife, we are introduced to the nervous sensibility of

Dimple Dasgupta who is so conditioned by traditional Indian concepts, that
she considers marriage to be the only goal of her existence. In satiric comments
and ironic situations and dialogue, we see the mental disturbance of Dimple
before her marriage and after that.
Before marriage, like any girl of marriageable age, she is worried
about her looks, which can lower her chances of agood match in the marriage
market: "She worried that she was ugly 'worried about her sitar

- shaped

body, and rudimentary breastsW(4),she suffers from 'pre-marriage blues'.

Dimple always feels that "Mamage, she was sure, would free her; fill her
with passion. Discreet and virgin, she waited for real life to begin". ( 1 3) But
the irony of her life is that for her, marriage, instead of freeing her, becomes
an intolerable bondage.
Her husband, Amit Basu, turns out to be a mediocre engineer, who
does not make her realise her dreams of a luxurious, passion filled life. A
satiric comment on the wedding by Ms. Mukherjee: "It was a perfect wedding:
'There were one hundred and five photographs to prove that it was perfect."
(16) As if real life is what is seen in the photographs. As far as Dimple is
concerned, the photos prove to be a sham.
According to her immature, romantic concepts about marriage,
which she must have gleaned fi-om pulp fiction books and other media, Dimple
feels that:
"young married's were always going to decorators and
selecting 'their' colors, especially their bedroom colors.
That was supposed to be the best part ofgetting married:
being free and expressing yourself." (W; p. 20)

The tragic irony of her situation is that she is not able to choose
even the curtains in her bedroom at her in-law's place.
There are many instances of verbal irony. Dimple longs for her husband
to whisper words of love to her, but when he is unable to do so, she says, "But
I want you to say things to me. The way husbands are supposed to" and he
replies: "I'm not good at saying things" (22).
Dimple is too much influenced by Bombay film stars and their ways
of life. She wants, to live like them, in an opulent manner. She does not
realise that she is being unrealistic. Even when Dimple and her husband
emibwate to the U.S., she is not prepared for the harsh reality of their existence in
a small, stu*

flat.
"She realized suddenly that she had expected apartments
in America resemble the sets in a Raj Kapoor movie:
living rooms in which the guests could break into song
and dance, winding carpeted staircases, sunken swimming
pools, billiard tables, roulette wheels, baby grand
pianos, bars and velvet curtains." (W; p. 64)

Bijoy Mullick, husband of Ina Mullick, who has settled in the U.S.,
gives a satiric appraisal of the Indian immigrants through the ideas of his
emancipated wife:
"Ina has this theory about Indian immigrants. It takes
them a year to get India out of their system. In the
second year they've bought all the things they've
hungered for So then they go back, or they stay here
and vegetate or else they've got t o live her.: like
anyone else." (W; p. 76)

He believes that Indians are not really committed to their lives in

the U.S. During parties, when the really westernized Indians put forth very
progressive ideas, Dmple and Amit Basu together put up a subtle resistance to it:
"Dimple always like an ideal wife, waits for cues from
her husband for the right answer before she replies to
any questions. She starts getting disburbed when Ina
shows signs of friendship. Duringa comfortable threesome

with Meena and Ina, when Meena starts to discuss a

recipe that she has read somewhere, Ina questions
disgustingly, and sarcastically: "Don't you ever get
tired of house hold hints?" (91)
Ina is a much more intelligent and liberated person than the other
two females who are dumb about many things. But the men make fun of her
as belonging to the 'Women's lib', and so she is not to be entertained. But the
satirical picture of Ina provides a contrast to the ultra sensitive, highly strung,
neurotic Dimple. When Dimple comments that Ina is not eating, she flares up:
'Why is food our national obsession? Why don't we
mxl<.: more time for happiness? For life?' to which
Dimple retorts with unconscious irony: "I guess its
all that starvation." (W; p. 95)
When Amit does not land a good job, Dimple feels cheated, she
reflects with bitter irony:
"She was bitter that marriage had betrayed her, had
not provided all the glittery things she had imab~ned,
had not bought her cocktails under canopied skies..."
(101-102)

Her daydreams are flights of fancy out of touch with reality. Amit
does not feed her fantasy life, he is considered bitterly only as a provider of
material comforts. Dimple satirically ranks him along with: "blender, colour
TV., Casette tape recorder, Stereo, in their order of convenience." (1 13)

Situational and verbal irony is seen in the incident when Amit, one
day comes late fiom the office, and creeps up behind her. Shocked, she strikes
at him with a small knife with which she is chopping garlic : "All I wanted
was romance," Amit said with a nervous giggle, and look what happened to
me"(128). And she assumes that "...perhaps to make up for his lateness he
had pretended sexual desire". (129)
At times Dimple, with a lot of self pity, thinks about the unfairness
of her life.
"There would be no thrilling demolitions, merely
substitutions. Her tactful domestic virtues and h i t ' s
savuigs would accrue steadily and they would retire to
Calcutta before they were sixty to lead circumspect
lives, envied by those friends who had never left."
(W; p. 150-15 1)

Finally, there is an affair with an American, Milt Glasser on the sly.

She tries her best to hide it from her husband, but Dimple suffers from a guilt

complex because of this. Much as she admires Ina and Milt, she can never

hope to be liberated like them. When Milt almost confesses his love for her,
she bungles everything by asking him about his job, rather than being more
intimate. "I want to know you better. How can 1 know you if I did'nt know
your job?" (200) The irony of the situation is that when Milt wants to hear a

Dimple's middle class inhibitions make her consider.that a man is known by

his job, that a man without a job is no man at all.
She gets so worked up and guilty and confused that she cannot
distinguish or separate her trend of thoughts from what she sees on T.V. The

T.\'. becomes the voice of madness for her with all its shows of violence and
murder. The lack of real communication between her husband and herself
becomes temfyingly lonesome for her. She blames him for her condition.
Finally she decides to acquire her freedom by murdering him while he is
eating, unaware of her intentions. Thus the tale of Dimple ends in macabre
irony.
Just before she kills him, she ironically notices his irritating habit
of spilling sugar on the counter:
"...horrible to have to spend a whole lifetime watching
him spill sugar on counters, ...but he never thought of
such things, never thought how hard it was for her to
keep quiet and smile though she was falling apart like a
very old toy that had been played with, sometimes quite
roughly, by children who claimed to love her." (W; p. 2 12)
She stabs him seven times, again ironic, as it is symbolic of the
seven steps taken by a Hindu bridal couple during the mamage rite to invoke
blessings for a long married life.
In her novel 'Jasmine' Mukherjee adopts a satiric tone, when
talking about Jasmine's birth in a remote Punjabi village.
"But daughters were curses. A daughter had to be
married off before she could enter heaven, and dowries

beggared families for generations. Gods with infinite

memories visited girl children on women who needed to
be punished for sins committed in other incarnations. "
(J; P. 39)

The birth of a boy was glorified according to Indian custom. The

tone of irony and sarcasm is evident in the criticism about Indian women who
were unlucky:
"All over our district, bad luck dogged dowryless
wives, rebellious wives, barren wives. They fell into
wells, they got run over by trains, they burned to death
heating milk on kerosene stoves." (J; p. 41)
Men from cities preferred village girls as they are very pliant, and
not very intelligent:
"...The cousin, a large dogmatic woman, said that bigcity men prefer us village girls because we are brought

up to be caring and have no minds of our own. Village

girls are like cattle; whichever way you lead them, that
is the way they will go." (J; p. 46)
Jyothi wants to study and become a doctor. The reactions of her
father and grand mother are shockingly ridiculous. Her father: "The girl is
mad! 1'11 write in the back of the dictionary. The girl is mad!". (51) The
grandmother, supported hun, saying: "Blame the mother. Insanity has to come
from somewhere. It's the mother who is mad" ( 5 1 ) She does not lose her
chance to have a satiric dig at her daughter-in-law, who supports Jyothi in her
ambition to study, for which she has to suffer even physical iorture from her

husband. But ironically her mother wins the argument: "She smiled so wide
that the fresh split in her upper lip opened up and started bleeding again" (52)
says Jyothi, poignantly. Her mother had even tried to kill her when she was
born, but she has survived the sniping. After that, her mother always
supports her.
About how she fell in love with ~ r a k a s hshe
, says in a lighthearted
tone: "Love rushes through thick mud walls. Love before first sight that's
our Hasnapuri way" (67). She ridicules rustic Punjabis who liked to show off
their material possessions.

"People kept their windows open and their television

and stereos blaring. What was the point of owning
high status goods if nobody knew you owned them?
Punjabis were so rich!" (J, p. 88)
Due to a traBc irony of fate, when Sukhwinder, a Sikh aims at
killing Jyothi, as he considers all Hindu women as whores, he mistakenly lulls
Prakash. Though a widow, she decides to continue her husband's mission of
going to the U.S.; she lands there on a forged passport in: "national airlines
flying the world that do not appear in any direct0ry... They serve no food, no
beverages. Their crew often look abused" ( 100). This is a sardonic comment
on the plight of helpless unauthorised ticketless travellers the world over.
When she has to put up with Prof. Vadhera's family, she satirically
notices the lot of the Professor's mother :
"In India the groom's mother was absolute tyrant of
the household. The young bride would quiver under
her commands. But in New York, with a working wife,
the mother-in-law was denied her venomous authority."
(J; p. 147)

The relation between the Professor and his wife is satirised as: "He
was following an ancient prescription for marital accord: silence, order and
authority. So was she: submission, beauty, innocence." (161) Jasmine choses
to rebel against this code in her relations with men when she lives in the U.S.
Jasmine says:
" l n this apartment, of artificially maintained
Indianness, 1 wanted t o distance myself from
everything Indian, everything Jyoti - like. To them, 1
was a widow who should show a proper modesty of
appearance and attitude. If not, it appeared I was
competing with Nirmala." (J; p. 146)
As an Indian widow, in an Indian household, Jasmine has to live
modestly. When she understands her own difference in nature, she satirizes,
herself highlighting the differences between Jyothi Vijh, Jasmine and Jane,
the three alternating selves in her.
"I should have saved; a cash stash is the only safety

net ... Jyoti would have saved. But Jyoti was now a
sati-goddess... Jasmine lived for the future, for Vijh
& Wlfe. Jase went to movies and lived for today...

Profligate squandering was my way of breaking with

the panicky, parsimonious ghettos of Flushing.
For every Jasmine the reliable care-giver, there is a
Jase the prowling adventurer." (JP; 176)
Her favourable but slightly humourous comment about Taylor, who
has been her employer: "Taylor didn't want to change me. He didn't want to
scour and sanitize the foreignness. ( 1 85) voices her opinion that Taylor does

not want to dominate her too much. He is prepared to accept her lndian self
This is the difference with Bud, who has a bit of the colonizer in him and is
uneasy with her foreignness. So she finally chooses to go with Taylor.
Ultimately, there is her satiric comment about America:
"In America, nothing lasts. I can say that now and it
doesn't shock me, but I think it was the hardest lesson
of all for me to learn. We arrive so eager to learn, to
adjust, to participate, only to find the monuments are
plastic, agreements are annulled. Nothing is for ever,
nothing is so terrible, or so wonderful, that it won't
disintegrate." (JP; 18 1)
This is in contrast to the various institutions of Indian society and
life which are based on values of permenance.

In her short stories, like "A Wife's Story", we have satiric and ironic
pictures of a husband who comes to meet his wife in America, longing for a
honeymoon. She has come there only for the purpose of higher study; but her
attitudes have completely changed. Ironically, the husband is not aware of
this. for whose benefit, she puts on a show of wifely devotion and wears her
ma~tgalsutra. But she confides to the readers satirically:
"That part of my life is over, the way trucks have
replaced lonies in my vocabulary, the way Charity Chin
and her lurid love life have replaced inherited notions
of marital duty." (TMS; p. 32)
Irr 'The Tcnant', the promiscuous life of the chief character is

satirised. Maya Sanyal, the protagonist, understands that her licentiousness

i s just

the "sad parade of need and demand", ( 1 1 1 ) and that. "She feels ugly

and unworthy. l~lcradult life no longer seenis miraculously rebellious; i t is

1711n, it is perverse. She has accomplished nothing." ('TMS;
p. 110) In fact, it is
ironical that when she becomes promiscuous and rebellious by Western
standards, she feels very empty and sad. Mrs. Mukherjee is satirising sexual
liberation in the immigrant woman that has been taken to the extreme limits
of licentiousness in the western backpound.
In the story, 'The Lady from Lucknow', a young married Indian
lady hailing from Lucknow, living in the U.S., tries to seduce an elderly, sixty
five year old, white married man. She expects that when his wife finds out
the affair, she would be jealous, rave and rant. But, on seeing them in bed,
together, the wife dismisses the Indian lady, as of no consequence. The wife
humiliates their passion. The Indian lady is no threat to the white woman,
she is: ...
"...just another involvement of a white man in a pokey
little outpost, something that "men do" and then come
to their senses while the memsahibs drink gin and tonic
and fan thier faces. (D; p. 33).
The lady from Lucknow is struck by the irony of the situation and
amusedly reflects:
I was a shadow without depth or color, a shadow

temptress who would float back to a city of teeming

millions when the affair with James had ended.
I had thought myself provocative and fascinating.

What had begun as an adventure had become shabby

and con~plex." (D; p. 33)

There is a gruesotnely ironic story, 'A Father', in which the daughter

of a family settled in the U.S. gets prebmant all of a sudden. She is an unmanied
woman, and the parents especially the father, Mr. Bhowmick, who notices the
change in her first, is womed. He is afiaid thatshe might one of her American
co-workers as her lover who has done this to her. But even after weeks, no
names surface. He then notices that she is moving around only with girls.
When she is forced by her mother to reveal the name of the father of the
unknown child, she screams. "Who needs a man?" she hissed. "The father
of my baby is a bottle and syringe. Men louse up your lives. I just want a
baby. Oh, don't wony - he's a certified fit donor...." (72). His wife says,
"Like animals" (72) then he hears horror in her voice for the first time.
"Yes, yes, yes, she screamed, like livestock. Just like
animals. You should be happy - that's what marriage is
all about, isn't it? Matching blood lines, matching
horoscopes, matching castes, matching, matching,
matching ..." (D; p. 73)
At these words of his daughter, Mr. Bhowmick is so horrified and
shocked at the mocking tone, where she is equating her pregnancy with the
formalities of an arranged marriage; that he becomes mad with anger and
hit at his daughter's stomach violently with murderous intentions. The ultra
progressive notions of his daughter, who decides to have a baby without physical
relations with a man, are thus satirised here by Ms. Mukheqee.
In the story "Nostalgia", Dr. Manny Patel an Indian, conventional
at heart, falls for an Indian woman whom he thinks, is a typical, traditional
lndian woman. But the woman turns out, ironically, to be a minor who has
duped him for his money. He has to hand over a cheque for seven hundred

dollars to the pimp when he is caught red handed. 1-1is nostalgia which is
satiriscd here for a traditionally Indian woman, apart firon] his American wife.
leads him into this blunder. Returning home after the humiliating episode, hc
decides. "And in August, he would take his wife on a cruise through the
Caribbean and make up for tbis night with a second honeymoon." (D; p. 1 1.3 j
In 'Visitors' Ms. Mukherjee satirises the life of an outwardly
successful Indian couple. The husband surrounds his wife with luxurious
comforts, treating her like the queen of his heart. But the wife is awakened to
passion that is alien to her prosaic, duty bound husband one day, by a chance
encounter that is frightening, but sensuous, with a young admirer, Rajeev
Khanna. Instead of feeling happy in her relationship with her husband, she
muses satirically:
"Why then is she moved by an irresistible force to steal
out of his bed in the haven of his expensive condominium,
and run off into the alien American night where only
shame and disaster can await her?" (D; p. 176)
Her frustrations and longing for adventure and passion, which she
can never hope to get from her predictably comfortable married life, is satirised
here.
In her biographical work, Days and Nights in Calcutta we see
Ms. Mukherjee satirising the attitudes o f her native Bengali women, where
they consider intelligence at a low premium for a woman, and submissiveness
as the best quality in a girl.
"Again and again, among middle class Bengali women,
I would hear, "She is a lovely, docile girl, she's never

given us any trouble", or She is not at all independent,

she'll do whatever her husband tells her", and these
remarks would be offered as compliments (DNC; p. 23 1).
In a different context, Bharati Mukherjee, ironically comments:
"Sita is an exemplary figure. The lesson is clear, uncomplicated: The wife's
role is one o f self-abnegation." (DNC; p.232) This is the image of woman
that Ms. Mukherjtc: tries to modify through her satirical writings.
' f i e Use of Myths
Myths are stories about legendary persons which influence the
minds of those who believe in them in an unconscious manner. The modem
favourable view of myth is beautifully summed up by Millar Burrows in
Dictionary of the Bible as:
... a symbolic, approximate expression of truth which

"

the human mind cannot perceive sharply and completely

but only glimpse vaguely, and therefore cannot
adequately or accurately express ... Myth implies,
not falsehood, but truth; not primitive, naive
mi~ti:~.izrstanding
but an insight more profound than
scientific description and logical analysis can ever
achieve. The language o f myth in thls sense is
consciously inadequate, being simply the nearest we
can come to a formulation ofwhat we see very darkly" (599).

So~netunesmyths record and justifi social institutions through

generations. Stories about mythical women, known for their purity and moral
strength abound in Greek and Indian classics or epics. These serve to
propa~pteunwritten codes o f conduct, especially for women, re-emphasizing
the cultural patterns of behaviour.

Saraswathy Amma has made use of the Biblican myth of Eve, the
temptress, in the garden of Eden. She supports the action of Eve, hailing her
as a harbinger of knowledge. Saraswath~Amma explains in her article
"Purushanmarillatha Lokam" that it is Eve's womanly curiosity referred to as
'temptation', that opens the doors wider for other human beings to drive out
their ignorance. So also Pandora, should not be condemned as a heralder of
evil and misery when she opens the box that brings sorrow into the world,
since she leads man into a wider world of experiences.
Similarly, Saraswathy Amma in Premabhaianam, her novel,
re-interprets mythical heroines like Ahalya, Draupadi, Sita, Thara, and
Mandodari (The Panch Kanyas) in a new light. Jasbir Jain in "Gender and
Narrative Strategy" says:
'Women writers seek to re-interpret ancient myths
anew and the stories of the Ramayana, of the
Mabharata, figures of mythology like Sita and Savithri
are interpreted in feminine contexts'. (33-34)
Saraswathy Amma chooses to admire the Panch Kanyas not for
their famed virtue of chastity and fidelity, but for the courage of conviction
displayed by these women in their actions and speech. The Sita myth generally
represents an ideal woman; as Sudhir Kakar in "Feminine Identity in India"
observes:
"The ideal of womanhood incorporated by Sita is one
of chastity, purity, gentle tenderness and a singular
faithfulness which cannot be destroyed or even
disturbed by her husband's rejections, slights or
thoughtlessness. ..

In the Savithri myth. the ideal of devoted fidelity to

one man takes on an added dimension and categorical
refinement: Exclusive devotion to one's husband
becomes the prerequisite for the all important motherhood
of sons...
To be a good wife, is by definition, to be agood woman... "

(55-56)
This ideal of womanhood, continues Sudhir Kakar which,
"...inspite, of many changes in individual
circumstances in the course of modernization,
urbanization and education, still governs the inner
imagery of individual men and women as well as the
social relations between them in both the traditional
and modern sectors of the Indian community " (57).
The Radhakrishna myth used by Kamala Das is symbolic of love that
is eternal and lasting, love that is not merely physical, but reaches sublime
levels of spirituality. This myth is made use of by Kamala Das in many of her
poems and prose pieces like 'Ghanashyam'. She has not made much use of
the stereotypic mythlcal figures of chastity like Sita, Ahalya, Savithri or
Sheelavathy. This could be so, because, Kamala Das advocates sexual
liberation in her works,
Shashi Deshpande has mentioned at least a few of these mythical
women in her works: Sita, Savithri, Gandhari, Draupadi and Maitreyi. At the
outset of the novel, That Lone Silence Jaya, the heroine, identifies herself
with these women though later she rejects them. She imagines following her
husband wherever he goes, like Sita follows Rama into the forests, like

Gandhari, she blindfolds herself to unpleasant realities as long as she feels

that her family is safe and secure. She mentions the fidelity shown by Savithri
who reclaims her dead husband &om the jaws of death wondering whether
she could ever he capable of such blind devotion to her husband. She also
wonders whether she would have Draupadi's strength, which the mythical
woman displays in controlling her five husbands. Deshpande through Jaya
mentions Maitreyi, who begs for knowledge and immortality from her husband,
rather than material possessions, but Jaya rejects this image later on. Finally
Deshpande makes use of parts of the Bhagavad Gita from Mahabharatha which
describes the great mental and moral struggle undergone by Arjuna when
Sree Krishna advises him "Yathecchasi Tatha Kuru" (Do as You Desired)(Ch. 18
SL. 63). From Sree Krishna's advice, Jaya takes the cue that one should not
blame others for what they have to endure in life, one has to make one's
choices. In Come Up And Be Dead, there are a lot of references to the Bible,
to Shakespeare and to other characters in the classics. Ms. Deshpande's wide
reading and the influence of Indian cultural myths and social conventions on
her is revealed here. Ms. Deshpande has also written stories about mythical
figures Amba in 'Inner Rooms' and Du~yodhanain 'The Last Enemy'.
In Bharati Mukherjee also we get references to the Sitamyth, though

in a very satirical manner. As Jasbir Jain in "Gender and Narrative Strategy"

mentions:
"Bharati Mukherjee, like Desai, uses the Sita Savithri image to
er~closeDimple's identity in wife which however slowly breaks through the
traditional role model of an Indian wife.' (34)
These writers make ironic use of such myths that show women in
submissive role. They later reject the conventional images. As Renuka Singh,
in The Womb of Mind comments:

"...the mythological past becomes real and meaningful

when it helps us to come to terms with forces be they
benign or malignant, uncanny or familiar... Even if
one wants to escape myths, it is difficult to ignore
their significance as the sacred can re-emerge even in
a secular age'." (148-149)
As she says, it is only by recollecting and assimilating them
positively, can liberation be initiated for the modem women.
The Use of Fantasv and Dreams
In her &-tide "Gender and Narrative Strategy", Jasbir Jain comments that,
'Fantasy allows an extension of the self - and becomes a
survival strategy: but when indulged in by the writer
and not the character, it signifies the desire to cross
the boundaries'. (35)
In Saraswathy Arnma's fiction we do not get any examples of the
use of fantasy, but some of the characters very umealistjcally day dream,
about their future brides or bridegrooms. This is illustrated in her stories
'Ellam 'Ihkanjha Bharya' (The Perfect Wife) and 'Roopamichanthi' (Figure
as Desired).
In Karnz!a Das, we see her resorting to the use of fantasy whenever
she wants to express wishfulfilments that are unreal or imaginary. In her
short stories like 'Unni', 'Kalyani', 'Pakshiyude Manam' (The Smell of a Bird),
the events seem to happen in a surrealistic atmosphere. In 'Unni', a ten year
old suddenly appears before a housewife whose husband is away. As she is
childless, she extends some hospitality to the boy, suddenly she receives news

that her husband is dead. She connects the appearance of the boy with the
death of her husband, and harshly drives him out yet he seems to be the
wishfulfilment of her maternal longings.
In 'Kalyani' a housewife is arrested by policemen who mistake her
to be a street prostitute when she ventures out at might. She is put behind
bars and nobody - not even her husband, believes that she is the housewife.
In 'Pakshiyude Manam' the woman keeps seeing images ofher own
death. Death symbolism abounds in her stories about hospitals and death bed
scenes, reflecting the troubled psyche of the characters, mainly women.
Kamala Das's stories which thus make use of human psycholoby, take us to a
realm of make believe which requires ' a willing suspension of disbelief' in
order to appreciate their artistic beauty.
In Shashi Deshpande whose works are probings into women's minds,
we see her use of dream psycholoby. The description of dreams, representing
the loneliness of spirit, can be observed in The Dark Holds No Terrors. In
Ibat Long Silence, the main character dreams of being left alone:
"Only occassionally did I have dreams about trains'
leaving me behind or carrying me away, separating me
fiom someone I wanted to be with. Sometimes I was
trapped in ghostly passages and there were sepulchral,
deep voices that filled me with horror. Most of these
nightmares slid away as I woke up, leaving me with
nothing more subtantial than a clammy sense of fear
and dread. .." (TLS; p. 87)

Jaya of That Long Silence, and Indu of Roots and Shadows, have
dreams of either being left behind or missing the bus while on a journey.
These nightmares point to their sense of insecurity and their sense of
loneliness: a terrible existential loneliness of spirit that they experience.
In Bharati Mukherjee's novel

Wife we see the subjective use of

fantasy. Jasbir Jain says "Fantasy is put to a strong subjective use ... It is also
used by Bharati Mukherjee" (35). The device of fantasy in her short stories
represent the writer's wish to cross boundaries of time and place. In the case
of Dimple in Wife. fantasy is psychologically used as an escape from reality.
Dimple, insomniac and highly strung, imagines:
"Between two and four in the morning she thought she
heard men ~ u t t i n gkeys in the front door and roaches
scuttling in the closet. In those waking nightmares,
the men had baby faces and hooded eyes." (W; p. 97)
The only thing is that 1)imple can never remember these fantasies,
I

her husband never comes into these mghtmm.

fantasises her husband as having:

But whlle day dreaming, she

...a forehead from an aspirin ad, the lips,

"

eyes and chin ftom a body builder and shoulders ad, the stomach and legs
from a trousers ad ..." (23). Her husband does not feed her fantasy life which
is the reason she tccame disllusioned and neurotic.
Kamala Das advocates sexual liberation in her poems and stories. In

MY Stow there are incidents in which she describes sexual escapades, not only
heterosexual but also lesbian relationships. If we interpret this work as a fictional
autobiography, these amorous relationships outside the orbit of her marriage can
be seen as an extended fantasy of her full blooded love life. This is the natural

outcolne of'a ~narriagcillat is loveless. This overwhel~ningdesire for love can be

seen in her other woman characters also who search for love outside marriage.
I!sc of the L)econstructivc .4puroach
'lhis modem, i11nc;vative approach is seen in both Saraswathy Amma
and Shashi 1)eshpande.
Saraswathy Atn~nadeconstructs the story of Ketnanan as narrated
by the famous llalayalam poet Changampuzha in his poem Remanan.

Uc~narianis a poor shepherd who is rejected by his lady love, Chandrika, who
hails from a rich family. She has led him on, they have both dreamt of a
glorious future with their divine love; but when her family members arrange a
marriage Lor her with a rich man, she jilts Ramanan, who commits suicide.
,411 those who usually, conventionally read the poem sympathise with the plight

of Kernanan and fir~dfault with Chandrika's behaviour.

Except, of course, K. Saraswathy Arnma, who justifies Chandrika's
action in her story "Remani" which seems to be a parody of Remanan. She
maintains, through the words of a critical character, that Chandrika is not to
bc blamed for having a b ~ e e dto rrlany the rich man chosen by her parents.
First of all, argues Saraswathy Arnma in support of Chandrika, it is her filial
duty to obcy her aged parents. Secondly, Chandrika is practical enough to
know that her 'divine love' would wither if she marries Remanan and has to
suffer poverty. Lo\.c cannot feed

011 ideals

alone.

Charidrika never imagines that her fonner lover would be so weakhearted

a s to co~nnlitsuicide. This is an excellent example ol'feminist decor~structiort

of a popular story.

.4 si~nilarstor), I S seen i t ) Shashi Dcshparide:~'"l~hcIrrttcr I<oo~tls",

111

\rhich she makes .\mha.

story.

111

;I

myth~calbvolnarl character as the heroine ol'tlle

the episode of Aiiiba in Mahabharatha, A~nbais only a sccond;ir-y

ctiaracter. and the valour of Bhishtria is the main thernc. Dcshpande rcccals
the agony of .~\nlba'splight on being rejected by Salva, the Inan whom she
desires, and later by L'ichitraveeya, for whose sake lhishma has l'orccfully
taken her along with her two sisters, unaware of her wishes. Shc l e i s a
terrible anger against these men. especially Bhishma, with his vow ofcelibacy.
She \ows that she would avenge this humiliatiori i n her next birth and she
~nunolatcsI~crself: tlcre the Sc~niriistapproach is seen in the narration oftllc
stor).

from ;\lnba7s view point,

i11

and angerher expressions of frustration

. .

against Bltishnia. In "l'he Last Enemy', the hero is Duryodhana,( i t is an

example of deconstruction from a man's point o f view) who lies hidden in a
pond at the end of the Kurukshetra war, fearfully awaiting the imminent
attack by Hhima.

l l e knows h e will be d e f e a t e d , but finally,

paradoxically, he realises that " . . . i t is the dead who always win, the dead who
are the real victors'' (1 07).
I(le~nents
of hletartarr~tion
~-

-.

bletatiction concerns itself with sclf'conscious writing, with ccriain

conventions oftlie novel, revealing in the process a criticism o f t h e author's
~iietliodofcreatiorl of tlic novel. In Fvletafictio~lconventio~ialI-cality is [lot
~iradcuse 01: as l'atr-ic~aLVaugh ctriiimc~~ts
in l ~ cbool,
r
h l e t a l i c t ~ o' ~I ~~ .I ~ ~ ~ : I ' I ~ I : ~ ~
;111ti I'lwiticc
.
..of' Self

~- ~ -

Cgriscious

Isw.

"...theinaterialist, positivist. a ~ i dcnipiric~stkcor-Id viciv

on which realistic fiction is prcmiscd iio longcl- exists.
It is hardly surprising. tlierct'orc that inore ailti niorc

novelists have come to question and reject the forms

that correspond to this ordered reality" (7).
Patricia Waugh points out that
"...the well made plot, chronological sequence, the
authoritative omniscient author, the rational connection
between what characters 'do' and what they 'are', the
casual connection between 'surface' details and the
deep, scientific laws of existence" (7).

These are the norms by which realistic novels were written earlier,
which have been abandoned in the modernistic metafictional narration.
Seen in the light of these deikitions, we cannot consider Saraswathy
Amma as a metafictional writer. Neither can we suppose that Kamala Das,
Shashi Deshpande and Bharati Mukherjee have completely done away with
realistic narration. Yet, we see these writers, self

consciously positing

certain questions about their own writing, either as asides or as a direct address or
a confession to the readers, where we can note elements of metafictional
narration. As Patricia Waugh in Metafiction says, "...although the term
metafiction may be new, the practice is as old (if not older) than the novel
itself. .." (5). In Saraswathy Amma's short story, 'Avarude Kathayezhuthu'
(Their story writing) one of the characters, Rathi, explains how or why they
choose to write. Since Saraswathy Amma's characters can be taken as her
own mouth pieces, we can take Rathi's words as the writers own, a reflection
on her writing. "...Is it not for self happiness that man indulges in artistic
creation? Only those who want, need appreciate it.' (78)
Saraswathy Amma expresses her inspiration behind her writing as
the desire for self satisfaction in artistic creative writing. Her own approach

to writing is serious, with no thought of fame or gain. We can see her rejection
of pulp fiction when Rathi and her friends make fun of the usual method of
writing a melodramatic, romantic novel.
In Kamala Das's 'Jana Paranjha Katha' there are elements of
metanmation. In Mv Stow she expresses the opinion that, for her, writing
is an emotional release. Her poetry makes her unfrustrate herself, gives
her emotional stability and lets her escape from harsh reality. In her poem
'Introduction' she mention that she speaks three languages, her language is
her own and peculiar. Kamala Das has deliberately chosen to write poems
in English in her own name and short stories in Malayalarn under the
pen-name Madhavikutty. She asks her friends and critics to bear with her, to
leave her alone. Though she writes with ease, it is self conscious writing.
It is in Shashi Deshpande's two works, 'Roots and Shadows' and
'That Long Silence', that we see the author reflecting on her writing through
the two main characters, lndu and Jaya respectively. In Roots and Shadows
the heroine has a bitter experience which taught her how to write diplomatically,
and rise up the ladder in her career as a writer. She has written in praise of a
social worker, a very influential person, whom she believes is also a very
good and sincere woman. But another person writes an article about the
same social worker in a very derogative manner, that she is a shameless
opportunist and exploiter of weaker persons. Both these articles are shown
to the editor, who chooses her's for publication. She wonders whether he has
gone through the other person's piece. The editor assures her that he already
knows every word is true in the derogatory piece, but it is unpublishable as it
is not at all beneficial to his paper nor flattering to the time serving social

worker. This incident is a revelation to lndu about what she could and could
not write about. Tlrough she is consciousthat her writing does other women
and herself no good, for the sake of a name, for the sake of money, she
continues writing as she does.
A somewhat similar experience happens to Jaya, the heroine of
That Long Silence, a failed writer. Though she confesses:
"I've always found writing easy. Words came to me
with a facility that pleased me, sometimes shamed me;
too - it seemed too easy. But now, for some reason, I

am reminded of the process of childbirth." (TLS; p. I)

She continues her confession:
"For I'm not writing o f all those innocent young girls
I've written of till now; girls who ultimately mated
themselves with the right men. Nor am 1 writing a
story o f a callous, insensitive husband and a sensitive,
suffering wife. I'm writing of us. O f Mohan and me.
And !'mow this -you can never be the heroine of your
own story. Self-revelation is a cruel process. The real
picture, the 'real' 'you' never emerges." (TLS; p. 1)
She reflects on her method of writing:
"Perhaps it is wrong to write from the inside. Perhaps
what I have to do is see myself, us, from a distance.
This has happened to me before; there have been times
when I've had this queer sensation o f being detached
and distant from my own self. Times when I've been
able to separate two distinct strands - my experience,

and my awareness of that experience. Can I do this

with our story" ? (TLS ; p. 2)

As a story writer, she is equating her experience of creating a fiction

out of their lives to the process of childbirth, as many other writers have done
before her.
Like Indu, Jaya finds solace in writing 'middles' of newspapers or
in women's magazines, under the assumed name 'Sita'. In Jaya's case, once

when she writes sincerely about amarried couple and their problems, Mohan,
her husband, actually objects to it, aghast at the 'self revelation' he takes it to
be, though she tries to argue that it is a transmutation of her personal experiences.
She is scared of this reaction fiom Mohan: "...scared of hurting Mohan,
scaretl ofjeopardising the only career I had, my marriage." (14 1) Hence she
seeks refuge in 'The Sita column', writing about silly women's problems which
can never affect her maniage. She is lacking in moral courage. It is Kamat,
her well wisher and neighbour, who rebukes her and derogates her Sita image.
He can: "...see the woman who writes this ... 'she's plump, good humoured,
peabrained but shrewd, devious, skimming over life ..." (149) When she replies
that he has encouraged her to write, he retorts: "Don't saddle me with the
burden of having fathered that ... that obnoxious creation of yours ..." (149)
This is an eye opener to her writer's creativity. Kamat tells her to
infuse her anger and some real life and warmth into her writings. Kamat has
once warned her:
"I'm warning you-beware of this "women are the victims"
theory ofyours. It'll drag you down into a soft, squishy
bog of self

pity. Take yourself seriously, woman.

I)on*t skulk behitid a fiilse nanlc. iZr>d\vo~h- work if

you w:?tit others to take yoti serioi~sly."( ' I p. 148)
'These words of liamat jolt her hack into

sense of realistic, serious

WI-itingwithout pitying women or making then1 martyrs, as when she has

been scarcd of becoming a failed writer. She earlier assesses herself a s a
writer thus: "Middle-class. Bourgeoise. IJpper - caste. Distanced from real
lilc. Scared of writing. Scared o f failing.'' (148)
Finally, at the end of the novel, when she decides to assert her
~ndividualityi n eveything. she also decides to take up her writing once more.
She decides to write the way she always wanted to - Inore sincerely and truthl'ully
al)out the sufl'erings and lives of women, instead of taking rcfi~gein their
conventional image. She liberates herself boldly from traditional taboos in
hcr women's writicy.
'll~eseheroines of Deshpa~idereflect thc opinions of the author herself'
irl

her process of bccornir~ga real, scrious writer. In this sense, these arc

~ncralictionalclen~entsin her realistic mode of writing.

L!se of C o n t r a s m ~ a m c t e r s
Ihe writers discusscxi here have made elTecti\,e use ofcharacter contrasts,
inorder to hlghl~ghtcertain aspects of thc main character or the argument
Saraswathy A n ~ ~ nwhile
a , projecting. her ideas through the characters,
i:l\\;iys hrir~gsin a character called Shanti or at times Sharada. 'lhese are the

d~rcctinouthpieces of the author herscll; p~.ovitiing!'oils lo the main characters.

S o n ~ c t i ~ n eshe
s filnct~onsas the co~r~rnerttato~or critic of

:i

given situatio~l.

d i r c c t i ~ ~the
g ct~ief'cliaractcrtowards a resoliltion of thc c r i s ~ sor- situation.
S u c ! ~ccrr~tr:istir:g charactcr.j are usually inore intellige~~t
:~nd-,-itical ahout

issues. At times these characters are the husbands and wives themselves

where the husband is old fashioned and the wife seems to have progressive
ideas.
For example in the short story, 'Vivahasammanam' (Marriage Gift)
the woman Shanti advises a girl friend to forget her former lover and to bum
his gifts when her marriage is fixed with another person, to which she has
agreed; Shanti tells her that this will safeguard her relations with her husband
without causing suspicion in him.
In 'Avi\nhithante Asrukkal' (Bachelor's Tears) Shanti rectifies the

habits of a friend's husband by timely action. Before marriage, he has been

an ardent lover, but after marriage he neglects his wife and comes home very
late Shanti takes her friend for a walk, listens to all her complaints about her
husband. They lose their way as it becomes dark, and they finally reach
home very late. The husband, already there waiting for his wife, is angry and
impatient and very much worried. Shanti points out to him that his wife has
suffered this torture evey day. He is thus made to realise his mistake and is
ready to mend his ways.
Shanti, compared to the other characters presented by Saraswathy
Amma, is cool-headed, bold and practical. The other women characters are
sentimental and at iimes idiotic, compared to the intellectual Shanti. Shanti
definitely represents the author herself, providing a contrast to others and
offering her ideas on various social problems. In Premabhaianarn the practical
heroine Booni provides a contrast to her sentimental sister.
In Kamala Das, characters serve as contrasts incidentally. In most

of her stories about women, young married women with romantic youthful

aspirations are contrasted with their older husbands who do not come upto
their expectations: the result being unhappy marriages. In MY Stow, the
husband, practical and prosaic, is introduced as a foil to his young sentimental
wife. In her short stories on city life, and a few of her poems the same subject is
dealt with. When describing lesbian relationships, one character is always
seen to depend on the other, who would be stronger than the other.
In the fiction of Shashi Desh~ande,the heroines are serious women,
always thinking with clarity except when they are disturbed. They provide a
contrast to the average, unthinking, unintellectual woman in their families or
their friends who appear very sentimental. In That Lonrr Silence, Jaya has an
alter ego, Kusum, who is insane. As Jaya measures her mental stability
according to her relationships, she feels sane as long as Kusuln is there. But
with Kusum dead, Jaya feels so insecure that her sanity seems suspect, for
herself, though this is not evident to others around her. As for Indu in Roots
and Shadows and Jaya in That Lonn Silence, they get a balanced view of life from
the totally contradictory opinions they get from Naren and Kamat, two well
wishers. Naren has been considered the black sheep of the family, he is a
total contrast to the well mannered Jayant, Indu's husband, who is educated and
sophisticated.

But it is from Naren that Indu learns about the honesty of

approach in life, just as Jaya learns such lessons from Kamat. Kamat is Jaya's
neighbour, who has no pretensions unlike her husband. In both these
instances, the heroines are attracted to these men as they promised a different
attitude to life than the ones they understood from their own husbands. In
their families they have to wearmasks; with these men, they could be themselves.
In her short stories also, Deshpande brings in characters who serve as foils to the

main characters who guide them and support them in times of i~eed.

In Eharati Mukherjee there are minor characters in all her novels

and shorter fiction who present contrasting attitudes to life, different from
the main characters. Even in sexual matters, this contrast is evident. A typical
case is Diinple in Wife who is contrasted with her practical husband and Ina.
Dimple is a conventional woman at heart, who wants to break the bonds of
tradition but feels guilty and oppresssed about it, as she fears her husband's
reaction. She therefore tries to hide behind a mask of femininity, though she
secretly envies the liberated Ina Mullick with her westernized outlook. Ina is
confident and bold, Dimple is fearful and insecure. Finally, it is her desire

for 'freedom' that makes her neurotic and leads her to kill her husband, who,
she thinks, stands in the way of her 'emancipation'.
Use of the divided self
In Deshpande's That Lona Silence we see the heroine with a split
or divided self: as Jaya the superior intellectual self, as well as Suhasini, the
simple, average, domesticated self, providing a contrast to each other. In
Mukherjee's 'Jasmine' the heroine is seen to have a multiple self - as Jyoti,
Jasmine, and Jane, these alternate selves function at different points in the
story as totally different selves divided against each other.
Point of View
Saraswathy Amma uses third person narration or omniscient point
of view in most of her stories. In some short stories, she has used first person

narration, &om a man's point of view. Usually she makes use of women
narrators. presenting a woman's point of view of the situations. In certain
stories making use of the first person narrative, the author identifies herself
with characters called 'Shanti' or 'Sharada', appraising the events presented

in a critical and objective manner. The authorial intrusion is seen at many

places in her fiction, it is seen more often i n her prose work natned
Purushanmarillatha Lokam. Here she takes the reader into her confidence
and speaks in a conversational tone.
In Kamala Das, we get objective third person narration mostly, from
a woman's point of view. But in a few stories, like Saraswathy Amma, she
uses first person narration with a man's point of view. as in 'Naipayasam'
(Ghee Dessert). There is veIy tittle of authorial intrusion, the fictional representations
being quite distanced from the author. In her auto biographical Mv Stow we
get first a person narrative to make it more effective. In 'Janu Paranjha Katha'
the point of view is that of the character Janu; she requests the writer to write
down her story. The point of view alternates between that of Janu and that of
the author.
Conventional third person narration is adopted by Shashi Deshpande.
She uses an intensly subjective method of narration, from the psychological
point of view of the main character. In all her fiction except, Come up and be

Dead. we get only a single point of view, of the main character which is usually a
..
woman. But in the novel Come up and be dead, she seems to be experimenting
with a multiple point of view. A situation, involving a murder, is being
assessed by different persons or characters according to their view points.
Ms. Deshpande also uses first person narration with a man's point of view in
a few of her stories.
In Bharati Mukherjee we get the omniscient narration in The Tiger's

Daurrhter. In Wife, Jasmine and M e r of the World, her three other novels,
she has used third person narration. Though in The Tiger's Daughter, Jasmine

and Holder ofthe World she makes usc ot'ol!jcct~vcnul-I-ation,in ~,

shc is

vcry subjective. Shc rcvcals the mental disturl)anct: of t1:c chrlractcr, in the
tnethod of a psychological build up to the final catastrophe. The point o f
view is usually that of a woman's, who happens to be the main character. In
Jasmine though it is a single person speaking, the voice acquires the identities o f
different persons having different perspectives under different conditions.
Novels of Propaganda
The works of Saraswathy Amma are blatantly propagandist. The
characters become the mouthpieces of the author. In Deshpande, the characters
are indirectly propagandist. 1; Kamala Das, propagation of her ideas are
subtle, in Mukhej e e incidental. These feminist writers, through their characters,
try to reveal their intolerance at the Indian women's oppression due to the
dominant patriarchal Indian cultural norms.
Language, Imagery, Syntax
Saraswathy Amma writes her stories in the form of lengthy, dialogues
or arguments. As prof. Leelavathy comments in an article 'Bhoomkkiarvum
Avakasikal (They are also Inheritors o f Earth) in India Today:

"K. Saraswathy Amma (1919-75), who wrote artistic,

well sculpted stories in which she left men far behind,
had to face neglect as she gave importance to the boldness
ofwotnen, in her writings... Inspite of writing artistically
creative and beautiful stories with committment and a
goal, none of the niajor critics of that period encouraged
her. As she was bold, she contirlued to write without
expecting any encouragement ..." (p. 105 j

Saraswathy Amma writes in an ornate, artistic, style, using wordy

sentences. Some of her short stories like 'Ellam Thinkanjha Bharya' are
artistically perfect, with an ironic 0. Henry twist at the end. The intellectual
content predominates in her writings. Her fiction of ideas is written to reveal
her revolutionary feminist ideals. Therefore in some stories the situations
seem contrived, as in "Avarude Kathayezhuthu" (Their Story Writing),
"Mannuvarikkali" (Play with Sand) and "Swargadwararn" (The Opening to
Heaven).
There are references and allusions to various western writers she
has read, including the Greek epics like Ulvsses and Aenied and the lndian
epics like Ramavana and Mahabharata and also the &.

She uses a light

hearted approach when she teases the readers with her queries, she makes
use of self mockery also. There is no consistent philosophy of life in her
writings.
Saraswathy Amma has made use of images, symbols and metaphors
satirically. A typical example is her comparison of love to a sweet meat, in
the short story 'Madhurapalaharam' (Sweet Meat). Other comparisons are
that of a wife to a doll attuned to the wishes of the husband, of mamage to a
play where the main actors, the husband and wife, have to act out their roles
to perfection in order to make a success of it and the conventional image of
the sunset to death. In a few characters like in 'Pakalum Ravum', 'Vaividhyam
Vende?' and others, she has made use of the technique of the interior monologue,
where she psychologically probes the minds of the characters which are
similar to soliloq~!ies.

makes use ofcolour imagery like yellow, red and green colours to dcnote
different moods ofsthe character. She makes use of metaphors that stand for
life, death and freedom for instance, the comparison of a flight of eagles or
swallows to denote the desire freedom, death or even escape from life; flow
of a river for the journey of life and the turbulance of waves for the disturbances
of the character's mind. As critic Ramachandran Nair points out in his
critical work 'The Poetry of Kamala Das', in his article 'Words' she makes
use of:
"...several phrases, expressions and even fragments of
lines which would appear unidiomatic to a purist in
language. These are unintentional Indian turns she
imparts to her language. (1 17)
Though this is said about her poetry, this can be applied to her
fiction also.
Kamala Das has a pessimistic outlook on life unlike Saraswathy
Amma, who is invariably and amusedly tolerant about life. There is not much
of humour in Kamala Das, nor a consistent philosophy of life. When she
speaks of love, it rises above the mere physical, though in many poems she
has described the carnal instincts in man. She makes use of images and similes
like "Her womb, that had lainfallows, had grown fibroids just as a desert may
grow cacti and carnivorous plants" (PTH; p. 33) in describing her grief over
a dying woman, "My grief fell like drops of honey on the white sheets on my
desk." (MS; p. 105) When describing sorrow and "... a familiar face that
blossomed like a blue lotus in the waters of my dreams." (MS; p. 11 8) when
describing her quest for Sri Krishna as a symbol of divine love.

Kamala Das

indulges in nostalgia when reminiscencing about

her old grandmother, the grandmother's house, and her native place in Malabar.
She has written touching stories that deal with the psychology of children,
rendering the subtle nuances of their characters, the feelings of mothers for
their children and the lack of feeling of children for parents.
In Shashi Deshpande, we see her as modernistic in using a language
that seems like the 'stream of consciousness' technique. She reveals her sharp
observation in her bare functional and economic style. There is a shutthg
back and forth in time that reveals various stages of the development
of the characters. The use of flashbacks is significant. In That Long S i l e m
she begins the novel with blank pages, signifying the 'vacant spaces' or
silences in the life of women that she is attempting to break by penning their
stories. Her characters are in a state of flux, in the process of finding their
true tradition.
She makes use of interior monologues and a sort of psychological
probing, to reveal the workings of the character's minds. She uses the passive
voice most of the time that is a typical Indian usage. Sometimes she expresses
her ideas in lenbhy, wordy and philosophic sentences, satiric in tone and content.
She shows the influence of western feminist writers like Virginia Woolf and
Betty Friedan. There are quotations and allusions to Shakespeare, The Bible,
Karl Marx, and from the Indian epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana in her
works. She has experimented with writing mystery novels like 'Come Up
and Be Dead' and ' I f I Die Todav' with its atmosphere of suspense that she
builds up. Shashi Deshpande uses contrasting, concrete images like 'broodmg
darkness', 'walls of silences', 'stifling comfort' which are paradoxical, to render

her meaning. She describes the relations between extended and nuclear
families and the characters involved in their power struggle i n such family set
ups. There is also a shift from the first person to the third person in her
narration, for immediacy of effect.
Deshpande seems to have been influenced by writers like Tchekovand
Tolstoy, beside Tagore and Dickens especially in Come Up And Be Dead
Images, symbols and metaphors are used profusely; for instance , the symbolic
image of Jaya's life with her husband in That Long Silence as "A pair
of bullocks yoked togethef (7),herself as a sparrow with her little ones, protective
and possessive, and the husband as 'a sheltering tree'. Symbols like a peacock
standing for antiquity and a robin for modernity in "Why a Robin?" are also
used. She is a feminist theorist, in the sense that, she describes the predicament
of mature married women and their problems after marriage and the silences
of women, as well as the stories they choose to tell. She does not brazenly
expose her views like Kamala Das in her poetry or Saraswathy Amma in her
prose. She has an indirect way of expressing her ideas through comparisons,
but she is unsparing in her criticism. Unlike Saraswathy Amma there is a
vagueness in her resolutions to the problems presented. Her stories are open
ended.
In Bharati Mukherjee we get a close imitat~onof the western style
of writing fiction. She uses racy dialogue in most of her shorter fiction, with
dramatic presentation. Most of the stories are in the active voice. In order to
heighten the effect that she belongs to the category of American writers, though
she is Indian to the core, she makes profuse use of American words and
descriptions of American places like Iowa, Detroit, Miami, and short forms
like BMW, NJIT, MCI, JFK and the like.

In order to reinforce the lonely, bleak and violent atmosphere in

many of her short stories, she uses imagery that suits the background: as in
"Loose Ends" where 'Human beings have become 'locusts' to survive', afternoons
are 'pure dynamite'. 'Miami is a jungle' and others.
There is no psychological probing of characters except in 'Wtfe' where we get her psychic building up of the atmosphere and background in
such a way, that suggests the mental breakdown of the character. Repulsive
imagery such as the death of the mouse, her sensations of vomiting, her own
end, imaginatively described as being 'splattered like a bug', and different
descriptions of nine

ways to commit suicide, are usedprofusely. About her

style Subhash Chandra comments in his essay 'Americanness in The Middleman

and other Stories'. "It is bare, functional and unselfconsciously unemotional." (2 17)

There is a sprinkling of Indian usages in Ms. Mukherjee's writing

like 'ghar jmai', 'mlechha', 'arre baba', which are Hindustani local expressions.
Besides, she uses American slang like automobile for car, motel for hotel and
the like. She also uses French sparingly. She is an expert at mimicking
different local lanpages in her writings. Stanley Camalho in the essay "Bridge
Between two worlds" opines that:
"She (Ms. Mukherjee) credits her flawless ventriloquism to a very
good ear that unconsciously picks up nuances of a language."
Indianness, she claims, is for her a set of 'fluid identites' to be
celebrated, a metaphor, as she explains to Alison. B. Carb in an interview.
She filters her American experiences through her consciousness
and presents it in her fiction in her own way. While reviewing her novel
Holder of thevorld, T a m J. Tejpal mentions: "The prose is rich, almost too

rich, teeming like plant life in a tropical garden, replete with wonderful
detail." (196)
She has a fluid style and she handles her theme of immigrant
experience with effortless ease, being an exponent of the expatriate novel.
She sensitively describes the unpleasant, even gruesome incidents in the life
of an immigrant, sparing no detail. She effectively presents the dreams and
struggles of the c h t e r s , in an alien back ground. Immigmtion, transformation and
metamorphosis, becomes her main concern. The greater degree of liberation
achieved by women who go abroad, when suddenly faced with more
emancipation and liberal outlooks, is well presented. Bharati Mukherjee is
an innovative writer experimenting with newer techniques like photographic
realism.
About her use of tense, Jasbir Jain in "Gender and Namtive Strategy"
says:

... I would like to draw attention to the use of tense in

"

one of Bharati Mukhejee's short stories. 'The Tenant'

(The Middleman and Other Stories) where except for

an occasion or two, the whole story is written in the

present tense. She is describing the world of the
immigrant which is akin to the world of the self-aware
woman: she is on the borderline without a recognisable
past or an easily definable future." (36)
When she speaks about methods of self analysis realised through
the medium of art, Jasbir Jain comments:
"It is significant that ways of self analysis are looked
through art or pseudo art. ...as do heroines of Shashi

Deshpande's. That Long Silence and Mukherjee's

Wife. In Wife it is the world of the film and TV which
dominates-passivity rather than reception or participation
is emphasised. (34)
Jasbir Jain opines that:
The ending of a novel is again a narrative strategy: it
is never the logical conclusion to a tale as the ordering
of the plot would lead us to believe. The way a novel

ends is a statement on the self, on its ability or inability to survive, specially when the 'self' is a woman
cornered in a world which does not provide for her
self - expression. (35)
In Saraswathy Amma's Premabhaianam, the heroine is made to
commit suicide where suicide is not a mere escape from life, but an assertion
of the power and strength of her personality that refuses to surrender her

ideals. Bharati Mukherjee's Dimple in

escapes into madness and murders

her husband, the action being highlighted by the author as a means for the
character's frenzied self assertion. Kamala Das uses death as an ending o f
Inany of her stories where death stands for the final liberation fiom life.
Ms. Deshpande ends her novels on an optimistic and hopeful note.
Bharati Mukherjee concludes the novel "The Tiger's Daughter" on a note of
uncertainty which suits Tara's ambivalent attitude to her life. In Jasmine
there is an assertion of the matured individuality of the heroine who looks
forward to a better life of her own choice at the end.
Use of fragmentation
1;rabmentation is a stylistic technique used by at least two of the
authors, Ms. Deshpande and Ms. Mukherjee in their novels. Judi M. Roller

in her book The Polities of the Feminist Novel comments that:

"The fractured point of view and disjointed arrangement

of chapters often mirrors the concern the author feels
about the splintered nature of modem life. Ideology
has other effects on the form of some of these novels.
Some authors, for example, while fragmenting their
novels, move back and forth between fantasy and
reality." (1 2)
The effect of fragmentation is seen in a few stories of Kamala Das
and in Ms. Mukherjee's The Tiger's Daughter and Ms. Deshpande's

That

Long Silence and The Dark Holds No Terrors as such it reflects the mental
conflicts and emotional disturbances of the characters.
These writers write using fust hand experience. Saraswathy Amma
tried to live upto her ideals till her death. The three other writers are progressive

and modem, they continue to write experimenting with newer techniques all
the time.