Feminine Sensibility in Indo-Anglian Fiction

FEMININE SENSIBILITY IN INDO-ANGLIAN
FICTION

Indian Institute of Technology, Madras

An interesting aspect of the modern Indian enlightenment has been the creative release of the feminine sensibility. Women in modern India have not only shared the exciting and dangerous burdens of the struggle for independence but also articulated the national impulse and the consciousness of cultural change in the realm of letters. In the personality of an individual like Sarojini Naidu, the temper of Indian womanhood achieved its comprehensive synthesis; she was not only the lark of the Indian political awakening but also the nightingale of the Indian imagination. If a plunge of the Indian womanhood into politics had been almost a common occurrence in the days of the freedom struggle, the literary enterprise too, held out its fascinating, if not always rewarding, attractions; in the development of the Indo-Anglian novel, the feminine sensibility has achieved an imaginative self-sufficiency which merits recognition in spite of its relatively later manifestation.

Some of the women writers do indeed belong to the “Westernized upper-class” which naturally limits their social experience to a single stratum. Nayantara Sehgal is a representative of this kind of writers. Iqbalunnisa Hussain, Mrs. F. Das, Padmini Sengupta, Santha Rama Rau, and Venu Chitale are some notable women writers whose novels are as vividly representative as they are variegated. In this context, however, Kamala Markandaya’s novels, in comparison with those of her contemporaries among women, seem to be more fully reflective of the awakened feminine sensibility in modern India, as she attempts to project the image of the changing traditional society. As such, Markandaya merits a special notice both by virtue of the variety and complexity of her achievement, and as representative of a major trend in the history of the Indo-Anglian novel. In her novels, she not only displays a flair for virtuosity that orders and patterns her feelings and ideas, resulting in the production of a truly enjoyable work of art but also more important, she projects the national image on many levels of aesthetic awareness. Indeed, her novels seem to be uniquely reflective of the national consciousness in its multiple forms with the characteristic sensibility of the modern educated Indian woman.

Markandaya’s five novels, Nectar in a Sieve, Some Inner Fury, A Silence of Desire, possession and A Handful of Rice represent in toto the contemporary ‘zeitgeist’ and the traditional ‘elan vital’ of India. The purposive direction of her creative sensibility endows her novels with a certain representative character that marks them out as a significant entity in Indo-Anglian fiction.

In Nectar in a Sieve, Markandaya dramatizes the tragedy of a traditional Indian village, and a peasant family, assaulted by industrialization. Rukmani and Nathan, the peasant couple in a south Indian village, are the victims of the two evils: the zamindari system and the industrial economy. The happy arcadian atmosphere, and the hearty contentment, that Rukmani feels and enjoys, soon disappear after the construction of the tannery. All this seems to have happened in the “twinkling of an eye”. The tannery, symbolic of mechanical power, destroys the traditional village. Inflation, vice and disease, quickly disturb the peaceful flow of life in the village. Labour problems and the drought condition further upset the peasants’ life. Misfortunes are heaped on the head of Rukmani: one of her sons is killed at the tannery; the crops fail; another son dies of starvation; and her own daughter, Ira, “prostitutes” in order to live; but, the final blow is from the zamindar who orders them to evacuate because they cannot pay the revenue. Rukmani and Nathan go to the town to seek the help of their son. Unable to find him there, they turn when Rukmani’s husband dies of privation and disease. Buffetted both by man and nature, Rukmani comes alone to her village to live with her son Selvam, and her daughter, Ira.

With her impeccable representational realism, and evocative descriptions of the Indian arcadia, Markandaya achieves a perfect poise between the rural reality and the disciplined urbanity of art. The real truth of the novel is the spiritual stamina of Rukmani against such formidable enemies to her culture as the draconian landlord, and the soulless industry. And, this mother of rural India lives in her children, Selvam and Ira, who belong to a different age but who are of the same self. In this superior sentiment of love for the Earth and Nature Nectar in a Sieve recalls, Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, and Dennis Gray Stoll’s The Dove found no Rest.

Markandaya’s second novel, Some Inner Fury is thematically more astringent than the earlier one. The divergence is total: the unsophisticated, uneducated and uncivilized peasants, with their problems of inldustrialization and landlordism, give place to the more civilized and anglicized upper-class ladies and gentlemen, with their issues of political violence and racial feud. The scene is shifted from rural India to a cosmopolitan city of gaiety and luxury, hollowness and hypocrisy. In this fictional drama of militant nationalism, the heroine, Mira, is finally redeemed by the national movement. It results, not in her tragic end, but in the termination of her attachment to Richard. Political violence and incendiarism, doubtless, determine the course of events of her personal life and national history. In her extended recollection of the past, Mira, the narrator-heroine, suggests the motif of the novel:

“A whole war lies between us which had hardly begun when we met and is now a thing of the past, a whole struggle, whoose beginning we did not see, which used us, and wrenched us apart, and is now best forgotten.”

The atmosphere of the novel is thus surcharged with national politics wholesomely subsumed in its artistic framework. The “never-to-be-forgotten year of nineteen forty-two,” as the impersonal image of militant nationalism, seals the fate of the love-lorn heroine, Mira. Her love for an Englishman, Richard, is foredoomed to failure, notwithstanding their deep understanding. However occasional, an ostensible undertone of xenophobia marks the national upsurge which sweeps and swamps everything that comes across. Thus the novel is at once a faithful representation of the contemporary social consciousness, and a clear condemnation of the official nonchalance and apathy towards the mounting tension in the country. Quite naturally, the bureaucratic bachanalian propensities could not but lead to a popular revolutionary reaction.

While the central ideas in Nectar in a Sieve and Some inner Fury are respectively the havoc of economics and politics in the lives of individuals as well as communities, the diagrammatical presentation of the contemporary consciousness in her third novel, A Silence of Desire, shows up a new dimension of sensibility in that the fictional focus is on the psychological adjustment of an urban middle-class family. It is essentially a “spiritual crisis” for Sarojini, the serene and traditional housewife of the newly emergent middle-class in the country, when she is asked by her modernistic husband to give up her faith in what she simply believes to be the traditional values of life. But, after all, she accepts the scientific spirit of the age, which is not in conflict with the basic human values, as it merely attempts to make the humans more happy here and now. Sarojini’s fundamental spiritual urgency and her moral scrupulosity need not be either sacrificed or subordinated; but, only her attitude towards the scientific civilization needs reorientation. Sarojini’s belief in the Swamy’s super-human powers and spiritual superiority impels her to go to him for the cure of her physical ailment–a tumour in the womb. After much misunderstanding and an unhappy silence, Dandekar succeeds in his efforts to shift away the Swamy, as the only possible solution to make his obdurate wife see reason and regain her health in a modern hospital. “Faith-healing” is neither an essential part of the national tradition nor is it efficacious in all cases. Sarojini’s ignorance of the truth of the matter causes her much psychological tension and even domestic disharmony. Shorn of this flaw, Sarojini truly represents the traditional Indian wife, in her concern for the family as well as her religious devotion. Ultimately Sarojini’s desire to resort to faith-healing is silenced by her acceptance of the surgical treatment, thanks to the Swamy’s characteristic detachment, and his helpful departure from the town.

Markandaya’s next novel, possession, is as much a study of the malevolent influence of a civilized barbarian over the native genius of an artist, as a probe into an alien onslaught on the autochthonic cultural matrix. It reveals the tragic consequence, of an unrefined English woman, Lady Caroline, trying to transpose an unsophisticated Indian artist, Valmiki, a South Indian boy of exceptional sensitivity into an English atmosphere. Anasuya, the narrator, is the witness of this drama of the destructive intrusion of a ‘patron’ into the sanctum of the human heart. The world of Caroline is a “wasteland of spirit” that depersonalizes the individualistic Valmiki. Her arty eccentricities and her irrepressible sensuality warp his intellect so seriously that he soon degenerates into a Bohemian of continental dimensions.

Val, as Caroline calls him, is accidentally discovered by her with the help of her Indian friend, Anasuya. She perceives, with an uncanny insight, the rich potentialities of Valmiki as an artist. Paying a costly compensation to his parents, she whisks him off to England, but not before Val takes the blessings of his guru, the cave-dwelling Swamy outside the village. The Swamy, representing the venerable ascetic order of traditional India, is quite confident of Val’s spiritual allegiance to him.

From the beginning, Lady Caroline is aware of the Swamy’s invisible influence on Valmiki; and, in her eagerness to possess the boy outright, she oversteps the bounds of matriarchal patronage, by seducing him into an almost incestuous carnal alignment, despite the disparity in their ages and the difference of race. Motivated by the sheerest self-interest, she grooms him into a smarmy smartaleck; doubtless, she can justly claim to have “civilized” a village idiot, a mere goatherd, but her civilization is fundamentally apocryphal. Her sagging sense of values dehumanises the personality of Valmiki, no less than her “terrible, over-powering craving for possession”, which finally kills the artist in him. The commercial vulgarization of his art under the tutelage of this “white narcissus” cannot possibly be called an aesthetic achievement. The maniac exultation of Caroline, over Val’s success in America and Europe, merely betrays her neurotic possessiveness and Val’s self-delusion. Val’s sybaritic existence is observed by Anasuya:

“The glitter-dust seemed to fall agreeably on Valmiki. Assiduously attended by slim young women in black, he was floating around the room like an exotic sun-flower, flushed with champagne….Most of the uncouthness was gone, and some of his honesty.”

And Anasuya, the confidential friend of both Caroline and Val, attributes hissuccess to his general handsomeness and the prevailing fashion for things Indian. As part of Caroline’s curious bric-a-brac Val quickly fades into a pleasure-loving idler. Val’s sensitivity is ruptured when Caroline forces his separation from Ellie, whom he loves truly, and whose heart-rending sufferings he shares with an uncommon empathy. She reminds him of her own mother: for, both meekly accept the Karmic finality of the pain and sorrow of the world as the inevitable nature of existence. But Caroline’s possessive officiousness, and cauterized sensibility, debar him from visiting even his mother. After Ellie’s departure, Annabel is the new rival to Caroline, menacing her possessive control over Val. Disgusted with the meddlesome frump that Caroline is, with all her “alabastine beauty”, Val is easily attracted towards Annabel. But soon Caroline succeeds in forcing him , only to lose him forever. The cloudy conscience of Caroline suspects the worst, and finally realizes the end of her possessive charm over him.

There are, in this cosmopolitan novel of ideas, two powerful personalities that determine the course of the action. Caroline’s role is quite obvious, in her selfish intrusion into, and sensual exploitation of, the artistic consciousness of Valmiki; she is a hindrance to the progress of Valmiki. Val, with the ground of an innocent goatherd, lacks the necessary volition to resist the hypnotic spell of Caroline, with her claim of ownership. She proprietorially avers:

“I discovered him in a...cave in India, hideously bare and comfortable except for those superb walls.”

In this, she seems to begin where Forster’s Miss Quested in A Passage to India ends–a cave with a mysterious and even eerie atmosphere. It is, however, when the Swamy visits London that Caroline feels perturbed, though she contemptuously refers to him as “the medicine man”. He is, in fact, her “real adversary”.

In this unholy complex of Pygmalionism, Caroline recalls to one’s mind the Shavian philologist Higgins, although his final ironical liberation of the flower-girl, Eliza, in her “translated” form of Lady Doolittle, is a contrast to Caroline’s conduct, reflecting her general debility of sensibility. A nearer cousin of Caroline, both in her “oozing benevolence” and utter lack of cultural refinement, appears, however, in Henry James’s Roderick Hudson Roderick is the Jamesian creation of an artist, with a spiritual refinement, but wanting in the complementary intellectual awareness. He is like Valmiki in his promise and potential of an artist but ends up as “an unexpected failure” when he becomes a slave to passion. His patron Rowland is intellectually refined, without the conscience of an artist. With his vicarious pleasure in the success of Roderick, he is a pathetic meddler; and his condemnation of Roderick has a heartless egoist results in the artist’s suicide. But unlike the Jamesian hero, Valmiki is redeemed by the moral and spiritual consciousness of the traditional cultural pater familias, the Swamy, who welcomes Valmiki into “the service of God.” The Indian tradition regards all the possessions of man as divine gift, or prasad, which can be conscientiously used, and even rededicated to the Lord. And Swamy himself is not a misfit, edged out by society, but a holy man in quest of the Ultimate Reality, the Satchidananda (Truth-Consciousness-Bliss). He is indubitably, as Caroline instinctively feared, the most formidable rival to her, not in possessing the mind and heart of Valmiki, but in releasing and uplifting him into a unique state of spiritual ecstasy. The wide Indian wilderness, where the Swamy dwells, is the natural atelier of a natural artist like Valmiki, who at last attains the maturity and strength to reject Caroline, the lady without conscience. The Swamy affirms that Valmiki works for a “divine spirit.” The dispossession of Valmiki is now total. The clash of wills, and the cleavage of the continental cultures, result not in human destruction, but in a recognition of the necessity of cultural co-existence and spiritual liberty.

Caroline must not be taken as a representative Western woman. It is interesting to note that the English Caroline in possession is so unlike the French Madeline in Raja Rao’s The Serpent and the Rope. Madeline is so advanced and refined in her cultural make-up that she never tries to possess Rama, but helps him in his spiritual quest, even as he guides her to the Buddhistic “Eight-fold Path.” Caroline and Madeline thus offer a study in contrast of the same European cultural consciousness.

Markandaya’s achievement lies chiefly in her artistic juxtaposition of the sustaining values of the Indian spiritual tradition and the soulless, prurient pursuits of a Western virtuoso, sans the sense of enduring values of life, and in breathing into their polarized symbols the unmistakable sense of felt life.

Markandaya’s latest novel, A Handful of Rice, is fundamentally a novel of moral refinement. It is a convincing artistic affirmation of the well-known dictum: “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.” The protagonist of the novel is Ravi, a juvenile delinquent, thrown out by the unequal and indifferent social system into a gang of social miscreants. He tries to rob a family, but is generously given a chance, by the family, to improve himself; for, the head of the family realizes that reformation is more profound and permanent, not by incrimination but by tolerance and kind treatment. Ravi hangs about the house; the father of the family, initially wronged by Ravi, recognizes finally that he is nlot-irredeemable, and sympathetically accepts and admits him into the family-fold. Ravi marries the younger daughter of the family by virtue of his own moral re-armament and resultant strength. It is, in fact, this self-same quality–the moral consciousness–that sustains him when he falls on evil days, reeking with squalor, misery, wretchedness and drabness. Conscientious as he is, he refrains from violence even when he is desperate; and an unyielding optimist that he is, he lives on hope. With characteristic candour, Markandaya sets the tone of the novel as “the constant nibbling desire to have a second helping of food, a cup of coffee every morning, a shirt without holes and a shawl to keep oneself warm.”

Thus, Markandaya’s literary sensibility projects itself in her novels as an acute, if unresolved, perception of the different and distinct forms of national consciousness, which propel the individual’s progress in the modern world. It is possible to trace out in her novels an intelligible pattern of ideas, that reveals her aesthetic assimilation of a long-established tradition under the disturbing impact of modernity. The five predominant and cardinal ideas that pervade her fictional translation of the national tradition are, broadly speaking, “social” as evident in Nectar in a Sieve, “political” as can be seen in Some Inner Fury, “spiritual, or more strictly, religious” as embodied in A Silence of Desire, “cultural” as presented in possession and finally, “moral or ethical” as embedded in A Handful of Rice.

In fine, Kamala Markandaya’s fictional achievement lies in her being a steady traditionalist, while transmuting the different phases of national experience into significant works of art. Her intellectuality and sophistication do not wean her away from the national tradition. Understandably, therefore, traditional life forms the substructure or all her novels, so far. The national image that is projected in her work is neither effete nor effeminate, but is quick with life and is full of life’s resilience. The fact that none of the protagonists in her novels runs away from the hard realities of life, by choosing death as the final solution, is a vindication of the traditional values of Indian culture, namely, acceptance, tolerance and endurance.