Discuss the theme of feminism in the novel The Binding Vine
Among the recent Indian women novelists writing in English,
Shashi Deshpande's credentials are most impeccable. She has emerged together of
the mainstream woman writers in India and has drawn critical attention due to
her detailed, sensitive and realistic representation of Indian bourgeoisie
woman within the domestic sphere. Her major novels include Discuss the theme of feminism in the novel The Binding Vine The Dark Holds No
Terrors (1980), Roots and Shadows (1983), That Long Silence (1988), The Binding
Vine (1992), A Matter of your time (1996), Small Remedies (2000), Moving On
(2004) and within the Country of Deceit (2008). Shashi Deshpande's forte has
been the Indian woman, her conflicts and predicaments against the background of
up to date India. the problems and themes in her novels arise from things of
girls at the cross roads of a transitional society, changing from traditional
to modern. With rare sensitivity and depth, she portrays the dilemma of the
educated bourgeoisie Indian woman trapped between her own aspirations as a
private and therefore the forces of patriarchy which confine her. G.S. Amur
rightly observes: Woman’s struggles within the context of the contemporary
Indian society, to seek out and preserve her identity as wife, mother and, most
vital of all, as person is Shashi Deshpande's major concern as a writer. (Amur
10).
Her novels, featuring female protagonists, reconstruct
aspects of women’s experience and plan to formulate to ‘muted’ ideologies,
registering resistance. Shashi Deshpande’s female protagonists are truly in
search of inner strength and her plan to given an honest portrayal of their
frustration, hopes and disappointments makes her novels vulnerable to treatment
from the feminist angle. Shashi Deshpande, however, resents being called a
feminist and maintains that her novels aren't intended to be read as feminist
texts. this is often evident from what she says : Discuss the theme of feminism in the novel The Binding Vine Is writing by women just for
women? . . . once I sit right down to write, i'm just a writer – my gender
ceases to interest me. …We are different, yes, but once more the factors which
unite us are much more important than the gender differences which divide us .
. . I’m a novelist, I write novels, not feminist tracts. Read my novel as a
completely unique , not as a bit of labor that intends to propagate feminism.
(Deshpande 2003 : 143).
At another instance she writes : My writing has been
categorized as ‘writing about women’ or ‘feminist’ writing. during this
process, much in it's been missed. I even have been denied the place and
dignity of a writer who is handling issues that are human issues, of interest
to all or any humanity. (Jain 37)
Shashi Deshpande’s novels, however, reveal her acute
sensitivity to the problems involving women and her tremendous sympathy for
ladies . She presents both the weaknesses and therefore the strengths of the
ladies . In her own words, she is portraying in her writings, “[the] ...
vulnerability of girls . the facility of girls . The deviousness of girls . Discuss the theme of feminism in the novel The Binding Vine The
helplessness of girls . The courage of girls .” (Dhawan 34). She seeks to show
the ideology by which a lady is trained to play a subservient role in society.
within the words of Atrey and Kirpal, "Shashi Deshpande's novels
eclectically employ the postmodern technique of deconstructing patriarchal
culture and customs, and revealing these to be man-made constructs.” (Atrey and
Kirpal 15).
In The Binding Vine, Shashi Deshpande deftly handles the
juxtaposition of the 2 situations – rape committed within and out of doors
marriage. The narrator-protagonist Urmila (called Urmi) highlights the despair
of two women – Mira, who may be a victim of marital rape and Kalpana, who is
brutally raped out of wedlock and is now on her death – bed. Through this
novel, Shashi Deshpande sensitively depicts the trauma of such married women
whose bodies are violated by their husbands but who would neither protest nor
dare reveal this to anyone for the sake of social and moral security. She also
highlights the plight of the ladies who are raped out of wedlock . Discuss the theme of feminism in the novel The Binding Vine Such
unfortunate victims often prefer suffering in silence to being exposed to the
humiliation involved in publicizing their tragedies. Through the voice of Urmi,
Deshpande offers us a glimpse into the lives of various other women who are
victims of 1 or the opposite sort of violence, oppression or deprivation.
The novel opens with the narrator-protagonist Urmi’s
grieving over the death of her one-year old daughter, Anu. She is consoled by
her mother, Inni, brother Amrut and sister-in-law, Vanna. But Urmi cannot
forget her loss. She, in fact, wants to cling on to her grief as she feels that
any attempt on her part to blot Anu’s memory out of her mind would be a
betrayal towards her daughter. rather than fighting her pain and sorrow, she
holds on thereto as she believes that to abandoning of that pain, to let it
becomes a thing of the past would be betrayal and would make her lose Anu
completely. sort of a masochist, she clings to her pain and allows her memories
of Anu, every small incident to flood her longingly and an excellent sense of
loss.
Urmi’s state of bereavement makes her sensitive to the
suffering and despair of others. it's during this state that Urmi meets
Shakutai, the mother of a rape victim, Kalpana, who is on her death-bed. Urmi
meets Shakutai on her visit to the hospital where Vaana works. Kalpana is lying
unconscious and Shakutai assumes that her daughter has been injured during a
car accident. But the doctor, after examining Kalpana, informs Shakutai that
her daughter has been brutally raped. Shakutai is shatterd by this news and
refuses to simply accept it. She tells Vaana hysterically, “It’s not true, you
people try to blacken my daughter’s name”. (Deshpande 1998 : 58). Later, when
she hears Vaana and Dr. Bhaskar talking about reporting the interest the
police, Shakutai cries call at fear, “No, no, no... don’t tell anyone. I’ll
never be ready to delay my head again, who’ll marry the girl, we’re decent
people, Doctor, don’t tell the police” (58).
Urmi accompanies the wailing Shakutai to her house on
Vanna’s request and from here their association begins. Shakutai blames her own
daughter for the rape. She feels that it had been thanks to Kalpana’s boldness
and lack of any fear that she met this tragedy. Shakutai tells Urmi:
Urmi urges Shakutai to urge the case registered as a rape in
order that the culprit is arrested and suitably punished, but she fails to
convince Shakutai whose immediate concern is that the rape should remain a
secret. Shakutai seems to be more worried about the scandal that might
certainly ruin the family’s name and impair the wedding prospects of not only
Discuss the theme of feminism in the novel The Binding Vine Kalpana but also her second daughter, Sandhya. The mother’s reaction is,
undoubtedly, a mirrored image of the society governed by the age-old patriarchal
norms. Shakutai wants her daughter to suffer in silence, for cries can cause
curiosity and cause a scandal making the matters only worse for her.
This incident is simply an example of the truth of women’s
position in society. a lady during a patriarchal set-up, has no place to travel
to once she is stigmatized. In Indian social set-up, the oldsters of a woman
don't act boldly and firmly out of fear of society. rather than bringing the
guilty ones to law for punishment, they like to suppress the matter because
they know only too well the hypocrisies of society. Conforming to the social
ways, they keep their daughters secure within the four walls of their houses
till they're handed over to their rightful masters. No wonder then, that
Shakutai says, “But sometimes, i feel the sole thing which will help Kalpana
now's death”. (178)
In The Binding Vine, Shashi Deshpande makes a bold plan to
portray the agony of a wife who is that the victim of marital rape – a topic
addressed within the Dark Holds No Terrors where the protagonist, Saru, is
assaulted in the dark by her husband who vents his frustration on his wife as
she becomes a successful doctor while he remains an underpaid lecturer. within
the Binding Vine, Shashi Deshpande portrays a man’s obsession together with his
wife and her intense dislike of physical intimacy with him. Discuss the theme of feminism in the novel The Binding Vine The travail of the
wife finds expression during a series of poems composed by her and discovered
by her daughter-in-law, Urmi, long after her death. Urmi’s state of bereavement
makes her sensitive to the suffering and despair of her long-dead
mother-in-law, Mira. She makes a desperate plan to explore the mind of the
young Mira by delving deep into the poems composed by her.
Meera’s deepest feelings are expressed in her poems written
within the vernacular, Kannada. Urmi carefully translates these poems into
English. A careful study of her poems enables Urmi to decipher the essence of
the thoughts that Mira had attempted to place down on paper. Her writings
reveal her untold suffering thanks to the forced sexual intercourse subjected
on her by her husband. She could only tolerate in silence the violation of her
body. Her humiliation and trauma is expressed, however, in her poems. One poem
particularly reveals Mira’s tragic despair :
Pursuing Mira’s diary, Urmi is convinced that she had
written from her personal experience. She (Urmi) observes that: “It runs
through all her writing – a robust , clear thread of an intense dislike of the
sexual act together with her husband, a physical repulsion for the person she
married”. (63) Mira’s suffering epitomizes the plight of countless other women
who silently undergo similar traumatic experiences in their married lives. The
violation of one’s body, albeit sanctified by marriage, are often as
humiliating and traumatic an experience as rape. Such examples prove the
validity of Simone de Beauvoir’s observation that : Discuss the theme of feminism in the novel The Binding Vine Marriage is obscene in
theory in thus far because it transforms into rights and duties those mutual
relations which should be founded on a spontaneous urge; it gives an
instrumental and thus degrading character to the 2 bodies in dooming them to
understand one another in their general aspects as bodies, not as persons.
(Beauvoir 463).
Though the novel The Binding Vine chiefly revolves round the
individual tragedies of Urmi, Mira, Kalpana and Shakutai, Shashi Deshpande,
subtly hints at the suffering of various other women during a sexist society.
The gross unfairness that prevails in Indian society against women is clear
within the marriage of Akka. Akka willingly agrees to marry a widower who is
that the father of a toddler though she is cognizant of her prospective
husband’s obsession together with his dead wife. Akka’s willing acceptance of
such a wedding proves the very fact that during a male dominated society many
young girls accept marriage under any condition because they need been taught
that marriage is that the most desirable goal for a woman and finding the groom
is that the most difficult thing. during a traditional society women are
groomed and educated for dependence, for wifehood and for motherhood. within
the words of Colette Dowling :
Mira wonders at her mother’s total indifference to her own
life and asserts that she will never be like her mother, “I’ll never think my
life, myself nothing, never”. (101). Mira’s dairy also reveals the prejudiced
attitude faced by women within the literary world. Mira has genuine interest in
writing poetry but she is discouraged by her very idol Venu, the highly admired
and acclaimed poet of her times, whose greatness Mira aspires to realize . Discuss the theme of feminism in the novel The Binding Vine Venu
tells her, “Why does one got to write poetry? it's enough for a girl such as
you to offer birth to children. that's your poetry. Leave the opposite poetry
to us men.” (127). Thus during a male-dominated society, a lady is discouraged
to possess any identity of her own. Her identity is predicted to be merged with
and grow from her role as wife and mother. Female children get older with indoctrination
that holds up, overtly and covertly, this ideal because the just one a ‘good’
woman should aspire for.