Assignment

Assignment writing: Paper 204: Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies.

This blog is Assignment writing on Paper 204: Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies assigned by Professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

• Name: Nidhi Dave
• Roll no: 16
• Enrollment no: 4069206420210005
• Email ID: davenidhi05@gmail.com
• Batch: 2021- 23( MA Semester 3)
• Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Marxist feminist theory

Introduction

From the last 200 years, efforts have been constantly made to protect and uphold the rights of women all over the world through various movements. It started as early as the year 1789 when the suffragette movement was introduced to fight for women’s right to vote. From thereon, the feminist movements have only gained more and more prominence and recognition to inspire the current feminist movements. From the beginning of the 20th Century with rapid Industrialization taking place, there was further a need to protect the workers more specifically the women from facing any form of exploitation or discrimination in the workplace. As a result, during that time several thinkers or reformists laid down their own theories on the rights of women concerning several areas in the different economic systems. This article specifically aims to focus on the Feminist Theory devised by Karl Marx, a staunch proponent of communism. 

What is the Marxist feminist theory

Feminism is a term used very widely in recent times and its definition has continuously been changed over the years to accommodate the changing needs of society. It essentially refers to any movement or a given set of movements to protect and uphold the various social, political, economic, or cultural rights of women and to provide them with equal opportunities to progress. The Marxist, Socialist, and even Capitalist feminist theories aim to achieve the same outcome but follow different paths. While Marxist feminism aims to liberate women by preventing them from being oppressed through some radical utopian demands, socialist feminism focused on liberating women by removing the patriarchy in society. Capitalist Feminist Theory on the other hand aimed to empower women by focusing on their economic freedom. 

The Marxist feminist theory was focused on the exploitation women were subjected to under the Capitalist System with the amount of work they had to put in. They were forced to work in the industries for longer periods and were paid extremely low wages as compared to men. Even the working conditions were extremely dismal for them. Its main idea was that the women could be liberated only by eliminating the Capitalist System wherein the women were not paid sufficient wages for their labour. There are several aspects which Marxist feminism focuses on which are as follows:

Classless society

The primary objective of Marxist feminist theory was to create a classless society wherein both the upper class and the lower class people are treated equally. At that point in time, women were considered to be inferior to men and didn’t enjoy equal rights. Further, the women in poor households were discriminated against in the field of labour and employment. On the other hand, the upper-class women or the Bourgeoisie enjoyed certain privileges without putting in any labor. By creation of a classless society, the vision of Marx and Engels was to ensure that there was collective ownership and the basic dignity of women in society.

Equal pay

Karl Marx’s theory focused on providing equal wages to both men and women for the equal amount of work they were putting in. There shall be no gender-based discrimination in terms of wage payment. In several books introduced in the 1970s, women were stated as the reserve army of labour which was however unrecognized many times. As a result, they were not provided with equivalent wages for their efforts. Hence, they should also be provided with adequate protection for their labour.

Reproductive labour

Marx and Friedrich Engels under this theory also focused on the unpaid reproductive labour in which the women were involved.\ Women performed a very important role of bearing children or procreation which helped in carrying forward the future generations, but for which they weren’t paid anything. They also didn’t have an equal opportunity for carrying out productive labour. Being highly critical of Capitalism, Marx also held the opinion that capitalism was responsible for the state having control over a woman’s sexual desires or even their bodily integrity. The family eventually became a place where the women were oppressed and were considered to be subordinate to men thereby creating this gender gap in wages and status in society.

Social wages

Social wages essentially refer to the amenities that are provided to the persons in the society. At that point of time, a large number of women all over the world were landless and were not allowed any social participation. Hence the focus of the Marxist Feminists was to shift the attention to the rural women who despite working on the lands were landless because of male domination and the erasure of the work carried out by them on the family farms for self-production or self-subsistence. This had two outcomes at large:

a) Firstly, the labour of women in the subsistence farms fell within the purview similar to that of reproductive labour as they were not paid the wages for the work which they did on their own piece of land.

b) Secondly, the rural household was now considered as one economic unit and eventually led to the erasure of the value and the labour of rural women.

Wages for household work

As stated before, the women were not encouraged to engage in productive labour in the industries and were largely subjected to housework. Hence under Marxist feminism, there was a demand for the inclusion of the household work as well as for the determination of the wages. Further, there was also an opinion that private property was the main reason for such an exploitation of the women and there was a dire need to improve their working conditions be it their own house or their workplace.

Inter-sectionality

The Intersectional (interconnection between different sections of society on basis of gender, caste, or race) organizing of the women from the different castes, communities, or regions is a very important feature of Marxist Feminism. It essentially means that there shall be a wide coalition on the basis of the differences among the people. As a result, it would facilitate the interaction among the people with different identities and communities having different facets as a result of their continuous oppression. Such intersectional organizing of the people which focuses on the oppressions in recent times has played a vital role in promoting the social movements with the labour movements and facilitating increased cooperation between the agricultural labourers and industrial workers.

Emotional labour

Under the Marxist Feminist Theory, emphasis was also laid on the emotional labour of the women. It refers to the labour that women have to be involved in for keeping their family members emotionally stable. Though it didn’t directly create any product or service which is expected from all forms of labour, it was equally important to ensure the well-being of the entire family. Even in the field of employment, there was an emphasis on emotional labour on part of women to fulfill the job requirement which however used to go unnoticed. 

Affective labor

The women were also involved in a form of labor that was byproductive in nature i.e., fulfilled two purposes. This was known as Affective Labor and was discussed by certain scholars such as Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Shiloh Whitney. These were all the thinkers who believed in Marxist feminism. It focused on the fine line that was there between the personal and the economic life of the women. While the women were involved in domestic labor, their work was also to be economically appreciated by including it in the overall production. 

These were some of the important features of Marxist feminist theory which aimed to free the women from the clutches of Capitalism and provide them with the rights and dignity which they deserve.

These were all the major aspects of the Marxist Feminist Theory which despite its limitations played a significant role in shaping the modern Feminist Ideologies. 

Marxist feminists

Marxist feminist perspective adapts the principles of Marxism to emphasise how capitalism uses the family oppresses women, and the harmful consequences of the family to women’s lives.

Marxist feminists look on class and gender inequalities as dual systems of oppression, with both being very powerful and independent systems. Marxist feminists often argue that class and gender inequalities reinforce each other and create groups that are doubly oppressed.

Margaret Benston’s (1972) Marxist feminist study: ‘The political economy of women’s liberation’ emphasises the value of the unpaid labour women perform within the family. This labour, which sustains the current labour force and nurtures the next generation, comes at no cost to the owners of the means of production. Additionally, the responsibility of the male breadwinner to support his wife and children fetters his ability to withdraw his labour power in defence of his class interests. In so doing it helps reinforce the inequitable capitalist economic system.

As Rosemarie Tong (1989) notes in her book Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction, Marxist feminists identify how work shapes consciousness, and women’s work shapes her status and self-image. Therefore Marxist feminists are primarily concerned with the division of labour that keeps women in the domestic sphere of the family and men in the workplace.

Woman’s position within the family may help explain the problem of developing working class consciousness. As with exchange relationships in general in capitalism, underlying these seemingly equal exchange relationships are power relationships. Various relationships, such as those between males and females, relationships in the family, prostitution, surrogate mother hood, etc. may appear to express equality, but because of the underlying unequal power relations conceal great inequalities.

Toward a Feminist Synthesis

Folbre notes that there are a number of problems created by the conventional neoclassical and Marxist views.

1. Models of the economy and society are incomplete and inadequate. The conventional economic approach examines only production in the economy, devaluing the contribution of any necessary labour in the household. Measures of production such as gross national product (GNP) are misleading measures of economic activity because only certain forms of economic activity are valued.

2. Models of economic development are inadequate, because they consider only production, not reproduction and the social arrangements surrounding these. These issues are especially important for the poorer countries today. The manner in which women, family and households are affected by economic changes, and the constraints and opportunities faced by them will have a lot to do with whether and how economic development occurs in these countries. 

3. Analysis of political debates and conflicts over social welfare programs may be misleading. Among the questions that need to be asked are how were these programs initially achieved, and in whose interests were they implemented? For example, excluding women from factory work during the nineteenth century is often treated as a great gain for the working class and for society. But this may have had serious long run negative effects for women. Today, when social welfare programs are under attack, who will be hurt by the decline of these? How can coalitions be developed to maintain and restore these programs?

4. In the Marxian approach, the lack of attention to unpaid household labour has led to an inadequate theory of population and labour force. There is little in the Marxist model that deals with the reasons for fertility decline, and neoclassical explanations (costs and benefits) are probably superior in that regard. As well, why women have entered the labour force in such large numbers, and why the feminist movement emerged are not adequately explained in the Marxian model.

What kind of philosophy is Marxist feminism based on

Karl Marx was a renowned socialist, reformist, thinker, and economist. He was clearly against capitalism and aimed to eliminate the class society or the hierarchy which existed at that point wherein some communities were superior (bourgeoisie) such as the industry owners and the others inferior such as the industrial workers who were exploited by the superiors. Owing to his ideologies, his theories on feminism and economics were also against the Capitalist practices and rather focused on communism i.e. collective sharing or ownership of resources. His Feminist Theory was also based on this premise. It is a social, economic as well as a political philosophy that aimed to view communism through the lens of Feminism.

The very philosophy of Marxist Feminism is that there should be no private property or private ownership because it causes greater discrimination against the women and reduces their role in society. Both men and women should be treated equally in society and for achieving this there was a need for revolution. At that point in time, there were gender-specific roles that were assigned to both men and women. While men worked outside, women used to work at home and raise their children for which they weren’t provided any wages. As a result, the males were considered superior and had the power to redistribute the income among family members. This was clearly disregarding the labour a woman carried out at her home and also led to a distinction between the bourgeoisie (Males) and the Proletariats (women). This was the concept upon which the Marxist theory was based. It aimed to lay emphasis on the recognition of women and the contributions which they used to make in society.

Limitations of Marxist feminism 

The Marxist theory of feminism had a few drawbacks and certain issues which it failed to address. Due to this, it failed to cover and justify the aspects relating to women’s exploitation under the Capitalist system in an exhaustive manner. A few of the limitations are as follows:

Though the Marxist Theory involves a very exhaustive analysis of the exploitation of women under the Capitalist System, it strictly divides the industries between the public and private sectors. While in the Public sector it is possible to carry out such an analysis of the economic and the social exploitation of women but the private sector wasn’t considered worthy enough for it.

The feminist theory under Marxism was based on the fact that women constituted the Reserve Industrial Army. It explained the expansion and the contraction of the unemployment cycle. However, it failed to cover the aspects regarding the decline in fertility and the change in the value of labour while considering the same.

The Marxian Theory was largely economic in nature and focused on commodity production, class exploitation due to industrial labour, and other related aspects. However, it failed to take into consideration the social factors of inequality and discrimination such as race, gender, or sexual autonomy and hence doesn’t provide a systematic explanation of these. 

The labour which is generally not sold to the master or the employer doesn’t hold any economic value under Marxist Feminism. As a result, at that given point the reproductive labour or the emotional labour in which the women were involved but received no wages was not to be considered. Hence it was believed that the housewives were unproductive which was certainly not the case. They played a vital role in any household and reproductive labour but which was not included in production.

These were the major limitations of the Marxist feminist theory which had to be addressed later on by the various thinkers such as Max Weber and other feminists in the future. It was suitably modified to accommodate such changes. Hence is very much relevant in the current times and has inspired a lot many feminist movements in recent times.

Applicability and significance of the Marxist feminist theory in current times

Marxist feminism was focused on empowering women by creating a classless society. This holds a lot of relevance even to this date. Several countries follow Communism defined by Karl Marx and even the Feminist movements worldwide are inspired by it. However, after the fall of the USSR in 1990, the feminist movements based on Communism haven’t been very successful. The theories stated by Karl Marx were highly generic with regard to feminism and failed to draw any relations between the variables discussed under his theory such as Patriarchy and Capitalism and how the former leads to the latter in any society.

In the current times, Marxist feminist theory acts as a tool to understand the relationship between the social order, women’s labor, and the ownership of property. His theory goes a step ahead to emphasize the consideration for the reproductive labour of women by payment of wages. In the current times, this becomes even more important because the number of working women is increasing and there is a need to facilitate their work-life balance. In the current times, the Feminist movements put forth the demands for the development of a political system under which women’s liberation, class politics, issues of gender identity, and sexual preferences are given paramount importance. This is what Marxist Feminism directly emphasizes. 

In India, Marxist feminism holds a lot of relevance for removing this perception of the gender-specific roles given to the male and the females in society. It reduces the employment opportunities available to women in the labor market. However, Marxist feminism focuses on the identification of Reproductive labor but nowhere did Marx mention how to achieve it. Still, in India, women’s work at home is considered inferior and they have no economic independence. They are dependent on the income of their husband and would be treated at their Husband’s whims and fancies. Yet in several other countries, the influence of this theory has been quite positive such as in Ukraine, Russia, the USA, etc.

Conclusion

Marxist feminist Theory, despite all its drawbacks proved to be vital in igniting a sense of revolt among the women to fight for their rights. It gave a direction to feminist movements and if not all, questioned certain aspects of capitalism to hold the system prevailing at that point of time accountable. Now what remains to be seen is the effectiveness of Marxist Theory in the coming years towards the growth of feminism and feminist movements at large.

Work Cited: 

• Stefano, Christine Di . "Marxist Feminism ." Wiley Online Library . 14 Sep. 2014. doi.org/10.1002/9781118474396.wbept0653. Accessed 5 Nov. 2022.

• Verma, Parth. "Marxist Feminism ." iPleaders . 6 July 2022. blog.ipleaders.in/marxist-feminism/?amp=1. Accessed 5 Nov. 2022.

• Thompson , Chris . "Marxist feminists ." sociologytwynham.com. 1 July 2013. sociologytwynham.com/2013/07/01/marxist-feminists/. Accessed 5 Nov. 2022.

• Gingrich, Paul. "Feminist Critique of the Marxian Approach." Sociology 304. 10 Mar. 1998. uregina.ca/~gingrich/mar1098.htm. Accessed 5 Nov. 2022.

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Assignment

Assignment writing: Paper 203: The Postcolonial Studies.

This blog is Assignment writing onPaper 203: The Postcolonial Studies assigned by Professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

• Name: Nidhi Dave
• Roll no: 16
• Enrollment no: 4069206420210005
• Email ID: davenidhi05@gmail.com
• Batch: 2021- 23( MA Semester 3)
• Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Racism in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea is both a response and a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, set in the West Indies and imagining the lives of Bertha Mason and her family. Bidisha describes how Jean Rhys’s novel portrays the racial and sexual exploitation at the heart of western civilisation and literature.

✴️Introduction: 

The novel Wide Sargasso Sea is written by Jean Rhys in order to highlight multiple issues like gender discrimination, the opposite nature of male and females, how the desires of the central characters not fulfilled and how all these things lead to the madness. The entire identity of the main character has been shattered and taken away from her. Antoinette was a Creole girl and Rochester was an English white man, but they got married and the consequence was so dangerous that Antoinette had to suffer for a lifetime. Wide Sargasso Sea is a novel written by Jean Rhys is a novel that is written with special purpose as to describe the earlier life of Bertha Mason of Jane Eyre, whose original name is Antoinette in the novel. It shows her life from the very beginning of her life, how she is married to Rochester and how her psyche gets worse and worse. The entire process is described here and the reasons responsible for that are also described at lengths.

✴️Title:

The title of the novel is very important. The Sargasso Sea is a large area where there is a huge attention of seaweeds (sea plants) in the North Atlantic Sea. Just like these weeds, the characters here also are tangled in the web of emotions and ideas- they seem to be drowning each other. Thus, the title of the novel is actually the showcase of what it actually is.

🔆Wide Sargasso Sea: 

Wide Sargasso Sea is a visceral response to Charlotte Brontë’s treatment of Mr Rochester’s ‘mad’ first wife, Bertha, in her classic Victorian novel Jane Eyre. Jean Rhys reveals the horrifying reality that might lie behind a man’s claim that a woman is mad, and humanizes Brontë’s grotesque invention, the now-archetypal and heavily symbolic ‘madwoman in the attic’. The novel is a vindicating howl of rage and injustice, and a skin-flaying revelation of personal sadism.

Wide Sargasso Sea is also a valuable historical work, written in the 1960s but set in the early 1800s, which explores Victorian paternalism, sexualised racism and the complex social and political history of the West Indies. Rhys vividly imagines Rochester’s time there when he met Bertha, who is a Creole – a naturalized West Indian of European descent. The Emancipation Act freeing slaves but compensating slave-owners for their ‘loss’ has been passed, England and France are the dominating and competing colonisers while Spanish colonial exploration is a past influence, and many formerly profitable estates are in decline because of the absence of exploited labour and a slump in the sugar market.

🌟Racism in Wide Sargasso Sea 

🔆What is racism?

Racism is most commonly used to name a form of prejudice in which a person believes in the superiority of what they consider to be their own “race” over others. This most often takes the form of believing that those with other skin colors—especially darker skin colors—are inferior physically, intellectually, morally, and/or culturally, and mistreating and discriminating against them because of this. Such a belief typically promotes the notion that white people are “the default”—that whiteness is “normal” and that people with other appearances are the ones who are “different” (and “inferior”).

The word racism is also used to mean a system of oppression based on this kind of prejudice that is thought to be embedded into the fabric of society and its institutions, resulting in ongoing mistreatment and injustice in many, many forms. This is often called systemic racism, institutional racism, or structural racism. These terms imply that such racism is upheld by laws, policies, traditions, and institutions—and the people who keep them in place.

✴️Definition:

"The belief that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined by hereditary factors and that this endows some races with an intrinsic superiority over others."

"Abusive or aggressive behavior towards members of another race on the basis of such a belief."

Racism is most commonly used to name a form of prejudice in which a person believes in the superiority of what they consider to be their own “race” over others. This most often takes the form of believing that those with other skin colors—especially darker skin colors—are inferior physically, intellectually, morally, and/or culturally, and mistreating and discriminating against them because of this. When used in this way, racism typically refers to a system that has oppressed people of color all over the world throughout history. Such a system is often thought to operate through white people using the advantages that the system gives them (often called white privilege) to maintain their supremacy over people of color (often called white supremacy).

✴️Race and Gender issues in Wide Sargasso Sea 

Antoinette was a Creole girl and Rochester was an English white man. So there is clearly a difference between them in terms of race and gender as well. The novelist shows us that Antoinette is a weak character mainly because of her being female and black. Rhys finds herself caught up in two different cultures and is not sure about her own identity that she reflects in her heroine. Like Rhys, Antoinette is a sensitive and lonely young Creole girl who grows up with neither her mother’s love nor her peers’ companionship. In school as a young woman, Antoinette becomes increasingly lost in thought and isolated, showing the early signs of her inherited emotional vulnerability. Moreover, Antoinette’s passion contributes to her melancholy and implied madness. Her arranged marriage to an unsympathetic and controlling English gentleman worsen her condition and pushes her to fits of violence. Eventually her husband brings her to England and locks her in his attic, assigning a servant woman to watch over her. Fearful, Antoinette awakes from a vivid dream and sets out to burn down the house. 

Wide Sargasso Sea is constructed following the terms of a literary and historical discourse which takes Europe, and precisely England, as origin and reference. The starting point of the novel is Jane Eyre; consequently, it bears the features of the English classical literary canon which celebrates western standards while looking down upon non-Western values. The relationship which is at stake in Wide Sargasso Sea is that of the Creoles, Black or White, and women, to the colonizer. It foregrounds the issue of race.

✴️Race: 

After the secession of the British rule over India, Britain passed the sovereign power to the two newly formed countries – the Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The Partition of India did not only bring the creation of the new countries, but also brutal conflicts which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. “Never before had anything even remotely like it been attempted. Nowhere were there any guidelines, any precedents, any revealing insights from the past to order what was going to be the biggest, the most complex divorce action in history, the breakup of a family of four hundred million human beings along with the assets and household property they had acquired in centuries of living together on the same piece of earth.”Its consequences were also the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war over Kashmir and the 1971 conflict over Bangladeshi independence. 

In Wide Sargasso Sea, the white characters cannot see coloured people as human beings who are capable of thought and reasoned determination. They are stereotyped as children and the ignorance associated with them is usually read as the source of their laziness and passivity. They cannot make deductions or come up with sound conclusions. That is why in the scene of the burning of Coulibri, the racist planters portray the white Creoles as victims of a malevolent mob of Blacks. Yet, the episode preceding Antoinette’s depiction of the collective face sheds light on the seemingly unjustified and unreasonable violence of the ex-slaves. Myra, one of the servants, overhears Mason saying in the course of a conversation, that he intends to bring indentured laborers from India to replace the newly emancipated black Creoles he considers as too lazy people. These laborers are called “coolies”, an Indian word meaning hired worker or burden carrier. The narrator says:

My stepfather talked about a plan to import laborers – cookies he called them – from the East Indies. When Myra had gone out Aunt Cora said, ‘I shouldn’t discuss that if I were you. Myra is listening.’

……Do you mean to say –‘.

I said nothing, except that it would be wiser not to tell that woman your plans – necessary and merciful no doubt. I don’t trust her.’‘Live here most of your life and know nothing about the people. It’s astonishing. They are children – they wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

In the Wide Sargasso Sea, the white race is not one cohesive and homogeneous whole. On the contrary, it is characterized by a deep fracture which divides the group into two separate entities: the British who were born in England, on the one hand, and the British who were born on the island, on the other hand. The second group is called the white Creoles. The two entities do not have the same approach to life and consequently their mutual social relationships are not constructed on an egalitarian basis. On the contrary, they are based on power and a sense of superiority endowed to those who were born in England. As a matter of consequence, the relationships are also tinted with disdain, particularly when they go from the first group to the second one.

✴️Rochester as a new type of Colonizer: 

We all know that the British had colonized many countries and the Caribbean is one of them. But here the character of Rochester is shown as a different and new type of Colonizer who had colonized a Creole Antoinette. So, here we find an oppressor who neither respects creoles nor the black ones. Rochester’s dominated identity is reflected in Antoinette’s capture and his domination over her. There is nothing like identity for the poor woman as Rochester destroys it and changes her name as well. By the end of Part 2 of the novel, where he is leaving Caribbean and going to England with Antoinette, he utters that:

“I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain...

 She had left me thirsty...”

These lines mean that he does not love the Caribbean people and their lifestyle and therefore he is willing to go to England and to satisfy the thirst that he had.

✴️Identity of Black and white 

Here, blackness appears as an essential identity, a foundational category. The black Creoles are depicted as an undifferentiated and unreasoning mass of people, physically alike and full of hatred.

🌟The black individual has no personal identity, no distinctive psyche; he is just a portion of a whole body of non differentiable people.

🌟The same objectivising and derisive use of “they” to talk about the black creoles is recurrent in the narrative. The young narrator offers an illustration: referring to her mother standing in the glacis and visible to anybody who could pass by, Antoinette says: “They stared, sometimes they laughed." 

🌟Another illustration is given by her mother Annette, two years after her second marriage. Mason, Annette’s second husband, looks at the Blacks the same way. 

🔸In Wide Sargasso Sea, the British racial classification equates ex-slaves with poverty or lack of economic resources. 

 

🔸In the novel, black Caribbean own nothing, which, according to colonial history, is not a distortion of the past. The imperialist ideology which has structured the West Indies has set the categories of representation.

🔸The legal castes of slaves are replaced by a race-colour system of stratification.Consequently binary oppositions which are at work in the diegesis assign the lower level of the society to the black characters, deprive them of any power, consider them as subaltern and ultimately reduce them to silence. The dominant white characters make up the hegemonic group while black Creoles form the landless rural proletariat.

✴️Unequal Power Between Men and Women:

"Long, sad, dark alien eyes. Creole of pure English descent, but they are not English or European either.” 

• In a place like Coulibri (and many other places similar where there were slaveries), white men have the sexual license to be with any women. The offspring with light colors seen in this island were proof of white men domination. But a white woman with a black man? It is seen as a disgrace. 

• There was a scene related to interracial sex, of Antoinette’s mother with a black man that she accidentally witnessed when she was a child.

• Her mother was mentally ill and her husband sent her to be looked after by a black couple, and she saw how her mother surrendered in the black man’s kiss and into his arms. 

A white man does not really degrade himself with a black woman, because the male is assumed to dominate the female as white dominates black. But a white woman who submits willingly to sex with a black man is seen as degrading her race as well as herself.

🔶Racism in Wide Sargasso Sea

🔅The first example I want to dissect is at the very beginning of the book, when the horse dies. Godfrey, a black servant that stayed at Antoinette’s house, is known for being somewhat untrustworthy and morose. After the horse dies in part one, he mentions, “The Lord made no distinction between black and white, black and white, they are the same for Him”. At first glance, we may think he is talking about the death of the horse. Although there is an argument for that, if we compare the Lord’s idea of life and death to black and white, there may be a racial meaning behind it. There is cause to believe that he is using these words to support himself, because Annette initially backhandedly blamed him for the horse dying. His savage remark was a reminder to not hold his race inferior. Godfrey’s attitude was further proved to be very morbid towards the white people, as he later said: “ this world doesn't last so long for mortal man”. Even though his character’s role was small, Godfrey emulates key points on racism in Wide Sargasso Sea.  

🔅The second example we are going to look at is when Antoniette makes “friends” with the little girl named Tia, who actually bullied her. As Antoniette walked home one day, Tia called her a “white cockroach”. This comment precedes an odd formation of friendship between the two girls, but a nasty round of comments follows at a playdate at the pool. When Tia takes Antoinette’s pennies, Antoniette snaps “Keep them then, you cheating nigger,” and Tia replies with a rant on how “Real white people, they got gold money”. I would have never expected such a heavily loaded conversation to happen between two children, but it reflects well on the current racial tension in the west indies in the late 1830’s. The emancipation of slavery for Jamaica was passed in 1834, so the tensions between the black people and the white people were still deflating. Instead of the previous reality of the white people being able to overpower people of color, the black people were able to fight back, and often used it aggressively to expose prejudices.

✴️Conclusion:

Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea foregrounds a West Indian community in which the social relationships between the characters are entirely determined by race and gender. These two social axes are the sources which foster and nurture the controlling process which attributes power to the White group and silences the Blacks considered as subaltern. England and nineteenth-century racial assumptions are the main referential of the narrative. Consequently races are addressed from an essentialist and nativist perspective. The colonialist discourse at work in the narrative is reinforced by a patriarchal ideology which confers supremacy to men over women. Such a social structure cannot but breed tensions and frustrations which impede mutual understanding and harmony in the community. In the face of this colonialist and phallocratic system, some characters choose to comply with the prevailing order and conventions, whereas others display defiance and resiliency. In this confrontation, what must be retained is not the outcome, but the intention. 

🔆Works cited:

• Senegal, de Dakar. "Race and Gender in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea," LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research , vol. 6, no. 1, 2009, p. 16, Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

• Patel, Ripal . "Racism in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea ," International Journal of Social Impact , vol. 1, no. 1, 2016, p. 4, Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

• , Chita. "Book review: ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys." https://herotherstories.wordpress.com/2020/06/14/book-review-wide-sargasso-sea-by-jean-rhys/. 14 June 2020.herotherstories.wordpress.com. Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

• 18, Joyame . "Analyzing Racism in WSS ." ENGL 123, Section 003 Introduction to Fiction: Adaptation, Intertextuality, and Fidelity. 30 Oct. 2018.introtofictionf18.web.unc.edu/2018/10/analyzing-racism-in-wss/. Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

• "Racism ." https://www.dictionary.com/browse/racism.

•  Bidisha. "An introduction to Wide Sargasso Sea ." Discovering Literature. 25 May 2016. www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-wide-sargasso-sea. Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

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Assignment

Assignment writing: Paper 202: Indian English Literature – Post-Independence.

This blog is Assignment writing on Paper 202: Indian English Literature – Post-Independence assigned by Professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

• Name: Nidhi Dave
• Roll no: 16
• Enrollment no: 4069206420210005
• Email ID: davenidhi05@gmail.com
• Batch: 2021- 23( MA Semester 3)
• Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

POSTCOLONIAL INDIA IN SALMAN RUSHDIE’S NOVEL MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN:

Midnight’s Children tells the dramatic and extraordinary story about postcolonial India. The novel depicts the historic events which shaped the life of India that we know today through the portrayal of the personal history of the Sinai family. Midnight’s Children is a critique of Indian mentality, diversity, politics and history, but at the same time a study on human relations.

Introduction: 

Midnight’s Children, one of the most victorious novels written by a renowned author Salman Rushdie, was published in 1981. To say that this piece of art won many awards and received an immense critical acclaim would be an understatement. It won the Best of the Booker prize, earning the reputation of being the best novel that has been given the prestigious Booker award.

Saleem Sinai, the protagonist of Midnight’s Children narrates the intriguing story about postcolonial India. This story does not seem to cease to amaze people for it is a universal study of plurality and diversity. Readers can relate to the characters, either because they discover their own personality traits in them, or because they find parts of their country’s history in the depiction of conflicts and wars, or simply because they link the actual stories of the people who were going through these tragedies with the newspapers headlines they read about. 

Saleem Sinai is aware that his story will not be suitable to everyone’s taste, but he still insists that he is telling the most truthful version he knows and that he is doing it out of love for his country: “One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of history. They may be too strong for some palates, their smell may be overpowering, tears may rise to eyes; I hope nevertheless that it will be possible to say of them that they possess the authentic taste of truth… that they are, despite everything, acts of love.”

Harold Bloom describes the novel in the following manner: “Midnight’s Children” is an ironic, quirky, but deadly serious critique of quiescence, of withdrawal, of forgetting.”It is indeed a fascinating account of one of the most captivating countries in the world, but simultaneously it is a tale about a family, their emotions and their struggles in the face of a tragedy that befell their country. However, in generously sharing the story of himself, his people and his country, Salman Rushdie also teaches us a lesson in the hope that we will come to learn to appreciate diversity and not repeat the same mistakes India has made.

Historical context

The history of Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie was born on 19 June 1947, two months before India gained its independence from Britain. He originated from an affluent family who lived in Bombay. His father was a businessman who graduated from the Cambridge University and his mother was a teacher. The Rushdies were Muslims, but very liberal when it comes to their viewpoint on other religions and nationalities. After the Partition of India, many Muslims immigrated to Pakistan, but the Rushdie family decided to stay at their home in Bombay. 

When Salman was 13, he attended a school in London and at very early age he encountered racism: “Of course, I knew that racism is not confined to the British. I come from a society where racism is commonplace, between one Indian community and another. But you have to combat racism wherever you find it.” Therefore, already in his early age his thoughts were directed at different types of racism. After studying history at Cambridge University, Rushdie moved to Karachi, Pakistan, where his family immigrated in the meantime. Even though he found a job at the television, with his European-educated mind, he had difficulties accepting censorship that prevailed in all the aspects of Pakistani life in regard to religion. As a result, he moved back to London. The binaries that were presented in his personal life when it comes to his origin and his personal sense of belonging were the inspiration for the central plot of Midnight’s Children. Goonetilleke writes that: “Rushdie is the kind of cloven writer produced by migration, inhabiting and addressing both worlds, the East and the West, the world of his mother country and that of his adopted country, belonging wholly to neither one nor the other.” Perhaps for this reason he is the best man for the job – the job of describing the true gist of Indian colonial history and all the consequences stemming from it.

Rushdie has been writing Midnight’s Children for five years: 

 “He dedicated it to Zafar as an inheritor of India’s legacy and as a sign of his own connection to it and to Islam (his son is given a distinctively Islamic name, though he had settled down in Britain and married a British woman).”

It is quite obvious that Midnight’s Children is, in its greater part, an autobiography. When asked about it, Rushdie admitted that the character of Saleem was based on Rushdie himself:

 “I gave Saleem certain parts of my childhood, so essentially he lives in my house and goes to my school. His friends are composites of people I went to school with. The school bullies know who they are.

In the same interview, Rushdie explained that the purpose of writing this novel was also to highlight all the aspect of freedom, not all of them being positive: 

 

“The idea of the Midnight’s Children was, yes, it was about my generation, but I also wanted them to embody the possibility. The idea behind giving them magic powers if they were born in the midnight hour was to say, “Freedom is a magical moment, and here is the potential of that freedom.” 

The history of India

After the secession of the British rule over India, Britain passed the sovereign power to the two newly formed countries – the Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The Partition of India did not only bring the creation of the new countries, but also brutal conflicts which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. “Never before had anything even remotely like it been attempted. Nowhere were there any guidelines, any precedents, any revealing insights from the past to order what was going to be the biggest, the most complex divorce action in history, the breakup of a family of four hundred million human beings along with the assets and household property they had acquired in centuries of living together on the same piece of earth.”Its consequences were also the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war over Kashmir and the 1971 conflict over Bangladeshi independence. 

The novel is politically centered around the figure of Indira Gandhi. She was the daughter of the former Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. She was politically popular because of various reforms she employed as well as for the Indian victory in the conflict with Pakistan that resulted in the creation of independent Bangladesh. She declared the State of Emergency in the country between 1975 and 1977, when she was found guilty of election fraud. With the State of Emergency she limited many civil rights and liberties, censored the media and started the sterilization process. In the novel, “Under the rule of the Widow, India is being made impotent, literally, through vasectomy and, metaphorically, too, as exemplified by the Midnight’s Children and Saleem himself. Midnight’s children have no power, no hope and no future.” Rushdie addresses Indira Gandhi as a “widow” in the novel, not only because she was the widow of Feroze Gandhi, but also because “A widow is a figure of ill-omen in Indian culture.”

“Midnight’s Children aims at demonizing Indira Gandhi and pursues a remarkably elaborate and persistent strategy in order to achieve this. Both the derogatory connotations of widowhood and witchcraft are combined to create the phantasmagorical image of the witch-like Widow who haunts the novel but who is only disclosed at the very end as identical with Indira Gandhi.”Midnight’s Children aroused considerable controversy with its publication. The novel was banned in India for the way it depicted the Nehru dynasty. Additionally, Indira Gandhi sued Rushdie for libel and won. India has always been characterized by the diversity of the people living in it. The Partition was nothing else but an attempt to divide the country along the religious lines and make the Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. What the people aiming to do this failed to realize is that you cannot ask the people to move to another country based solely on the religion. What has to be taken into account is a sense of belonging, many people felt attached to India, to the country India used to be, and in spite of that, there were forced to leave their homeland.

Saleem as the representation of the postcolonial India

The story of Saleem Sinai is the story of postcolonial India. The exact moment of his birth was 15 August 1947, at the stroke of midnight. This moment completely coincides with India’s gain of its independence from Britain. His birth ties him closely to the country’s fate and the future. Accordingly, his life is a reflection of the country’s ups and downs, good times and bad times. “More than a mirror of India, Saleem is the multitude of India.”

During the first hour of independence, 1001 children were born, all of them with astounding magical powers. The closer to midnight the child was born, the more magnificent and extraordinary their power was. 581 midnight’s children were alive by the time Saleem discovered their special gifts. His was the gift of telepathy, he was able to enter other people’s minds and get to know their most intimate thoughts, emotions and desires. 

Saleem’s gift of telepathy allows him not only to immerse himself into the minds of other midnight’s children, but also into India itself, he is connected to the country through his gift. He is able to hear all of India, through all of its diversity, including different religions. Midnight’s children are the most exquisite reflection of India itself. They represent the main characteristics of Indian country – the diversity and plurality. They are all different, they all come from different backgrounds, religions, but they are connected to each other by the precious gifts that they own, gifts which are not always a blessing. “The children of midnight were also the children of the time: fathered, you understand, by history. It can happen. Especially in a country which is itself a sort of dream.” The children are 

embodiment of the country, of the nation, of its present and its future. Owing to his own special power, Saleem organizes a Midnight’s Children Conference, so they all meet in his mind for one hour every day. Shiva, who was born at the exact same time as Saleem, has the power of war. He suggests to Saleem that they should be the leaders of the group, which Saleem rejects, wishing for the group to have a greater purpose. Saleem and Shiva, both being born at midnight, represent contrasting personalities. Shiva is named after the God of destruction, while Saleem represents Brahma, the God of creation. Shiva’s personality stems from his upbringing, he was born into great poverty, he was expected by his father is a beggar, so a lot of his personal frustration and anger can be justified. They together manifest the core differences striking India – rich and poor, Hindu and Muslim. “If Saleem embodies the Indian history of pluralism, Shiva embodies India’s parallel history of oppression and intolerance.”

India had very high expectations of its newly acquired freedom. The “Times of India” announced a prize for any child born at the exact moment of independence. India manifests its hopes for a better future through its celebration of independence. People are ecstatic, glorious celebrations are organized, and Saleem himself receives a letter from Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister, who predicts Saleem’s connection to the country: 

“Dear Baby Saleem, My belated congratulations on the happy accident of your moment of birth! You are the newest bearer of that ancient face of India which is also eternally young. We shall be watching over your life with the closest attention; it will be, in a sense, the mirror of our own.”

When Parvati gets pregnant with Shiva who completely abandons her after hearing the news, Saleem agrees to be the father to her child, as in this case the child would be entitled to their actual grandparents. At midnight on 25th of June, the Prime Minister declares a State of Emergency, allowing her to arrest her opposition and censor the media. 

At the same moment, Parvati’s son is born, continuing the tradition of grand events of Indian history corresponding to major events in Saleem’s life. They lived in the magicians’ ghetto when the soldiers broke in and killed most of the people residing there. Saleem was captured by Shiva and taken away to Indira Gandhi’s imprisonment. Saleem tells his interrogators about the rest of the midnight’s children and all of them undergo the sterilization process which results not only in the loss of their reproductive powers, but also in the loss of their magical powers.

Saleem’s birth represents the creation of Midnight’s Children, while his son’s birth represents their destruction. While Saleem was born at the time of great optimism and hope for the Indian country, his son was born at the State of Emergency, at the time of despair and chaos. However, even though all the magical powers of the Midnight’s Children are gone, Saleem’s son's magical powers remain. He has big ears, and his power is the ability to hear his father’s story. Aadam’s first word, “Abracadabra”, symbolizes that the magic is not dead just yet, it survived in the new generation of Midnight’s Children. At the end of their lives, Shiva and Saleem seem to be restored to the destinies they should have had. Shiva, a child who should have been born wealthy, lived a life of a struggling poor man, but eventually became rich and respected. Saleem, who should have been born poor, lived an affluent life to end up being poor with no house and no family. By destroying Midnight’s Children, Indira Gandhi destroyed the hope for the better future, she ruined the best embodiment and characteristic of India, its diversity.Considering the fact that Saleem is the metaphor of India, he himself could be blamed for the tragedy that befell the country resulting in the destruction of everything and everyone that is unique and different. 

Midnight’s Children itself, to provide a vision of the country he wants India to be: an attempt to imagine a unifying form for the subcontinent as a whole, from Kerala to Kashmir, from Bombay to the jungles of Bengal, a country that has indeed made a fresh start at the moment of independence, in which the differences between Hindu and Muslim and Sikh, Brahmin and beggar, are contained within a single structure.”20 It seems that Rushdie’s novel remained a dream as well.

Conclusion

“Rushdie specifies the ideals that Midnight’s Children celebrate: “My India has always been based on ideas of multiplicity, pluralism, hybridity: ideas to which the ideologies of the communalists are diametrically opposed. (In Midnight’s Children) the defining image of India is the crowd and a crowd is by its very nature super abundant, heterogeneous, many things at once.Midnight's Children remains the biggest celebration of the plurality, diversity, distinctions and differences of India. It shows us how far the things can go if we have a singular point of view. It teaches us to accept other religions,nationalities and cultures, to respect them and cherish them. Rushdie’s novel can also be observed not only through India, but globally, through the whole world: “Rushdie may epitomize the migrant writer par excellence with all its potential for reinventing the world and the subject of human identity, but the Rushdie affair also places him in a position in which he seems to personify the flip side of globalization – that is, the clash of civilizations, the increasing gap between cultures, and the proliferation of fundamentalism”.

 

Work Cited:

• BRATANOVIĆ, EDITA . "POSTCOLONIAL INDIA IN SALMAN RUSHDIE’S NOVEL MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN," International Conference on Social Science, Humanities and Education , p. 14, WWW. ICSE.org. Accessed 5 Nov. 2022.

• https://greenglobaltravel.com/salman-rushdie-midnights-children-movie

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Assignment

Assignment writing: Paper 201: Indian English Literature – Pre-Independence.

This blog is Assignment writing on Paper 201: Indian English Literature – Pre-Independence assigned by Professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

• Name: Nidhi Dave
• Roll no: 16
• Enrollment no: 4069206420210005
• Email ID: davenidhi05@gmail.com
• Batch: 2021- 23( MA Semester 3)
• Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

🌟The Home and the World as a political novel.

 🔸Introduction:

 Irving Howe, in his discussion of the nature and types of novel, defines a political novel as a work of fiction ‘in which political ideas play a dominant role or in which political milieu is the dominant setting.’ Now, what Howe implies is that a political novel treats some political events of significance in a politically based situation. Naturally, this genre includes political thoughts, confrontations and problems. Tagore’s The Home and the World satisfies all the above mentioned requirements and hence its claims to be a political novel seems to be just and relevant. 

Rabindranath Tagore's novel The Home and the World (1916) is set in India during the early twentieth century, a time when England still held power over the country. Tagore writes each chapter from the perspective of either Nikhil, Bimala, or Sandip to reflect the political turmoil and lack of unity in India at the time the novel is set.

The Home and the World is set during the height of the Swadeshi movement, a boycott of British goods that was initiated in 1905 as a protest against Great Britain’s arbitrary division of Bengal into two parts. At first, Tagore was one of the leaders of Swadeshi, but when protests evolved into violent conflicts between Muslims and Hindus, Tagore left the movement. In The Home and the World, he explained why he did not approve of what Swadeshi had become.

🌟The Background of the novel:

 The background of Tagore’s novel is based on the wide canvas of the national uprising of 1905, particularly in Bengal. The partition of Bengal by British rulers in 1905 and its consequent repercussions – the Swadeshi movement and boycott of foreign goods, the indiscriminate burning of foreign goods and clothes, anarchical agitations, political plunders and secret murders- are all included in its purview. Even the oppression of the British rulers and the fanatical activities of the extremists find a brilliant representation in Tagore’s fiction. 

🌟The Home and the World as a political novel:

Rabindranath Tagore’s Home and the World is a product of the crisis of that time, and as a political novel it echoes through its narration a large number of attitudes, not always compatible with the colonial experience. The novel deals with the experience of modernity and the price one has to pay for it. The controversial nature of the subject matter, in which Tagore takes the opportunity to launch his fiercest attack yet against the ideology of nationalism, contrary to its rising popularity both in India and the West, was also a reason it drew much attention, mostly in the form of reprobation and scorn, from readers both in and outside Bengal.

 The novel deals with the experiences of three characters during the volatile period of swadeshi: Nikhil, a benevolent, enlightened and progressive landlord; his childhood friend and a voluble, selfish but charismatic nationalist leader, Sandip; and Nikhil’s wife, Bimala, who is happy at the outset in her traditional role as a zamindar’s wife but who, encouraged by her husband, steps out of home to better acquaint herself with the world and find a new identity for the Indian woman. At the sight of Sandip, she emotionally trips, vacillates between him and her husband, until she returns home bruised and humiliated but with a more mature understanding of both the home/self and the world.

The novel has a certain allegorical quality in that Nikhil and Sandip seem to represent two opposing visions for the nation; with Bimala, torn between the two, not knowing for sure what should be her guiding principle - signifying Bengal tottering between the two possibilities. Nikhil’s vision is one of enlightened humanitarian and global perspective, based on a true equality and harmony of individuals and nations. On the other hand, Sandip’s parochial and belligerent nationalism, which cultivates an intense sense of patriotism in individuals, threatens to replace their moral sensibility with national bigotry and blind fanaticism. Seen from this perspective, Nikhil’s death at the end of the novel, just when Bimala is turning the corner and returning to her senses after a prolonged infatuation with Sandip and his views, also signals Tagore’s pessimism about the future of Bengal. In the absence of truly benevolent leaders like Nikhil, she would be mutilated, divided in two (currently Bangladesh and West Bengal), with millions of her children paying with their lives to meet the apocalyptic wishes of self-seeking, immoral, power-hungry politicians, determined to carve out her body on religious communal lines.

Nikhil loves his country as much as, if not more than, Sandip, but he will not allow his love for the country to overtake his conscience. Sandip, on the other hand, believes that ‘a country's needs must be made into a god’, and one ought to set ‘aside conscience [by] putting the country in its place’. This reckless deification of the nation and his belief that any action, no matter how heinous or unscrupulous, is justifiable if undertaken for the nation’s sake eventually turns him into a frightful terrorist and appalling criminal. He does not mind using intrigue or violence to accomplish his mission, even if it means harm to his own followers. As long as the mission is accomplished, the end justifies his means. He adroitly persuades Bimala to give all her jewelry to him to finance the movement, and steal money from the family safe. He also uses Amulya, an impassioned but idealistic youth (emblematic of the many adolescents who were influenced by the movement), exploitatively. When Mirjan, a Muslim boatman, refuses to stop carrying foreign goods, as it will take away his livelihood, Sandip arranges to sink his boat in midstream.

It is really to be admitted that the political flame of 1905 steers the story of The Home and the World. The story starts with the quiet, happy conjugality of Nikhil and Bimala. Their home was all peaceful, amorous and congenial. All that Nikhil desired was to bring his wife out of the narrow home to the wide world in order to know her more fully. However it was Sandip’s arrival, his intoxicant political views and his personal enchantment that stirred Bimala’s serene center- her home – and brought her out of the whirlwind of politics in the wide world outside. She was fascinated by Sandip’s stirring speeches and Swadeshi slogans and also by his romantic adoration of her as Mother India. Again Sandip was crafty enough to bring a stir among the young generation of Nikhil’s area. In other words Sandip and his associates lit up the political fire with noble intention but unfortunately the fire spread in a destructive manner. 

 Truly, there is nothing to question the Swadeshi background of Tagore’s novel. Yet questions may be raised about the actual political scenario of The Home and the World. The politics of Swadeshi is deeply rooted in the center of the work and spreads its boughs and twigs all over the story. Still the movement is not dominant in its real flame and fervor. Except Sandip’s catchy, agitative speeches and the reckless burning of foreign clothes at his instigation, The Home and the World presents no scene worth mentioning of the Swadeshi movement. The history of political unrest and the desperate conflict between the English rulers and the poor rulers of India is absent in Tagore’s artistic canvas. Nothing of the country- wide revolt by the young patriots, the fearless acts of terrorism and the glorious self-sacrifice by many dedicated souls has got a space in the novel. Therefore judged from this very angle, it remains impossible to group The Home and the World together with the classic political novels like War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities and The Mother. 

However, many would feel that the real meaning and interest of the novel lies in its moving portrayal of man -women relationship, in the psychological conflict, in the personal drama of husband and wife knowing each other both at home and in the world. The swadeshi agitation is a necessary political backdrop only because it is through this upheaval that an Indian wife can suddenly tear the moorings of a sheltered domestic life and float adrift in the high seas of a countryside agitation. The novel is full of political discussions and they are important only insofar as they help to reveal the working in the minds of Sandip, Nikhilesh and Bimala. Ibsen’s Nora (A Doll’s House) and Tagore’s Bimala belong to two different worlds. The former stands far from an idea, while the latter is an individual woman who may be distantly connected with an idea. Unlike Nora, Bimala does not stand for women’s liberation. When, early is the novel, Nikhil urges Bimala, so long a typical Hindu wife to come out of her secluded existence and to meet the world, Bimala is at first indifferent to the idea, saying ‘what do I with the outside world.’, Nikhilesh is not a Torvald Helmer and does not make a doll of his wife, neither does he try to impose anything of his own on her. A mighty political agitation that sweeps over the country and breaks the barriers of age, gives the Indian wife an opportunity to come out of her secluded existence. Not only does Bimala leave the introverted; but her mind and sight, her hopes and desires become red with the passion of the new ages. And it is at this time she meets Sandip, a fiery nationalist, who thinks and feels differently from her husband. Sandip is frankly a champion of greed and of the Nietzschean will to power. Bimala is fascinated by Sandip's impetuous vitality beside which her husband’s lour for truth, eternal and absolute, seems to be very thin. Bimala’s burning devotion to her country is mined up with her attraction for the country’s hero Sandip, who flatters her as the incarnation of shakti , the goddess from whom the son of Bengal will derive inspiration and energy.

Bimala does not share Nikhilesh's ideas, and therefore, although she notices that Sandip’s eloquence grows when he catches sight of her, she lets Sandip worm his way into her heart. Even when she finds herself on the high tide to excitement, she argues with her husband in support of Sandip’s doctrines. Although Bimala and Sandip are drawn towards each other by what seems to beam insuperable attraction, the adulterous impulse is soon checked, Bimala discovers that behind the sparkle of Sandip’s brilliance there is in him the slime of weakness, meanness and cowardice and she recoils in disgust.

Again on the basis of the stark contrast between Nikhil and Sandip Tagore’s The Home and the World has suffered much criticism from the contemporary Swadeshi leaders. Contextually Bipin Pal commented, “Rabindranath had not understood the essence of Swadeshi itself.” However, a reasonable analysis of the novel establishes a different truth. It is then we confront the fact that the author is not speaking against Swadeshi. Rather he is speaking for those poor natives who suffered the extreme as a result of the propagation of the movement which dealt with the destruction of their livelihood. The question is not then, how far Nikhil and Sandip are real historical personages. What is important here is that Tagore by the means of his novel originally intended to show the negative aspect of the movement, which had been given birth by sincere patriotic thoughts. The novel therefore remains as it does a specimen of Tagore’s remarkable understanding of the fragility of the destructive temperament, during the Swadeshi era. Herein Nikhil’s comment seems to be the most relevant since he in the course of the novel acts as Tagore’s spokesman- “you should not waste even the tenth part of your energy in the destructive excitement.”

 

Work Cited:

• https://ardhendude.blogspot.com/2014/10/analysis-of-tegores-home-and-world-as.html?m=1
• Datta, Sandip Kumar. Rabindranath Tagore's The Home and the World: A Critical Companion. Anthem Press, 2005
• https://www.literaturewise.in/mdl/mod/page/view.php?id=84
• https://surendranathcollege.ac.in/new/upload/RIMA_CHAKRABORTYHOME%20AND%20THE%20WORLD%20AS%20A%20POLITICAL%20NOVEL2021-01-29HOME%20AND%20THE%20WORLD%20AS%20A%20POLITICAL%20NOVEL.pdf.

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