A Feminist Approach to the Select Novels of Kamala Markandaya with Reference to Tradition and Modernity

A Feminist Approach to the Select Novels of Kamala Markandaya with Reference to 

Tradition and Modernity

V.Manimannan, Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Sethupathy Govt. Arts College.Ramnad.

M.Rajeswaran, Assistant Professor in English, Syed Hameedha Arts and Science College, Kilakarai.

S.Nagarethinam, PG Assistant in English, Govt. Higher Secondary School, Kaman kottai.

            The Kitchen culture that she inherits from her mother brings decency, decorum, order and fragrance .She knows fully well that ,in future,she has to be Kitchen Queen of her so called sweet home.This is the traditional image that a girl forms in her mind girlhood.She is taught to be submissive,committed ,decline tolerant so that she may prove herself an ideal woman not only for her husband but also for her father-in-law,mother-in-law and other-in-law.She is supposed  to keep the family tree grow prosper.She is taught not to copy male qualities that will make her polluted and demonic.

            A new woman is completely different from the woman who thinks of seeking equality with men , asserting her own personality and emphasizing on her own rights as a  woman .She is gifted with  depth and rationale thinking and is aware of value system .Quite contrary to the new woman is the woman whose pet words are self-assertion and dominance and who calls herself emancipated economically  independent.Such face of the woman is diagnosed as aberration .Thus ,the new woman ,clinging to her basic values modifying herself  according to the modifying circumstances,goes ahead on the way seeking for her own identity with new depth and getting recognition but never like the aberration type.

            Being a woman novelist, Kamala Markandaya expresses all aspects of a female, the inner voice, sentimentality of a woman, depression, frustration, feeling of dominate over some one, the hope of achieving aim, the happiness and sorrow, the patriotic feeling, the maternal instinct and all feminine quality.

            Kamala Markandaya has made her bold enough to declare that she will not let her brother diefrom starvation .When her father scolds her severly “I will not have you parading at night” she replies to him in an equally determining tone, Tonight and tomorrow and every night, so long as there is need. I will not hunger any more”(Nectar in a Sieve -103). The woman arises in her as she thinks of saving her brother even at cost of bearing the name harlot.Unlike Kunthi, she sells her body and becomes like Shanker by drinking the position (prostitution) to give life to her brother .

As she has learnt never to yield,she musters up courages and defies the society by giving birth child. She nurses it like a devoted mother.G.R.Taneja has tried to analyse the question of woman's search for identity. He says;...meaning,alienation,or fulfilment in marriage within and without,must be part of the larger question of life and living”. Ira proves that she can live and search her own identity. Believing in life for living,she defines and sets  her own parameters of life without considering the dual code of morality of the society.

            Kamala Markandaya'sSome  Inner Fury is full of fire on account of some inner fury of three women characters-Mira, the narrator, Roshan . The firebrand freedom fighter and Premala, a complete housewife. These women characters are pilgrims in their own way as they are on a journey seeking answer to  their on the meaning of life.In search of their self-hood , they step out of their houses with some doubts  in their mind place their feet on the different paths where armies of troubles are waiting for them.The paths differ butte goal is the same.

            Mirabai, who is provided the western aroma, makes up her mind to marry Richard with or without her mother’s approval.She thinks she is the mistress of her own life and has freedom to take decision concerning her life .Her mother asks her to wait when she makes her know of her decision of marrying Richard but never wishes to leave her love unfulfilled. She moves in with her lover Richard and crosses the first threshold towards freedom from tradition and cultural stigmas.

             She takes a bold step as she goes with her lover on a holiday tour. She believes in love and favours love over marriage .She sets the model of love without marriage,not of marriage without marriage without love, as the case of Kit andPremala, She gives herself to her love with full devotion.She wishes:

                                        “....we could be together all the time.”

                      “We shall be soon.”

                                        “But you may have to go away.”

                                        “I'll come back -I'll always come back to you!”(Some Inner Fury-199)

            This is the true love that both of them develop for each other .Love ,which is a substitute for marriage here , becomes, “ a talisman that would somehow keep us together, protecting us against war, the world ,everything”(Some Inner Fury-199).She bleeds inwardly, but silently suffers for the sake of the country. She bleeds inwardly, but silently suffers for the sake of the country .She is not selfish and knows that love always gives,never takes. Love is the unconditional sacrifice for her.what though she is not married !Her love is great ,high and far above marriage . It is the marriage of two minds,two souls not physically but mentally and spiritually.By her sacrifice, she never wishes to show her greatness to the unsentimental world.

            Feminist trends appeared on the horizon and they came into conflict with the conventional moral code. Infact, a set of new paradigms related to a woman’s life came into existence - tradition and modernity, self - assertion and self -facement, economic dependence and independence and so on. Post - Independence literature in India portrays all these trends and voices the clamouring’s of women for a new and just way of life. There is a view, may be of a small minority that the concept of the new woman “is a western import born of western compulsions”.4 and also that its acceptance in India like the acceptance of several other western concepts is just aping of the west and a sign of intellectual weakness. Post - Independence literature reveals the woman’s quest for her identity.                 It is said that male is superior to the female but without female, there is no existence.Women Are doing work in all aspects of life. Now she is going outside for survival. Like man she is living. She is equal to men and today the definition is changed. Women are superior but both men and women are necessary. Both work are important so both are equal and superior. Markandaya’s female characters show the superiority of a woman over woman.          

                                                WORKS CITED.

Markandaya, Kamala.Nectar in a Sieve.New Delhi:PenguinBooks, 2009.Print

...-A Some Inner Fury.NewDelhi:Penguin Books, 2009. Print.