M.Phil Research Scholar, Delhi University criticallyliterate@gmail.com
Keywords
women, patriarchal, body, casteism,
voice, silence
Absract
Originally
titled as ’Xanskar’, ‘The Offspring’ is a landmark short story in Assamese
Literature. It is authored by Assamese scholar and writer Indira Goswami. She
used the pen name Mamoni Raisom Goswami. Her works always created a
social alarm crying for attention. Likewise, this particular short story highlights various issues;
however, it would be scrutinized from a feminist lens.
There
are two principal women characters in the narratives, Damayanti and the other
is the wife of the male protagonist Pitambar Mahajan. For the sake of
convenience, one would call her simply as the Wife.
To begin
with, the Wife is suffering from Rheumatism and has not borne any child to her
husband. Mahajan has abandoned her after realizing that she is incurable
thereby quashing all his hopes of fatherhood. Thus, in the very beginning of
the tale, Goswami sets the society in a patriarchal establishment where
fertility is the instrument used to judge a woman. Barren women are seen as inauspicious
in many cultures. Throughout the entire story, she does not utter any
dialogues. Her presence is a dumb existence where she imbibes what she sees.
On the contrary is her counterpart Damayanti, who is a Jajamani Brahmin widow forced to
practice prostitution out of sheer helplessness. Being the bread winner of her
family comprising of two daughters, whoring is the only alternative left for
her.
The description given to Damayanti
is the evidence of a kind of voyeurism
in the text. Mahajan and the priest Krishnakanta gaping at her shows how
Goswami is offering a critique of the society which cannot but consider women
as erotic subjects. The author employs the technique of Male Gaze explained by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey in her
essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema".
The paper thus intends to read Goswami’s short story with a
feminist perspective and see how they occupy the peripherals of the society.
Does she offer a counter narrative? These questions will be taken up further.
Research Paper
Originally
titled as ’Xanskar’, ‘The Offspring’ is a landmark short story in Assamese
Literature. It is authored by Assamese scholar and writer Indira Goswami. She
used the pen name Mamoni Raisom Goswami. Her works always created
a social alarm crying for attention. Likewise, this particular short story highlights various issues; however, it
would be scrutinized from a feminist lens.
There are two principal women characters in the narratives,
Damayanti and the other is the wife of the male protagonist Pitambar Mahajan.
For the sake of convenience, one would call her simply as the Wife.
To begin with, the Wife is suffering from Rheumatism and has
not borne any child to her husband. Mahajan has abandoned her after realizing
that she is incurable thereby quashing all his hopes of fatherhood. Thus, in
the very beginning of the tale, Goswami sets the society in a patriarchal
establishment where fertility is the instrument used to judge a woman. Barren
women are seen as inauspicious in many cultures. Throughout the entire story,
she does not utter any dialogues. Her presence is a dumb existence where she
imbibes what she sees.
On the
contrary is her counterpart Damayanti, who is a Jajamani Brahmin widow forced to practice prostitution out of sheer
helplessness. Being the bread winner of her family comprising of two daughters,
whoring is the only alternative left for her:
What can I
do? I had to live. They even stopped orders for sacred threads and puffed rice.
They considered me impure, contaminated! And those tenants! They have turned
thieves and don’t give me my share of paddy. They take advantage of my
helplessness. In these circumstances, where should I have gone with my two tiny
daughters? I have not paid the land revenue. The land, too will be auctioned
off! What can I do? (5)
As a reader,
one finds these two women come across as foils of each other. They are
entangled in a complicated set up. Since Damayanti is a Brahmin woman,
therefore she is superior to the Wife in the social hierarchy. By this logic,
Damayanti should have been leading a privileged life.
Adverse
to this is her dark reality. She is branded as a fallen woman while the Wife is
the angel of her house. There are undercurrents of casteism in the whole story,
then why does it not affect these two women? This is due to the gender politics
at play. The Wife has a living husband (even though he has deserted her) while
Damayanti is a widow. This difference between the two is the reason behind
their dissimilar fates. The Wife suffers inside the home but her position is
socially accepted by the outer world. Nonetheless, Damayanti is ridiculed by
all the sections of the society.
Thus, it again foregrounds how the Man is made the center of the woman’s
universe and how his absence means crumbling of that universe. This shows woman
remains vulnerable regardless of the caste she belongs to. They both are co
sufferers at the hands of patriarchy. Gender here supersedes caste.
Furthermore,
as the narrative progresses, kinships emerge between the two aforesaid women.
Damayanti represents the body as illustrated below:
Her
rain drenched clothes clung to her body. The color of her skin was like the
dazzling foam of boiling sugarcane juice. Though her figure was rather simple,
she was immensely attractive. (2)
The
description given to Damayanti is the evidence of a kind of voyeurism in the text. Mahajan and the
priest Krishnakanta gaping at her shows how Goswami is offering a critique of
the society which cannot but consider women as erotic subjects. The author
employs the technique of Male Gaze
explained by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey in her essay "Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". Here, women play inactive roles. This
explains her passivity at various points where she prefers to remain silent.
Countering
the imagery of the body is the Wife who symbolizes the mind. She keeps on
absorbing what she sees around herself but does not mouth any utterances as
mentioned above. She is an invalid and therefore in stark contrast to
Damayanti. But her mind is active and one wonders how she feels at the betrayal
of her husband. What goes on in her mind remains undisclosed. Thus, Damayanti
and the Wife are perceived as two sides of the same coin. One symbolizing
the mind where as the other stands for the body. The union of body and mind is
the essence of human existence. Together they are part of a united whole.
More
connections are forged as the story advances further. Acting as foils to each
other, they became victims of dehumanization. It is exemplified from the
following quote:
Her
(Damayanti) blouse had stretched tight and was pulled up, revealing the white
flesh which, to the two men, looked as tempting as the meat dressed and hung up on
iron hooks in a butcher’s shop! (2).
Even his Wife is described as a
“bundle of bones” (2). Another quote on the Wife is as follows:
He could
even see her eyes, burning like those of an animal
in a dark jungle, as if she were straining with all her might to catch what he
was saying to her husband.
(3)
Thus, the women are stripped of any
humanity as they are trivialized with such descriptions.
Goswami debunks the attitude of suck
a society towards the women folk.
Furthermore,
Silence has been used as a crucial
technique in the execution of the story.
The citation above is a good
example. Other instances are demonstrated below:
Damayanti
looked back, her eyes opening wide with astonishment. But she did not
reply….His wife’s eyes had followed him, expecting her medicine, but now she closed
them wearily again. The fire in her eyes was extinguished, only the ashes
remained. (4)
Are these
silences deliberate? Or is one over thinking? Do they mean anything? As a
reader, I found it to be symbolic of womanhood. Women have been long denied
voice. History has been unfair to them. For many decades history was what men
created or endured, but woman was nowhere to be found. The silence means their
perspective remains in darkness and it is high time that it comes under
spotlight. Also, this silence can be construed as their tacit resignation to
fate, one as a reluctant whore while the other as a neglected disabled woman.
Nonetheless,
these silences have also been used to censure the caste system. Damayanti
immediately bathes herself after getting intimate with Mahajan. On being
questioned by the priest, she remains still:
‘You never
used to take a bath after sleeping with the Brahmin boy. What has happened
now?’ Damayanti did not reply. ‘Eh! He is from the lower caste, is that it…?’
Damayanti still remained silent. ‘Ah! This is good news indeed! That man was
yearning for a child.’ Damayanti still does not say a word. (6)
Thus,
Goswami does not let the women go scot-free either. Damayanti is subjugated as
she is a woman. But the author does not let the readers sympathize with her.
Damayanti exercises very little power and uses it to her own convenience. Once
taking money from Mahajan, she is the least bothered for his child in her womb
or the Mahajan himself. She heartlessly goes and buries the unborn child behind
her hutment. The episode of the fox digging out the limbs of the foetus points
towards the utter inhumanity pervading the narrative and infecting the society
as a whole. Everybody is exploiting each other for his own sake. People are
busy gnawing at each other’s existence rupturing a hole in the societal fabric.
As the story
approaches its culmination, one observes various inversions. Earlier, the story
had voyeuristic shades through the male
gaze. The men delightfully stared at the other sex. But gradually, the
women embrace this role though it is devoid of any sexual innuendo:
His wife was
staring at him. He stood still. The wide open eyes were like shining snakes in the dark (7).
The use of
eyes evokes a very powerful imagery as it slowly takes over the narrative. Her
eyes speak a thousand words as they prick at Mahajan’s existence. The Wife dies
after the abovementioned account. Nevertheless, the transition to a female gaze is carried out by Damayanti.
They observe the spectacle as mere onlookers:
They opened
the window cautiously and looked out. They saw a man digging in the dim light
of a lantern hung from a bamboo tree nearby (8).
Moreover, it
is now Mahajan who does not speak and acquires newfound muteness as he digs the
grave for his unborn child, “Pitambar looked up, but did not reply.” (9). Also,
the buried boy child is now dehumanized like the women were before, “But he is
just a lump of flesh, blood and mud! Stop it! Stop it!” (9). Thus, all
the ideas put forth earlier are reversed. Goswami gives a powerful message through this. Subverting the male by the female
is not the answer to the miseries
suffered by womankind. Matriarchy will do no good as a substitute to
patriarchy. But it is human nature to want power and seek hegemony over the
‘other’. Thus, it is a vicious circle which is difficult to escape. However,
Goswami leaves it to the readers to choose.
Moreover, as
one looks back, one finds that the writer has provided various breaking points
in the storyline. For instance, the description of Damayanti is titillating. At
the same time, there is a counter image of the naked bodies of her daughters.
Another illustration is when Mahajan ogles at Damayanti and is lost in his
fancies when suddenly she speaks, “Have you brought money?”(6). These
occurrences show Goswami constantly jolting the reader from his reveries to
come back to the reality. The purpose is to urge readers not to get soaked up
in the aesthetic pleasure but take action against injustice. Thus, at a broader
level, Goswami advocates a social transformation for all.
Bibliography
Goswami, Mamoni Raisom. “The
Offspring”, 1999. 1-9. Print
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema”. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory
Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999:
833-44. Web. 19 Apr, 2016
