A Study of Women’s Social Problems and Struggle against Society in Bharati Mukharjee’s ‘Desirable Daughters’
Abstract
This paper focuses on Bharathi Mukherjee, who is a Third World Feminist author whose foresight is present with the problems and struggling related to South Asian Women especially in the sense India. In the modern age, the problems of women per day to day increased through social or individual manners. Like her collegian women writers, she upholds the issue of women, but she differs from all among them because her main concern is to sketch the problems of antagonizing cultural conflicts faced by Indian women immigrants. And that's a way; the evidence of three sisters-Padma, Tara, and Parvathi in ‘Desirable Daughters’. Generally, Bharathi Mukherjee’s female heroines are bold and assertive and reflect the society's current situation. They have the strong power of the ability to the potentiality for adaptability of society; they struggle with their false notions and the firm ground of current reality and accept the bitter truth of their life.
Key-Words: - Social Problems, Struggling, Women, Society, Conflict.
Introduction
Bharathi Mukherjee is born in India, and one of the most famous widely known immigrant writers of America (US). In America, the immigrant writers can be divided into two parts. Firstly, the ‘Willing Immigrant Writers’ who came from Europe and settled in America and Asia, and later they made their home. The second part describes the 'Unwilling Immigrant Writers’ with the origin of America, whose forefathers were brought to America with lots of lies for works in some slave trips. But nowadays, Mukherjee has considered herself that she is different from other authors who come from European for a variety of various causes. Bharathi Mukherjee’s women hero head’s characters are generally migrants from other countries, and they all suffer from their cultural hurt but they describe women and are fidgety to publish their cultural family by undertaking their chivalric journey. She has received notable critical attention from almost all the parts of the globe in a relatively short time of just twenty-five years. She has been acknowledged as a voice of expatriate immigrants ' practicality.
Bharati Mukharjee's female characters suffer from twin's colonization once by expatriation and second by patriarchy. Being herself she is an immigrant woman she has been preoccupied with women and their struggles of adjustment in Canada and America. She has written several novels and short stories like Jasmine (1989), The Tiger’s Daughter (1971), Wife (1975), The Tree Bride (2004), Darkness (1985), and The Middleman and Other Stories(1988)- are centered on female characters who are none but the autobiographical projections of herself. She was born in Indian society, and she has been a direct witness to the controls and atrocities reflected upon women in Indian society. She is well aware of limited future culture and prospects for Indian women society as they are governed by Indian mythological worth. In her history, she could realize the issues of problems and long dilemmas for the increasing class of new women who are aromatized with western education and whose conscience is altogether formed and nourished by conservative forms and values.
General perspectives of women’s struggle
Among the world the major problems of women are now we can see that she has always struggling against society. Most women characters are Indian and they were crossing the geographical boundaries of their motherland with various cultures. But in foreign as immigrants they have to face the same problems of crisis, identity, social, racial, gender, and political prejudices, and cross-cultural dilemma. Women characters are a mixture of strong as well as weak personalities. Some of them get the victory of their fate while some others throw their weapons before their destiny. The women protagonist observation of her novels describes that she has written almost whole novels with predominantly feminist notions. In the words of Fakrul Alam: Once literature begins to serve as a forum illuminating female experience, it can assist in humanizing and equilibrating the culture, value system, which has served predominantly male interests. A literary work is capable of providing role models, instill a positive sense of feminine identity by portraying women who are self-actualizing, whose identities are not dependent on men (Alam 45)
Since Bharati Mukherjee’s women characters are the suffering of immigration, and all the journalists or critics focus her novels as problems and issues due to immigration but real sense the problems are not because they are immigrants because the women fight for their suitable claims as a woman and then as an individual. Bharati Mukherjee has attempted to make a new relationship between man and woman based on their equality, non-exploitation, non-oppression so that the creative potentials of both sides are maximized as individuals and not gender dichotomous. The male is a representative of the particular society, and last, being jerked off the center of the woman's caveat. Now, a woman is preparing to be her caveat force, beyond the fullness of patriarchy. And here is examining that the novels of Bharati Mukherjee are based on their concept.
Dr. N. D. R Chandra writes: "Like Anita Desai, Kamala Markandaya (Suraiya), Shashi Deshpande, Nayantara Sahgal, Ruth Prawar Jhabwalla, and Githa Hariharan Mukherjee exposes many facets of feminism, encompassing agitation for equal opportunity, sexual autonomy and right to self-determination." (R 1657) We can find the same copy in the fiction ‘Desirable Daughters' where the heroes Tara attempts to widen her horizons in matters of marriage, sex, and love; redefines her roles as mother and wife. The title of the fiction Desirable Daughters (2002) is valuable, significant and ironic. It reflects that all daughters are the object of family prestige, and so their conduct should be desirable, that is to tell, in tune with the norms laid by the society and not deviant. And only such daughters who do not cross the ‘Laxman Rekha’ of etiquettes would be liked and praised but in the fiction two daughters including the protagonist crosses the borders of ‘Laxman Rekha’.
Social Problems and Struggle of Women in ‘Desirable Daughters’
Bharat Mukharjee’s family has three daughters namely the Padma, Parvati, and Tara are desirable in their childhood and later girlhood in the sense that they fulfill the requirements of daughterhood- cordialness, beauty, intelligence, the audience – and they remain confined within four walls for the protection of family status and respect among society. “Our father could not let either of my sisters out on the street; our car was equipped with window shades.”(Mukharjee, Desirable Daughters 29) Tara reflects about her early life in Calcutta, “Our bodies changed, but our behavior never did. Rebellion sounded like a lot of fun…. My life was one long childhood until I was thrown into marriage.” (Mukharjee, Desirable Daughters 27-28) Bharati Mukherjee presents the atrocities effects on ‘gendered subaltern’ and that are women in the sense of childhood wedding, and remained the arranged wedding, and also the career of limited prospects for brilliant girls like Padma and Tara in the novel.
Bharati Mukherjee seems to generalise the mourning plight of every women when she noted about the Tree Bride in the chapter of first in this fiction: "A Bengali girl's happiest night is about to become her life imprisonment. It seems all the sorrows of history, all that is unjust in society and cruel in religion has settled her." (Mukharjee, Desirable Daughters 4) The image used for marriage describes the oppressive confined life. Mukharjee exposes her disapproval of child marriage and consequent widowhood through the mediation of the story of Tree Bride Tara Lata. A story of Tree Bride Tara Lata who is cursed and disgraced for the death of her husband and last married to a tree symbolically brings out the backwardness of the orthodox society of India.
It is the part of inhuman and an illiberal society to bereave a girl of her inborn right to survive and fulfill her all needs. The Women’s imbibition in the name of religious and social prestige is declared by the author. She said that the girl had poor children or had no more thoughts or idea that she had been transferred already from envied bride into the 2nd worst-thing in her own society which is the most cursed estate. The tale ‘The Tree Bride’ is the emblem of women’s self- sacrifice. The story depicts as an antithesis to the life of Tara, the heroine who transgresses the boundaries laid for her. At one time, Tara told me that the ‘Tree Bride’ has become the model of selfless saintliness while my story was different, perhaps a reversal. And this concept consolidates Padma's address to Tara as an American, self-engrossed being too. An author describes the conflict between the modern woman and the traditional woman; one lives a selfish life while the other lives for society and sacrifices her life. The story ‘The Tree Bride’ also serves as a signal to celebrate the liberation and liberty of women from the male domination and male support because the Tree Bride describes that a woman need not be helped and supported by man, and she can work and live even without a man. Throughout this fiction, the novelist depicts the curses of different and patriarchy forms of imbibition upon women.
Bharati Mukharjee depicts the wedding as the medium of imbibition rather than a desirable heavenly bliss. In the Indian community, marriages are imposed on all girls. The girls of Indian are not allowed to marry or love a man of their choice, especially of other caste or community. This trouble is raised in the case of the Padma who loves Ronald Dey, but could not marry him. The violation of the code is increased and any breath of scandal to this was unthinkable of women. Tara’s unsuccessful wedding is the outcome of imposed marriage. At last, she married a man she had never met before, and later she struggles the whole life of marriage. She has married to Bish because her father forces her and said to get married to him. She says; "I married a man I had never met, whose picture and biography and bloodlines I approved of because my father told me it was time to get married and this was the best husband on the market." (Mukharjee, Desirable Daughters 26)
According to the narrator Mukherjee, it has unjustified that the surrender to the whims of destiny and the manipulation of the marital marketplace. A male what the needs and dreams of the modern woman are. Here, the novelist’s highlights the liberty to choose one’s life partner for life and cautions us against the disasters caused by the imposed wedding. Here, we clarify the concept of irony in the failure of Tara's arranged marriage with Bish and the successful love marriage of Auro with Parvati. The incidents of imposed marriage upon girls are also focused in Bharati Mukherjee's other novel ‘Wife’ in which the heroine Dimple gets neurotic on shattering the dreams and illusions of wedding life and aborts her baby and lastly kills her husband. After her settlement in America Tara has faced the enigma of modern women. She has woven transformation from a desirable daughter to an advanced American lady. She is caught like the New Woman in the struggle between modernity and tradition.
As a protean protagonist, she braves that the New World seeks her identity. She makes adventures in food, dress, and fashion. She started to address her husband as Bishu while in India; she could not speak his name. She has also enjoyed sexual liberty with Andy. She is ready to divorce her husband because the life of promise as an American wife was not being completely fulfilled while she also knew that divorce was a stigma for women in the Indian community. She wished to work and drive to be economically independent without the help of any other. Her husband in the Indian conservative community is treated as a god, 'sheltering tree', and protector and provider, but Tara breaks this myth and accepts another man who has a suit for her temperament and who satisfies her sexual desires too. She has rejected an object of a sacrifice, showpiece, and a silent and an assistant creature to her hubby. She wishes to be loved in life and the whole part is respected and does not want that to be provided and protected by her husband as is desired in the case of any other woman. So she believes she differs from any other woman. She is the heroine of the fiction because she has the invincible valor to transcend the boundaries and to take initiations on an unknown path which may lead her to destroy life.
While her other sisters Padma and Parvati, both has complacent and living passive life, they both accepted a middle way, and remain the suspicious about their new recognize, not to do feel the necessary need to widen their horizons, and are very less assertive, Tara emerges as a most powerful figure to meet every adverse condition; to march forward with all her merits to an unknown and unfathomed way of realizing her full potential as an independent human being. The Padma lives in America, but she follows the basic tradition of Indian culture and clings to Indian ways, clothes, friends, and food. Padma tells Tara "American" that meaning is self-engrossed. She recalls Tara to follow the models of Sita and Savitri, a woman of the Indian epic, things are never perfect in wedding, a woman must be prepared to following less than completeness during the whole life time, and to herself make model on Sita, Savitri, and Behula, the virtuous wives of Hindu myths, but the sense of Tara, she choose her own way separately.
The intimations of Padma represent the perspective concepts of male chauvinism and by decaying it. Tara establishes the feminist perspective over phallocentric. A materialize of her son's various sexual orientations leaves her shell heart ached for events, but the maturity and readiness with which she accepts the above relation speaks of her modern sensibility and consciousness. Despite passing towards the complete freedom from traditional parts, Tara did not want and cannot be separated from her roots. She has normally Indian family norms and feeling isolated and incomplete divorced after being processed. The presence of Bish gives her internal isolation which she lacks in Andy's company. After separation, she feels nothing with emptiness from Bish because he is still in her mind’s life as her hubby, the sheltering tree. For an Indian woman, the need for a husband in the form of Bish shows that it is not so easy to completely move free from 'dependence syndrome'. She can’t avoid her motherly duties towards Rabi, who was her son. Even like Virmati who was Difficult Daughters Tara, too, and is unable to realize complete emancipation.
Among the experience, three Bengali sisters represented the three various aspects of female experiences. Tara is living a free life and lives an ultramodern as a divorcee where she is completed with every opportunity to enjoy progress or develop and freedom while Parvati is living a complacent confined domestic life with her husband Auro. Parvati and Tara, they are sisters remain in force on two extremes whereas the third Padma sees a fine balance between the two; she lived an independent life with her hubby Harish Mehta, and does not altogether discard her cultural notions and values. All among them, the three women characters the writer provides the three mega choices for an Indian woman to follow. Prof Anita Myles opines the same when she writes that Mukharjee's heroines were struggling hardships stoically and emerged stronger providing sustenance and equilibrium to the entire society.
Conclusion
The novel depicts all manners about the psychological journey of the protagonist Tara from America to her cultural identity roots that are in India. A visualize of India and America from her perspective notions. The main issue created in the most avoided topic that is, sex and Tara's wants for the size of the organ and sexual experience with Andy who was her lover and Bish, has been frankly exposed. The basic problems and issues discussed in the novel are love, marriage, sex, dowry, separate estate, and woman subjugation. Bharati Mukherjee's heroines are bold as well as assertive; they have the strong power of potentiality for acceptability; they live in the mood of firm ground of reality of society and accept the bitter truth of their life. In the fiction ‘Desirable Daughters’, Tara, Padma, and Parvati are all the protagonists and three sisters that break the concept with the old traditions of society, and clichéd new roles in one way or the other way to live life in their world. They are trying to adjust to the changed scenario rapidly.
References
Dr. Kiritsinh P Thakor, Assistant Professor, Department of English, VNSBL Arts & Commerce College, (Vadanagar).