Abstract:
Menstruation is a natural phenomenon concerning the female body and its biological cycle but it has been receiving cultural and religious meanings since a long past. Medically speaking, it is the monthly expulsion of uterus lining if fertilization of the female egg has not taken place. But this medical aspect has been given various socio-cultural underpinnings and the concept is still debated. Contemporary Indian writer, C.S. Lakhmi’s My Mother, Her Crime offers interesting insights into the idea of menstruation. Popularly known as Ambai, the author problematizes the idea of ‘becoming’ a woman in the process of transition from girlhood to womanhood with fears about the body coupled with cultural anxieties. By close reading of the text and drawing theoretical insights from postmodern feminists, this article contends that the text is a negotiation with socio-cultural tendencies and necessitates a humane and non-stigmatizing approach to menstruation. In the process, the article also analyses the nature of mother-daughter relationship within the complex heterosexual matrix.
Key Words: Menstruation, body, sexuality, stigma, trauma
Menstruation, although a natural phenomenon in the female body, has been steeped with silence, shame and stigma in Indian social structure for centuries. The menstruation cycle is often conceptualized in relation to biological and pathological aspects related to a woman's body, reproduction and health. Menstruation is a natural phenomenon concerning the female body, its biological cycle but it has been receiving cultural and religious meanings since a long time ago. Medically it is the monthly expulsion of uterus lining if fertilization of the female egg has not taken place but this medical aspect has been given various socio-cultural underpinnings and the concept is still debated. Although numerous attempts are done to bring in medical awareness about menstrual etiquettes and personal hygiene, societal negligence towards women’s actual experiential and psychological realities go unnoticed. Menstruation is perceived beyond a “normal” biological condition and implications such shame, guilt, isolation, embarrassment, silence and secrecy relegate it to a social taboo. Hegemonic social structures and cultural conditioning compels women to accept these implications in silence thus blocking expression of their agonies. Preconceived cultural constructs about menstruation as unclean, quarantines menstruating women and they accept social isolation out of the fear of being stigmatized in public. Alongside cultural imposition coupled with internal body leakage, women suffer physical pain, psychological agony, horror, helplessness and a tormenting sense of impurity and guilt. For something that needs to be thought as natural, normal and healthy, numerous negative implications get associated within the Indian cultural context too. Recent debates about menstruating women’s entry into the temple premises of Sabarimala and Shani Shingnapur stands testimony to this. Indian literary scenario has no doubt brought to the forefront some of the pertinent subjects related to the feminine world. The various struggles associated with feminine body such as menstruation, pregnancy, miscarriage, infertility and childlessness are some of the subthemes perceived especially in women’s’ writings. In spite of the strong socio-cultural impediments and existing narrative in the social discourse, most writers give a passing reference to the subject of menstruation and have not seriously delved into the bodily experiences to bring the discourse of menstruation to the centre.This study is motivated by the essential need to open up this subject in literary studies and analyse the ways in which this biological system is discussed in terms of reproduction or treated negatively with shame, silence, embarrassment or burden. Ambai’s short story My Mother, Her Crime makes an interesting text to explore and navigate through the various underpinnings that compel women to negotiate with their bodies and external modalities. Many researchers have concentrated upon feminism and activism in Ambai’s works but nothing specific is directed towards the understanding of menstruation, women’s body and its associated multiple layers of constructed ideologies. Hence, this study is relevant to the existing body of knowledge in the field of literary studies.
C.S.Laxmi (1944 - ) popularly known as Ambai is a well recognized south Asian contemporary feminist writer from Indian subcontinent particularly known for her short stories. Although she primarily writes in Tamil, most of her writings are available in English translations, usually attempted by translator Lakhsmi Holmstrom. Ambai’ writings are powerful, thought provoking and are cleverly crafted through appropriate literary devices along with language and experimentation in form. Her short stories may appear simple tales of everyday experiences but a closer reading makes one understand the serious undertones. My Mother, Her Crime, appeared first in her third collection of short stories titled In a Forest, A Deer: Stories by Ambai, translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom and published in 2006. The narrative is a tale of a young girl who is grappling with the anxiety of her menstruating body and the newly expected codes of conduct from her family.
Ambai brings new insights about menstruation through the eyes of Nirajatchi who attains puberty and experiences terrifying corporeal and cultural anxieties which happens to all women in the given cultural context. By bringing menstruation, the bodily fluids and woman’s body to the centre, the text questions the nature of socio-cultural construction and conditioning that surrounds a woman. By doing so, Ambai problematizes the very idea of being and becoming a woman and questions if the woman’s body and sexuality is responsible for the existing constructs. By close reading and analysis of the text using appropriate theoretical framework, this article analyses some of the cultural nuances about menstruation and presents how the text becomes a negotiation for non-stigmatization and acceptance of menstruation as a mere biological process.
Literature Review
The Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament mentions that menstruation consigned women physically and spiritually ‘unclean’ and contagious (Newton, 2016, p. 19). Women’s body and menstrual blood became synonymous with “shame, difference, castration, filth, reproductive power, disease, and death to the Other” (Miller, 2005, p. 289). Even though certain myths ceased to appear, the ideas associated with menstruation as “unfortunate, unpleasant and distasteful subject to address” (Strange, 2000, p. 609) continued. In biomedical literature, the menstrual cycle is theorized to be related to biological and pathological ideas related to woman’s body and health (Chrisler and Johnston-Robledo 2012; Ussher 2006). Menstruation is not just a taboo but it also affects society through various implications associated with it. Literary representation of menstruation became widespread specifically with feminist writings. Works involving feminist perspectives and on heath features in Our Bodies Ourselves: A Health Book by and for Women (1978) by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, and Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English’s For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women (1979). Emily Martin’s seminal text The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction (1987) analyses the language used to describe the menstrual cycle and labour in medical texts, and explores the various dimensions of women’s experiences. In 1988, Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb edited Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation, an anthropological and cross-cultural study of menstruation which analyses the concepts of taboo and pollution and reinforced that menstruation in some cultures in fact gave autonomy. All these scholarly works give various insights to the notions perceived and constructed across various texts and cultural milieu.
Considering this framework and weaving together postmodern critical insights on the subject, this article explores the various underpinnings in the select short fiction.
Textual Analysis
My Mother, Her Crime is a beautiful narration from the eyes of a girl child Nirajatchi who fondly remembers her complete adoration and bonding with her mother. As a child, she seeks comfort and every move of her mother is looked upon by her as awe and inspiration. For Nirajatchi, her mother was a divine being. But this mother-daughter relationship takes a different turn when she reaches thirteen. Her mother is out of station and is not available next to her on that ‘eventful day’ when she notices blood stains on her skirt. Perplexed, Nirajatchi runs to her sister Kalyani who “gives a horrified stare for a full minute and then goes off screaming” (Ambai, p.70). Although the narrator keeps reassuring herself that ‘nothing has happened’ yet she could sense from the looks and the treatment given that her body has signalled a new turn for her life. Fear, anxiety and helplessness surrounds her altogether and she craves for her mother’s comforting words.
I want my mother. I want to bury my head deep into the Chinnalampatti silk of her shoulder. I want, unashamed, to tell her, “I am frightened.” I want her to comfort me and stroke my head. Because surely something very terrible has happened. (Ambai p.70)
Nirajatchi is completely struck with fear and loss. She feels: “I feel as if something has ended for ever. As if I have left something behind, in the way one leaves the cinema after the show “The End” on the screen.” (Ambai, p.71) As Australian philosopher and feminist theorist, Elizabeth Grosz illustrates:
For the girl, menstruation, associated as it is with blood, with injury and wound, with a mess that does not dry invisibly, that leaks uncontrollably, not in sleep, in dreams, but whenever it occurs, indicates the beginning of an out of control status that she was led to believe ends with childhood. (Grosz, p. 205).
Ambai, here suggests the transition from freedom to bondage when menstruation sets in. When the woman’s body starts leaking every other freedom is curtailed. Although her mother had pronounced confidently, “Always be as you are now, running about and playing, twirling your skirt…” (Ambai, p.68), she deciphers that those days have ended. She ponders why she was not well informed about the processes of the body although she had asked her once, “Amma, what does ‘puberty’ mean?” (Ambai, p.67). This received only “Silence. A long silence” (Ambai, p.67). The old woman who comes to attend her says, “This is every woman’s destiny, after all” (Ambai, p.73). The clothing, the posture and the behaviour is expected to be changed. The narrator looks at her body with confusion, “I am not the same girl as I was?” (Ambai, p.74). For all her doubts, she was only told to be quiet and do/perform and act as per the directions given. The narrator comes running to pour out all the ‘creeping horrors’ to her mother when she is back but her long-standing wishes go in vain. In a state of horror, she listens to her mother thus:
And what a time for this wretched business of yours! It’s just one more burden for us now. (Ambai, p.77)
She understands how her dark skin colour and her body has turned to be a burden for all. The complex relation between the mother and the daughter is weaved together. For the comforting mother, she now becomes a ‘burden’. The psychological turmoil and trauma faced by the young girl does not become the subject of talk among the family members but the air is filled with expectations and a sense of burden. The protagonist understands the problematic nature of her body through her experiences rooted in the cultural ethos and sensibility. The text interlaces the idea of motherhood, mother-daughter relation within the nexus of the monthly expulsion of bodily fluids. Cultural ideologies and truths about women’s experiences are articulated within the scope of the text. Ambai offers unique visualizations of various struggles associated with the female body and women’s constant negotiation with it.
With the onset of menstruation, the protagonist realizes that her condition is beyond a “normal” biological condition and is a social taboo. The way she is being treated by her sister, father and elderly women around her deciphers to her that something has really happened and she cannot go back to the previous normalcy which she enjoyed. The kind of silence, secrecy, shame and strangeness which surrounds, bewilders and leaves her in a traumatic situation. Confused with the mystical nature of her body and the permeating external situation led by others, she gradually becomes conscious of her “otherness”. More than the bleeding body, she gets disturbed with the cultural conditioning that starts happening which to her astonishment her mother too is involved. In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir (p. 354) observes that menstruation can “inspire horror in the adolescent girl because they throw her into an inferior defective category. This sense of being declassed will weigh heavily upon her”. She also talks about the process of ‘becoming’ and ‘othering’. She comments that a woman's position is not natural, but is a social construct. The concept of femininity is artificially shaped by customs and fashion, and man’s dominance has been secured through ages by an ideological power. In the book The Second Sex, She comments thus:
One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine. Only the intervention of someone else can establish an individual as another. (Beauvoir, p.295).
What is imperative is that no one seems to explain what puberty is to the young girl, not even the mother. Even when asked, the replies are only in silence. This communication gap between the mother and daughter brings a long-term void in their bonding. No one in the family bothers to give a clinical explanation but a whole lot is done to condition her thoughts to adjust, adapt and stay isolated. Her father says, “You mustn’t be difficult now” and the old widow who comes for help adds, “Why does she have to be so stubborn?” (Ambai, p.73).
By bringing the concept of menstruation to the centre and making it the very theme of the story, Ambai draws our attention to the indifferent attitude of society towards menstruating women. Ambai vehemently voices against the stigma and silence surrounding menstruation and calls for question how such attitudes disrupt normal relationships with self and others. The text is thus a critique of cultural negligence to the pertinent sufferings of menstruating women. As stated earlier, most literary texts make passing reference to this suffering, but Ambai chooses to fight a battle against all the malicious thoughts and conditioning that surrounds such a scenario. She also contends that such a cultural understanding of menstruation as a taboo limits women’s freedom, thought and thereby denigrates them inferior against the mainstream. Through this narrative, Ambai pleads for positive acceptance of this biological concept without any associated connotations and also that young women should be educated on this; especially mothers to play an empathetic role in educating them.
The menstruation cycle is often conceptualized in relation to biological and pathological aspects related to a woman's body, reproduction and health. The article here addresses the myriad ways menstruation is positioned within the socio-cultural context and the ways women negotiate with this biological process. Women’s social isolation, its impact on mental health and their varied experiences, anxieties and fears are all represented through the eyes of the protagonist. The protagonist plights represent the fears and anxieties of all menstruating women. These unsaid experiences and attitudes are shaped by social contexts. It is within this socio-cultural framework; women tend to internalize in order to ‘perform” as per the codes given to them. This reminds one of Judith Butler, Postmodern feminist and philosopher who talks about the idea of performance and performativity in a heterosexual matrix. In her notable work, Gender Trouble, Butler argues that gender operates everywhere and is a set of ‘performances’.All actions that are considered appropriate for men and women have been transmitted and repeated to produce a situation or environment that both maintains and legitimizes a seemingly natural gender binary. According to her, heteronormative bodies and sexualities are constructed phenomenon to hold the power discourses. Butler’s theories interface gender and queer studies; especially the ideas associated with stigmatization. Any deviation from the constructed ‘normal’ goes for stigmatization and unacceptance. Butler contests that the multitude of ways that people are shamed or positioned as ‘different’ should not be understood as a consequence of their being or actions, rather the root cause of all this is when something is conceived as ‘normal’. The process of ‘gendering’ paves women’s bodies to be considered beyond normalcy or deviant and anything deviant is othered in heterosexual context. The text set for analysis clearly aligns with Butler’s notions. The short story taken for analysis brilliantly exposes the fears, anxieties and shame of encountering puberty. The mother-daughter bonding in the early days comes crumbling down as ‘betrayal’ sets in due to the compulsion faced by women to ‘perform’ in a hegemonic society. The predicament suffered by menstruating women parallels the narrative set by constructed ideologies. This argument is further developed by feminist scholar Iris Marion Young (2005), who affirms that “from our earliest awareness of menstruation until the day we stop, we are mindful of the imperative to conceal our menstrual processes” (p.106). Echoing Butler’s views on normalcy, Young further states:
The normal body, the default body, the body that everybody is assumed to be, is a body not bleeding from the vagina. Thus, to be normal and tobe taken as normal, the menstruating woman must not speak about her bleeding and must conceal evidence of it. (Young, p.107).
Young exposes the relation between menstruation and concealment because it does not fall under the purview of ‘normalcy’. In the narrative, the bleeding body is immediately othered and isolated as it is thought to be dirty, disgusting and therefore concealed. The protagonist in the narrative is not only expected to manage her bodily ‘waste’ and ‘dirt’ but also to exercise her agency in order to be acceptable. The text therefore voices for free will and liberty from all existing bondages in thought and practices. Ambai makes an attempt to re-signify the existing notions to have positive experiences about menstruation. By liberating one from stereotypes and stigmas and by getting rid of rules that restrict women’s lives, positive experiences can be felt. This is exactly what the narrative suggests. The selected text for analysis no doubt makes a genuine entry into the corpus of ‘menstrual texts’, a term coined to refer to texts that bring this subject to the centre of discussion and make visible as an important discourse in the mainstream arena of gender studies.
Through her creative writings, Ambai points to the innumerable ways in which society seeks to suppress and repress women. Cultivated belief systems, traditional ideas undermine and prevent women from recognizing their identity and self-worth. Experimenting with language, form and using narrative techniques like multiple perspectives, plurality of voices, archetypal references, internal monologues and so on, Ambai’s short stories offer deep analysis and food for thought. Women, according to her, need to express the silence in their lives and need to create a space for themselves. Through literary articulations, Ambai brings to the forefront the varied experiences of women. In her essay titled Dealing with Silence, Space and Everyday Life, Ambai reiterates the need to break free from the silences and to create a space to narrate their experiences.
Marriage as an institution administered in heterosexual society controls women’s free will. Many women writers have pointed out that in the given patriarchal set up, women not only are managed and controlled but are expected to keep the tradition rolling by passing it to their daughters. The tussle between tradition and modernity and mother-daughter relation within this nexus becomes an oft explored subject. The intense bonding between the mother and the child receives turbulence once the young girl conceives that her mother no longer understands her. The scholar Adrienne Rich makes a brilliant analysis of motherhood: “to have borne and reared a child is to have done that thing which patriarchy joins with physiology to render into the definition of femaleness” (1977, p.37). Rigid codes of ‘appropriate’ behaviour and internalization of these gendered codes governs women’s psyche and compels them to bear the torch of tradition, rituals and beliefs which are often restrictive and oppressive. For the child narrator, her mother “was the purifying fire that burned away all impurities” (Ambai, p.67). The indifferent and callous attitude of her mother baffles her at the end. This experience is more traumatic than her venture into understanding her body and sexuality. The narration ends thus:
In that fiery instant the divine image that covered her falls away to reveal the mere human mother. Her cold unfeeling words rise like swords blindly butchering all the beauties that she had hitherto tended. Endless fears will stay forever in my mind from now on; dark pictures. (Ambai, p.77)
Following Adrienne Rich: “the power-relations between mother and child are often simply a reflection of power-relations in patriarchal society” (1977, p.38). According to her, motherhood links patriarchy with physiology but at the same time she also believes that it is a means of ‘experiencing one’s own body and emotions in a powerful way’ (37). Desire is something which women are expected to hide. Recurrent metaphorical usage of silences, lack of communication and spaces through images and language is core to Ambai’s writings. The text no doubt decentres old thoughts and brings to the centre, the visibility of menstruation. The invisibility and silence that surrounds menstruation suppress speech of the body and this brings the proliferation of constructed ideas and misrepresentation. As Rich (1977) puts it, the body has a bloody speech but “menstruators” participate in the silences around menstruation allowing others speak for them (p.254). She firmly articulates these silences in words and images and contests that women need to express themselves.
Conclusion
The text brings menstruation as a subject of discussion to the centre and by doing so challenges the notions of silence, shame, dirt and other signifying aspects of the biological condition. Ambai situates this to the centre and decentres common notions surrounding menstruation. Along with, she problematizes the very notion of ‘becoming’ a woman in a society laden with patriarchal ideals. The protagonist Nirajatchi becomes a spokesperson for all menstruating women who experience such traumatic situations. The text not only questions the stigmatized gendered experience of menstruating women but also seeks to offer a humane approach to such attributes. By bringing it to the centre of discussion, the text situates gendered experiences within socio-cultural framework and becomes a vivid articulation for non-stigmatization and acceptance of menstruation as a mere biological process. As a ‘menstrual text’, the text makes an interesting area of exploration in the field of health humanities and medical humanities; the conjunction of health, medicine and literature for future studies.
References:
- Ambai. (2019). A Kitchen in the Corner of the House, Archipelago Books Edition.
- Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. (1978). Our Bodies Ourselves: A Health Book by and for Women, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
- Butler, Judith. (1990a). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
- Chrisler, J. C., & Johnston-Robledo, I. (2012). Reproduction and mental health. In P. K. Lundberg-Love, K. L. Nadal, & M. A. Paludi (Eds.), Women and mental disorders (Vol. 1, pp. 119–151). Santa Barbara: Praeger
- De Beauvoir, S. (1952). The Second Sex. Vintage.
- Ehrenreich, Barbara and Deirdre English. (1979). For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women, London: Pluto Press.
- Grosz, Elizabeth. (1993). “Bodies and Knowledges: Feminism and the Crisis of Reason.” In Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (Ed.) Feminist Epistemologies. London: Routledge, p. 187-215.
- Martin, Emily. (1992). The Woman in the Body. A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press.
- Miller, A. (2005). ‘The hair that wasn’t there before:’ Demystifying monstrosity and menstruation in ginger snaps and ginger snaps unleashed.” Western Folklore Summer/Fall 281-303.
- Newton, V. L. (2016). Everyday discourses of menstruation. Palgrave Macmillan.
- Rich, Adrienne. (1977). Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: Bantam Books.
- Strange, J. M. (2000). Menstrual fictions: Languages of medicine and menstruation, c. 1850–1930. Women’s History Review 9(3): 607-628
- Ussher, J. M. (2006). Managing the monstrous feminine: Regulating the reproductive body. New York: Routledge.
- Young, Iris Marion. (2005). On Female Body Experience. Throwing like a Girl and other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press.