Sahityasetu

Perhaps the only way to overcome a traumatic severance of body and mind is to come back to mind through the body.
Geoffrey Hartman

Abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the strategies adopted by women to counter traumatic situations borne out of marital strife as depicted in novels namely The Hour before Dawn and Rebirth by Assamese writers Dr. Bhabendra Nath Saikia and Jahnabi Barua respectively by applying feminism and trauma theory. The marital conflict incorporates the helpless state of a woman when her husband ‘deserts’ her. What choice does the female have in such a case? How does she cope with the psychic trauma? How does she counter and contest masculinity? The argument will focus on the analysis of strategies of countering trauma of emotional displacement by the two female protagonists from these two novels having similar socio-cultural set up of Assam. Kaberi is the central character of Jahnabi Barua’s novel Rebirth and Menoka is the central character of Dr. Bhabendra Nath Saikia’s novel The Hour before Dawn. Both Kaberi and Menoka suffer in their respective conjugal lives because of their male counterparts. While Kaberi lives with her husband in the metropolitan Bangalore, Menoka dwells in an upcoming town of pre-independence Assam. Despite the vast difference in their life styles, both the women undergo similar traumatic ordeal of betrayal and retribution that lead to their emotional displacement. An attempt has been made here to investigate the strategies of coping with trauma and displacement adopted by both the female characters and their individual responses of working through this painful (both physical and emotional) experience. This study also explores how they emerge victorious from battling the psychic trauma. This argues that representation of females in these novels by Assamese writers can be taken as contesting the patriarchal hegemony in our society. These representations have not been given due importance within the contemporary Indian discourse of feminism. Defying the psychological wound inflicted by patriarchy and negating the structured role of females in the social set up they counter their gendered identity in a bold manner. Thus, the gendered role of females, which is taken as a granted in our society, seems to have been challenged in these texts. They display exemplary courage and resolve to contest patriarchal devaluations of their feminine self. The void and utter loneliness, sterility of ‘space’- is sought to be (re)populated by forging new relationships.

Key Words: Patriarchy, Betrayal, Trauma, Strategy, Relationship, Counter Response

When an individual is displaced from the familiar surroundings of ‘home’, he/she may experience homelessness and this can lead to the trauma of being ‘un-housed’ in the mind of the displaced individual. Feeling displaced from a ‘home’, an individual may seek to carve out his/her own ‘place’ in an emotionally dislocated ‘space’. Any space remains an abstract idea or kind of a vacuum until it is physically occupied by someone or something. Kaberi in Jahnabi Barua’s Rebirth and Menoka in Dr. Bhabendra Nath Saikia’s The Hour before Dawn are displaced from their personal space inside their ‘home’ leading to a condition when the ‘home’ becomes only an abstract space for both the ladies. After encountering this catastrophic emotional displacement they vow to contest this hapless state of theirs being in no man’s/woman’s land. Home or the space they can truly term as home does not merely signify a geographic location demarcated by four walls and a shed above their heads, but what Sura P. Rath categorises as “both a concrete location and an abstract space in conceptual realm”(4) and characters psychologically feel safe, satisfied and be content with themselves. After facing emotional distress inside their ‘home’, both Kaberi and Menoka try to repopulate the ‘vacuum space’ by tactfully converting the space into a ‘place’ by restoring the fertility of the ‘body’. Symbolically their bodies become fertile once again as they conceive pregnancy. This fertility gradually leads to healing the trauma. Kaberi in her seclusion emotionally resembles kind of desert, barren place of land. So she forges new relationship with her unborn child, in a monologue mode. Later on Bidyut, who is her friend’s husband, becomes her reference point. Menoka’s plight is not much different either. And her fertility is sought through her extramarital relationship with a village outcast Modon, who is much lower in social status and the barren patch of land – her ‘body’ is populated again. Dhruba, fathered by Modon is the result of this furtive encounter. The narrative boldly and loudly asserts the power of woman when challenged by someone thought of as very dear. It also explores Menoka’s troubled but ultimately redemptive relationship with Indro, her child from Mohikanto, who is exposed to a bewildering world of adult complexities in a premature age and leaves for Calcutta for higher studies after matriculation. This paper investigates the strategies of coping with trauma and displacement adopted by both the female characters and their individual responses of “remembering, repeating, and working through” (Benson 201) the experience, and explores how they emerge victorious from battling the psychic trauma. This argues that representation of female in these novels by Assamese writers can be taken as contesting the male dominance in society. These representations have not been given due importance within the contemporary Indian discourse of feminism. Defying the psychological wound inflicted by patriarchal hegemony and negating the structured role of females in the social set up they counter their gendered identity in a bold manner. Thus, the gendered role of females, which is taken for granted in our society, seems to have been challenged in those texts. Displaying exemplary courage they resolve to contest “patriarchal devaluations of femininity” (Moran 3). The void and utter loneliness, sterility of ‘space’ is sought to be made fertile while (re)populating it by forging new relationships.

Jahnabi Barua is a young and promising writer based in Bangalore writing in English. Her first Book, Next Door, was published in 2008 by Penguin. Next Door is a collection of short stories set mainly in Assam. Rebirth published in 2010, is her first novel which was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in the year 2011. She is the first Assamese writer to be shortlisted for this prize. Rebirth is the story of Kaberi, a young Assamese woman grappling with her disloyal husband while she was expecting a baby. The uncertain marriage and her psychologically disturbed mindset gradually nurture and strengthen a passionate bond between the mother and the yet to be born child. It is also a monologue with the unborn baby. The narrative moves back and forth between Bangalore and Guwahati depicting Kaberi’s inner and outer self while she negotiates the treacherous water of betrayal and loss – an unfaithful husband, a troubled relationship with her parents and the death of a childhood friend Joya. The novel reflects her inner strength to reclaim and create her own place after being emotionally traumatized by Ron’s (her husband) betrayal. Barua’s trademark narrative style of restraint and disarming honesty unfurls the disquieting predicaments of contemporary metropolitan life of woman and reveals the timeless and redemptive power of love, friendship and self-renewal. On the other hand, Padma Shri awardee Dr. Bhabendra Nath Saikia (1932-2003) is a versatile Assamese author and considered a father figure of Assamese film industry. He received Sahitya Akademi award in 1976 and Padma Shri in 2001. The literary oeuvre of this genius incorporates multiple genres like short stories, novels, plays, children literature, lyrics, films etc. His creations are highly appreciated in India and abroad. Many of his short stories are translated into English, Bengali, Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati etc. The directorial venture which seems like an inborn trait in him brought seven Rajat Kamal awards for the best regional films from the Government of India in the Indian Panorama section of International Film Festival of India. “Agnisnaan”, Film adaptation of the first part of Antoreep (English translation - The Hour Before Dawn) won him the national award for the best screenplay in 1985. He also penned some successful dramas for the Assamese mobile theatre group Kohinoor and Aabahaan. This prolific writer and outstanding film-maker was also conferred the Srimanta Sankardeva Award, the highest honour instituted by the Government of Assam in 1978. The Hour Before Dawn (2009) is the English translation of Antoreep (1986) by Bangalore based freelance writer Maitreyee Siddhanta Chakravarty. Unfolding the family plot of an aristocratic and well to do Assamese family during the last decade of British era, the first part of the novel scripts the tension between Mohikanto and Menoka, the second part shifts focus to their son Indro. The happy family of Menoka nourished with deep love and care with four children is splintered by dissolute and ruthless Mohikanto’s whimsical decision to get married for the second time with a much young lady named Kiron. Menoka was deeply confounded by the heedless attitude in which her unquestioning loyalty was sidelined by the rogue Mohikanto. At this crucial juncture Menoka hinges on the pitiful state of helpless and meek female hopelessly watching her fate toying with her conjugal life. But this stirs her inner strength of womanhood after the initial languidness, throwing her out of the comfort zone and she decides on a befitting reply to the nocturnal foreplay of her husband with his second wife Kiron. Menoka deliberately gets close to Madon in an illicit and tender relationship and gives birth to a child. This is not an immature emotional outburst but a well pondered strategy to salvage her place of pride, and she refuses to be at the receiving end.

This paper applies trauma theory to examine the struggle undergone by both the female characters from the above mentioned novels. Originating from the ancient Greek term denoting wound, the modern concept of trauma varies according to context and discipline to which it is sought to be applied. Trauma is taken as a peculiar kind of psychological wound in general. It hardly manifests in any specific physical form but can invariably produce repeated, uncontrollable, and incalculable effects that continue long after its ostensible precipitating cause. Trauma, which “effects an incision in the self, so that one effectively becomes two”, as Felman and Laub (178) have mentioned, presents a unique set of challenges to understanding and representation, witnessing or relating. Further, because traumatic events often happen due to social forces as well as in the social world, trauma has an inherently political, historical, and ethical dimension. Therefore, the place of traumatic occurrence is of vital significance. Trauma occurs to real people and on real time. According to Freud's account, trauma can be understood as a “wound inflicted not upon the body but upon the mind” (1), whereby “knowing and not knowing are entangled in the language of trauma” (4). Dating back to the early 1990s current interest in trauma studies were generated by a number of pioneering works by Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub, Cathy Caruth, Judith Herman etc. The field grew rapidly with important work generated in psychology, cognitive science, history, and literature, including that of Jennifer Freyd, Bessel A. van der Kolk, Dominick LaCapra, Daniel Schacter, and others looking at the commonality of traumatic phenomena within divergent populations, including survivors of war, domestic violence, and incest. An event accumulates to be traumatic “in which a person feels utterly helpless in the face of a force that is perceived to be life-threatening” (Brison 40). For Erikson trauma is “a blow to the tissues of the mind that results in injury or some other disturbance” (183). Psychic trauma is generally defined as a reaction to an overpowering event resulting in psychological damage, but instead of understanding trauma according to event and/or response, Cathy Caruth has famously redefined it by “the structure of its experience ... the event is not assimilated or experienced fully at the time, but only belatedly, in its repeated possession of the one who experiences it” (1995, 4). However, after the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s, it became known that more women than men suffered from the long-term effects of psychological trauma and that these women were traumatized in their private lives. Historical trauma, colonial trauma are different important branches of trauma studies. However, trauma studies have generally been West centric and much has not been done to address issues from the non-Western countries. Holocaust, genocide of Jews, World Wars, partition of India, nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, attack of 9/11, attack of 26/11, Iraq and Afghanistan wars against Terrorism are some of the precarious events that shook human psyche for years resulting in traumatic psychosis.

The settings of both the novels are similar and contrasting at the same time. Rebirth is set in post-independent Indian metropolis of Bangalore and Guwahati; whereas The Hour before Dawn is a depiction of pre-independent upcoming urban Assamese society. The life style, food habits and the social setting have totally changed by now. Still we can identify a very strong connection between the two novels as both minutely script the life of Assamese woman, who has a natural grace of carrying and expressing themselves and share the common middle class upbringing. It is their conservative middleclass upbringing which has taught them to be religious, tolerant, and benevolent as well as complete human being at the same time. This common background teaches them to value humanity more than material possession. But this also makes them liable to be victimised as they do not apparently know the language of protest. Extreme behaviour, mannerisms or hysteria even under extreme circumstances are not accepted on their part. They are never encouraged to talk about personal problems and cry openly and are extremely dignified and restrained in expressing both pain and pleasure, and are mostly understated, moderate and almost never ecstatic. So, interestingly this female experience of suffering is considered normal in our society. Feminist and trauma theorist Lawra S. Brown rightly argues that “the private, secret experiences that women encounter in the interpersonal realm and at the hands of those we love and depend upon ... those events in which the dominant culture and its forms and institutions are expressed and perpetuated” (102) had to a great extent been left out of the realm of definition because these are considered normal and therefore not traumatic and posits as vulnerable female experience.

Kaberi, the protagonist of Rebirth is the only child of her parents. But she is not pampered with love and care as it should have been. Instead she had to live her life constantly under the shadow of terror of a tumultuous relationship between her parents. This makes her introvert and over sensitive from the very childhood and a bit timid as an individual plagued with a sense of unknown danger impacting her all the time. She is possessed by the past in terms of acting out rather than “remembering and working through” (Caruth, 1995, 5) that gives vent to her split psyche. She is afraid to be alone and is haunted by silence as she says:

“This silence, this peculiar kind of silence, where the very air seems to be frozen, makes me afraid. I have been afraid of it ever since Joya. It has been three years but even now this hush makes the hair stand up on my forearms” (Barua 22).

This fear is exactly what Dominick LaCapra rightly notes, “Something of the past always remains, if only as a haunting presence or symptomatic revenant” (49). She seems to be trapped by the past. She is unable to break this trepidation and even the humble computer would make her scared to type anything: “What if I hit a key and something terrible happened? If something was deleted or if the computer crashed? I had this image of the monitor falling off the table and breaking into ugly plastic pieces whenever I thought of it” (Barua 110). Her fear psychosis becomes what Judith Herman explains as trauma which first recounted “as a series of still snapshots or a silent movie” (175). The space, the blankness is what she is afraid of, the presence of a power, an absolute one: “I was always wary of that temple. It made me uneasy, absolute power always does” (Barua 108). It is nothing but the psychological trauma of witnessing (in the form of hearing) the strange and terrified thrashing sounds from behind the closed door of her parents’ bedroom during her childhood days. The trauma which “unsettles and forces us to rethink our notions of experience and of communication” (Caruth 4), is totally at work here. She carries the burden of this curse throughout her life even in place overcrowded by strangers. Once she was reading a book in a supermarket and suddenly she felt that mysterious fright has gripped her once again: “This is precisely what is so terrifying, the possibility of unimagined dangers in a familiar setting” (Barua 28).

Menoka, on the other hand, was also born and brought up in a conservative middleclass family and her father constantly hummed verses from religious scriptures. Unlike Kaberi, she does not have any psychological barrier or fear of the unknown. In fact, she is a courageous and stubborn lady who rose to the stature of Sita in her father-in-laws only to be ironically dethroned. It is immediately after her removal from the privileged position of pedestal by her husband that she felt that engulfing void:

“She felt as though she were standing with her children on the bank of a river she had just crossed. The cool water had cleansed and soothed her during crossing, but the rest of the household remained on the opposite shore” (Saikia 29).

She experiences the pain like "insidious trauma," that “do violence to the soul and spirit" (Brown 107) and when she looked at her four children this feeling intensifies into something very pathetic and numb: “On seeing them, Menoka felt a sharp stab of pain pierce her heart. They looked like a group of orphan at their meal!” (Saikia 110). She resolves to be a strong mother and a woman with all the abilities to hit back. Thus, her husband, Mohikanto’s denial of her ‘place’ for another woman compels her to bury her previous benign self as she confirms: “Last night, a woman had died, and she would never be born in the same form again. Another had been born – and she would never die” (30). But is it so eay to change one’s self? So, she is also liable to be wounded, vulnerable to be hurt at times: “Menoka felt overwhelmed with pain. An image of helpless woman, laying with her head plunged into her pillow, floated before her shut eyes ... shame, shame, shame! How could he do this?”(29). As critic Caitlin Hines has observed regarding his metaphor of Sweet Desserts, “thus not only are women grammatically objectified, reduced to mere syntactic objects, but also they are depersonalized, robbed of their uniqueness” (154). Both Kaberi and Menoka’s fate underline this point who have lost their hard earned coveted ‘place’, thus reducing their entity merely to an object lying on a ‘space’.

Both the females are displaced initially from the cosy comfort of their familiar surroundings to a new confinement after marriage. This physical displacement is not quite traumatic but can be seen as a socio-cultural practice. Kaberi accompanies her husband Ron to a totally new surrounding of concrete Bangalore and Menoka is shifted to ruthless Mohikanta’s house. Although this is a quite common practise after marriage, still there is something unfamiliar, resulting in a sense of dislocation and claustrophobia. Both of them are following the traditional customs of arranged marriages. Both did their duties in the most modest way possible only to be cheated later by their respective husbands. Although the timings of the betrayal vary, the intensity and the magnitude of the incidents are almost similar. Kaberi’s conjugal life has entered into the seventh year and Menoka has served her husband for eleven years without giving any chance to complain. But their loyalty in relationship matters very little to their husbands. Kaberi discovers that that her husband has developed an extramarital affair with one of his colleagues. This discovery triggers her traumatic journey to seclusion. Kaberi shouts, argues with her husband and slaps him. As if she is deserted only because she cannot conceive a baby. This makes her a victim who has an infertile body and when she finally succeeds in conceiving she decides to conceal the news from her husband. Thus she tries to rob her husband of the precious moment of joy. In one of the numerous monologues she murmurs: “One phone call and your father would install himself back in his proper place but I will never fell secure again” (Barua 42). So, the normalcy in their relationship is set not to return and it is Kaberi who makes this decision this time.

These monologues are nothing but a way of venturing into quietness of a secure place with her child. Bringing in the concept of ‘space-place’ dichotomy here, we can term Kaberi’s state of mind at this time as ‘empty space’ as the husband-wife relationship has become a vacuum. A healthy relationship acts symbolically as pious ‘place’. But when the relationship is marred by doubts and betrayal, it loses its markers of charms. Kaberi floats on this space for some time. As if locked out after being wounded psychologically and the wound “cries out, addresses us in the attempt to tell us of a reality or truth that is not otherwise available” (Caruth 1995, 4). And the child becomes her only solace: “You are all I have now, my love” (Barua 131). This she utters silently after she catches her husband kissing his girlfriend in the New Year party. This was the second time Kaberi is cheated by her husband. But her refined manners cannot stop her from slapping Ron and she shouts: “How could you? When you said it was over!” (132). Now she plans not to discuss the matter anymore with him and starts her inward tour into her inner recesses of mind with her child inside her womb. Afterwards, in a symbolic gesture she tries to find solace in Bidyut, dead Joya’s husband. She even prefers to break the news of her labour pain to Bidyut and not to her husband Ron as in a process to act out her traumatic existence: “I call Bidyut.”(203); and asserts her liberation from her husband. This liberation leads to reclaiming her place and this act of her initiates the healing process. Thus, in Rebirth Kaberi’s numerous monologues with her yet to born child and then her growing affinity with Bidyut hint towards reclaiming the lost ‘place’ by redefining her identity in a relationship dominated by patriarchal hegemonic discourse.

On the other hand, readers get a glimpse of stubborn Assamese female in Menoka in Saikia’s The Hour before Dawn. She is not ready to be victimised and does not behave in cool manner like Kaberi but resolves to fight Mohikanta’s rowdiness on her own term and “she would not allow that power, that masculinity, to return” (Saikia 46) to Mohikanto ever again. It is as if some hidden power has started growing up inside her. We can quote Audre Lorde in this context which points to this deep, hidden power:

“These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through that darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep” (37).

The ‘place’ which was fostered by her devotion to her husband was lost to Kiron, Mohikanta’s second wife. Menoka’s trauma resulting from her experience of emptiness was severe when she felt like “standing on the bank of a river” (Saikia 29), her nights become sleepless. However, her discovery of Madon’s feelings for her happens at very crucial time. Now she can give a try to reclaim what she has lost – the place. So the emptiness of the space is expected to convert to a throbbing ‘place’ with secretly entering into a tender but forbidden relationship with Madon. She decides: “If so much had to happen only because my body is no longer new ... then I have to show them that these eleven years haven’t taken their toll on me alone! I will show them who’s new and who’s old. And how!”(104).

When Mohikanta’s right palm landed a resounding slap on Menoka’s left cheek, it was the final blow which brings out the stubbornness of Menoka and she “felt her composure swing between extremes. One moment she was restless, the very next she was as serene as a person bowing for priestly blessing” (90). An unexpectedly displaced but resolute Menoka asks Modon “what’s the use of crying? Let’s see how long I can survive without tears ... I am extremely stubborn, Modon. But I have never deliberately done anything wrong, nor hurt anybody. I gave nobody reason to dislike me” (104). Modon is her man now: “You alone can help me, Modon. You alone can be my man” (104). Menoka venture into an illicit physical relationship with Modon and gets pregnant with his child. Thus, Menoka’s body that is neglected becomes the agency through which she tries to reclaim her lost ‘place’. She embarks on her journey of revenge and it is “perhaps the only way to overcome a traumatic severance of body and mind to come back to mind through the body” (Hartman 541). For Menoka the erotic functions positively, as “a sensual ‘life-force’ informing all levels of our experience; as a well of replenishment and empowerment; as a bridge that allows inter-subjective communication (Moran 55).”

Feminist critic Weininger argues that male sexuality is “limited in area and … strongly localised,” whereas women’s sexuality is “diffused over her whole body, so that stimulation may take place almost from any part” (91). The same critic concludes, “To put it bluntly, man possesses sexual organs; her sexual organs possess woman” (92). The irony is that Mohikanto was unable to anticipate that Menoka had such power hidden inside her. When he discovers Menoka’s pregnancy, a shattered and terrified Mohikanto is no less pathetic in appearance. He looks very feeble, and he “swallowed. For a moment, the picture of the snake appeared before him, and then it vanished” (Saikia, 124). Tim Keppel’s opinion on the daughters of King Lear in his study of Shakespeare’s King Lear, that “the women of King Lear are tainted rather than empowered, as men are, by their sexual capacities” (112) is applicable to Menoka as well. But here, Menoka is empowered but not tainted with her womanhood; in fact it provides a liberating experience for her. Menoka vehemently asserts her liberation with these words to Mohikanta: “You had elephants, you had drums and music, so you could fetch a woman and make her the mother of your child right before my eyes. I have nothing. I have done whatever I could with my limited resources” (Saikia 132).

In this way, both the novels Rebirth and The Hour Before Dawn symbolically depict the women altering the power relation of patriarchal setup by overcoming the initial shock they receive from their dear ones. Both are confident of their victories and they come back stronger. In fact, the initial jolt brings out their superior self which helps them to redefine their space and successfully reshape their identity in a predominantly phallocentric society. They realize and rediscover the power they possess, perhaps the most effective and decisive one they have. After this self-realization they embark on a journey of self defence by treating their husband in the same manner they have been treated and neglected so far in their conjugal lives. The strategy works well and helps them avoid being the victims themselves. Thus the power that Menoka wields over Mohikanta, and Kaberi over Ron “is only a substitute power,” and their “vicious behaviour” can be a “defence against the more powerful forces” (Aguiar 109) of Mohikanta and Ron. It is a befitting reply to what Woolf and Rhys term as “male modernism with their insistent returns to the scenes of phallocentric repression and oedipal longing, with their persistent construction of (an)other scene of female agency and desire” (Moran 64). Now, it is the turn of their male counterpart to taste the traumatic share of displacement and of being dilodged from their position that too inside their homes. Thus the refusal to succumb to the dominant cultural practice of patriarchal hegemonic discourse armours them to counter the trauma of emotional displacement and become some sort of extraordinary characters. These two texts can be taken as balanced and at the same time strong critique of the ubiquitous cultural positioning of women in the patriarchal setup as an object. This objectification must stop.

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