Abstract:
Feminists share the belief that women's roles in society are unequal to men's, and that society is constructed to benefit men at the expense of women's political, social, and economic well-being. Literature, criticism, and theory are all read and written by women. The feminist literary studies are based on the assumption that women read and that their reading makes a difference. The female protagonists of Divakaruni's are imagined universe and proficient to adjust with reality that is linear and personal as they are at establishing identities as a collective mass of consciousness that is borderless and continual. Sister of My Heart where she visualizes on sisterhood, womanhood and immigrant experiences through the lives of Anju and Sudha of Chaterjee’s family. The story carries on the theme, capturing the dilemmas and opportunities confronting women with one foot in customary Indian society and the other in the modern world.
Key Words: Feminists, women, customary, identities, womanhood
Introduction:
Feminism recognizes the importance of women and their contributions to society, and it envisions a future in which impediments to women's full involvement in public life are abolished. Many distinct political goals, philosophical viewpoints, values, philosophies, and point of views exist within feminism. Theory of Feminism has a multifaceted perspective; it gives current thought a new sense of awareness, strength, and wisdom. It is both a global and a current ideology. Feminism in Indian English Fictions is typically regarded as a beautiful and over-the-top concept that is dealt with subtly in limited circumstances. It isn't a new concept, and various authors and novelists have successfully elevated the problem through their inventive works throughout the years.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is one of the award winning and India’s best modern writers in English. She is an Indian American novelist, short story writer, and poet. She is an author who has persuaded generations of writers. She has elevated Indian fictional world with her significant literary outputs. She is known as an expatriate writer of the Indian origin. She was born in India into a very traditional middle class family. Divakaruni is also a community activist at Berkeley. She volunteered at a center for battered women and with a group of friends; she started MAITRI in 1991, a helpline for South Asian Women that helps victim of domestic violence and other abusive situations. She became a regular contributor to the internet magazine, salon in which she had her own biweekly column called “Spice of Life, in 1997 and 1998.
Feminine Sensibility in Sister of My Heart:
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni focuses her critical lenses on the life of Indian women and writes on the subject of strong family bonds and the courage of people who find themselves in a different world after immigration. Sister of My Heart written in 1999 and was followed by Vine of Desire. It narrates the story about family, friendship and bond between two sisters. The novel also captures the beautiful picture of Indian traditions and cultures. Divakaruni focuses on the sisterhood relationship in a traditional Bengali household. The story of both novels exhibit the features of novels dealing with the bonds between sisters, such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, Shobha De’s Sisters which are part dealing on Indian feminine sensibility. In family siblings seem to fight endlessly with each other, once they get young, the sister protect each other from feeling lonely, unloved, guilty, self-conscious and fearful did not matter whether the sister was younger or older. No wonder, much of Divakaruni’s text focuses on the lives of all spheres of women, as she openly admits:
Women in particular respond to my work because I’m writing about them, women in love, in difficulties, women in relationships. I want people to relate to my characters, to feel their joy and pain, because it will be harder to [be] prejudiced when they meet them in real life. (Agarwal 150)
This is where the Diasporic writers catch the ground breaking idea in women‘s psychology, an exploration of the intricacies, friction and love in the bonds between sisters. Divakaruni feels that the sisterhood relationships are the stretched relationships in one’s life.
The emotional portrayal of the two women in Sister of My Heart, is painted in an inventive manner of the characters’ inner and outer worlds that usher in rich emotional experiences to uplift the story about Anju and Sudha, who learn to make peace with the difficult choices, circumstances that have forced upon them. In Sister of My Heart Divakaruni articulates the moving story of two cousins, Sudha and Anju Chatterjee who began their lives in close contact with a growing emotional bond ties for each other. Anju and Sudha grow up and move on; they get into other relationships such as marriage that separates them for a period. But they do not build any gap between them, but are separated physically. Their relationship involves helping, sharing, teaching, fighting and playing.
As youth they spend round the clock together at times doing constructive activities such as art, music, sports, games, and religious activities. Their familiarity and intimacy of the relationship helps them typically to know each other very well, and this intimacy suggests that they can provide support for each other in their lifetime depending on the situation. In many situations, they both come together and understand each other's problems and dilemmas better than their mothers can. Their relationship in adulthood is extremely close, psychologically close to each other that inclines to be the way since their childhood.
The tension between the desires of mothers, who hold traditional Indian culture, indianness, and those of the cousins, who are more enticed by western philosophies, are under the inquiry. This western philosophy is the central evaluation of the work. As the stories move on, both the novels we follow the women through their lives, experiencing their joys, grief, jealousy, failure, misery, surprised and prolonged separation and find that these battles and triumphs hold a universal thread with which women of many cultures can easily identify. In the end, the strength of their friendship and the novel culminates in a poignant reunion, one filled not only with strong pleasure but also with constant uncertainty as the indianness is dealt with feminist approach to the novels.
In their devotion to each other and their unspoken vow to continue as sisters of the heart if not of the blood, each finds solace in the company of the other and become the alter ego. Dedicated to one another as Sudha and Anju are, adult life has preferences and designs that rarely approve sisterly bonds. For Indian women, marriage is the key, even for those who aspire to attend college as Anju does, or for those who fall in love at first sight, as Sudha. Anju and Sudha go to a movie, where Sudha meets Ashok. That night Sudha marvels at the chance that made Anju to choose that very day to go the cinema that arranged Ashok’s seat next to Sudha in a hall that held so many hundreds.
The novel uses a fairy-tale structure filled with rhythms and stories within stories and moves at a first place with a plot that thickens with the turn of every page. While the story of the Chaterjee men going to search for a cave of rubies adds a sense of adventure and intrigue to the plot, it may come across as a forced fit into the fairy tale mold of the novel, but part of Divakaruni's skill is her ability to juxtapose the extraordinary with the ordinary. The strength of this novel is its characterization of women’s relationships on many levels. The author's deep understanding of women’s world filled with emotions of sacrifice, desire, obligation, loss, jealousy, forgiveness, friendship, rivalry, and most importantly, love is beautifully rendered. The birth of Sudha's daughter Dayita anticipates renewal, hope and healing, but the novel is open-ended and does not provide closure. Sudha's life in America in all its complexity is left as a story to be imagined.
Amitav Ghosh's vision over Divakaruni's writing is for a new generation, which depicts cultural and traditional grounds in new trend "Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's account of family life in Bengal is warm and rich by detailed. Hers is one of the most strikingly lyrical voices writing about the lives of Indian woman today." ( gavani-gavani.blogs)
In the novels Sister of My Heart and The Vine of Desire, Chitra Banerjee has creatively portrayed the inner and outer tension faced by the women. She has artistically created a new empowering image of women in both the novels. Divakaruni draws the portrayal of two women protagonists simultaneously in her twin novels namely Sister of my Heart and Vine of Desire. Anju (Anjali) and Sudha(Basudha) are the center of attraction in these novels. Sister of My Heart (1999) focuses on two Indian girls Anju and Sudha who are brought up by three widowed women: Aunt Pishi, Gouri and Nalini and the way their life changes with marriage and a secret of the past. The selection of women and the diversity within each woman is portrayed through Anju and Sudha. The novel examines the emotional bond and the tension between the desires, which the women characters go through in the process of their growth.
The first part of this novel is titled as “The Princess in the Palace of Snakes”. In this part both the protagonists challenge to conform to the traditional feminine roles allocated by the male dominated world. Growing up among the champak flowers and night-blooming gardenias, the daughters of the Chaterjees are inseparable and share everything, connected by something much stronger than blood. They are sister of the heart and do not need anyone else. The bond of strong emotion is marked from childhood. In their childhood, sentimental sisterhood of both cousins is noticed by their interaction when they played together and knew each other very well. They are ever ready to search opportunities for providing emotional and active support to each other.
All through childhood, we bathed together and ate together, often from the same plate, feeding each other our favourite items: the crunchy brown triangles of parothas, fried egg plant, spongy-sweet rasogollah balls. Our favorite game was acting out the fairy tales Pishi told us, where Sudha was always the princess and I the prince who rescued her... And when we had nightmares, instead of going to our mothers for comfort, we squeezed into one bed and held each other (SMH 12).
In difficult situations, they provided emotional and psychological support to each other as is revealed from the above line. A bond of love and faith existed between the two. The fathers of both girls had died mysteriously on the same day when they were born. Since it is assumed that Sudha’s father was to be blamed for Anju's father's death she decides that she must atone for her sins by giving up things of interest for Anju's sake. Bound by tradition and stifled by the fact that they are women, the three mothers strive hard to run the family. Gouri-Ma is Anju’s mother and head of the Chatterjee household. After the mysterious death of the Chatterjee men, the responsibility to run the family is left to her. Gouri-Ma risks her health by managing the family bookstore. Nalini, Sudha’s mother wants to lead a luxurious life. Pishi is Anju’s and Sudha’s aunt. She tells the children stories and plays a pivotal role in upholding the prestige of the Chatterjee house. Pishi expresses the death of the men to Anju and Sudha in the following lines:
. . . One morning the telegram arrived. It informed us
that the Sundarban police found two bodies and the
charred remains of a launch in the swamp. No, only two
bodies said the police . . . No, it wasn’t a robbery, one of
the men still had his gold watch and cuff-links. In the
other’s pockets were two plastic-wrapped money bags
. . The bags held a few rupees and some papers with
our address in them. That’s how the police were able to
track us down.” (SMH 33)
The girls are to be married off at the age of eighteen; Sudha, who has fallen in love with Ashok, gives up her love for the sake of family honor. Anju, meanwhile, has fallen passionately in love with her future husband Sunil, who, however, has deep; love for Sudha. Anju is the bold but not so beautiful cousin, while Sudha is stunningly beautiful.
Both the girls are contrast to each other as sisters, the bond between them so strong it seems nothing can break it. When both are pushed into arranged marriages, however, each discovers a devastating secret that changes their relationship forever. The truth haunts Sudha and drives her away from Anju, slowly alienating both girls from one another as they enter adulthood and separate from each other physically and, to an extent, emotionally after marriage. The marriages of both the girls are arranged. The cousins get wedded on the same day. Anju and Sunil come to America. Sudha and her husband, Ramesh, live in India. Having married they have been separated nearly for four years. But still in their hearts they love each other and they maintain their sisterhood through letters. After three years of separation both the cousins have the joy of expecting their babies. Anju suffers a miscarriage and her husband supports her in this time of crisis. Sudha faces a divorce because, when her mother-in-law discovers that, she is expecting a girl and not a boy baby, she wants her to abort the child.
If we first analyze the character of Anju we observe that she has more social and economic advantage than Sudha. She is practical, challenges tradition, enjoys reading, and traveling. The prosperity and social position of her family allows her to transcend the restraining demands of traditional Hindu Indian female gender notions, which might eventually restrict her to mainly fulfilling the roles of wife and mother. She looks forward to enroll in English honors program at Lady Brabourne colleges. Her fascination for literature of Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Barret are example of modern education trends. Therefore Anju is advantaged to be able to focus on her studies and to give vision to improve her career:
Books! I'll send away for books that are hard to find in this country. Books by writes the nuns mention disapprovingly. Kate Chopin. Sylvia Plath. Books where women do all kinds of crazy, brave, marvelous things. I want the latest novels to give me taste of London and New York and Amsterdam. I want books that will spirit me into the cafe's and nightclubs of Paris, the plantations of Louisiana, the rain forests of the Amazon, and the Australian outback (SMH 62).
This is symbolized by the traditional fairytale of the princess in the palace of snakes waiting for her Prince Charming to rescue her. Both these novels are dealt by two characters from their birth till they get married. Women are the center of all her writing and she has created the compelling portrays of women as principle figures in her narrative. She is bold and subtle in her delineation of characters. Her women protagonists possess her own independent identity and their confidence assert them independent identity without referring to husband or other persons and their efforts to live according to her own ideas and ideals is a goal of her writing. Her picture of women is based on traditional Indian families settled in Calcutta. The surroundings of these middle class are usually urban life of Calcutta. The erudite women belonging to the modern generation in these families try to break away from the shackles of family tradition and justify their action by convincing argument and reasoning. They do not pamper in superficial modernism but make a case for contemporary or modernistic way of life to prove themselves and their abilities in such a set up.
Modern Indian women are generally liberated from traditional restrictions and some family constraints. Still they have to play certain roles in the frame of family and society. They try to explore and seek the meaning of life and personality. When this perspective is taken into account of Divakaruni’s characters, they do not remain just Indian but they get a universal dimension (Agarwal 71).
Opposite Anju, Sudha is beautiful, romantic, and conservative and likes designer garments and storytelling. Her mother is not economically independent and instead, must depend on the good graces of Anju‘s family for survival. Because she is socially and economically disadvantaged, she is more likely to succumb to restrictive traditional Hindu-Indian gender norms. The only advantage that she has is her physical beauty, which can only help her to survive within the framework of traditional Hindu-Indian gender norms by securing a ‘good’ husband: “Perhaps he writes ‘beauty’, for though I myself do not think so; people say I am beautiful-even more than my mother was in the first years of her marriage. Perhaps he writes ‘goodness’, for though I am not as obedient as my mother would like, I try hard to be good”(SMH 19).
She accepts the strict rules that go with upholding the Chaterjee reputation on the contrary headstrong Anju rebels against the mothers and wants to step out of the Dark Ages into the modern world of the 1980s: “It is because I am a daughter that my happiness does not matter? (SMH 40) She shows her interest in cooking, knitting, and crocheting even if she cannot excel like Anju. She chooses to be traditional which also demands a lot of courage and tolerance:
“I want to design clothes, she says. Salwar Kameezes. Pleated wedding Ghagras with mirrors stitched in. Kurtas for men, embroidered white on white silk. Baby frocks in satin and eyelet lace. I want to have my own company, with my own tailors and my own label, so that customers at all the best stores will ask for the Basudha brand. People in Bombay and Delhi and Madras will clamour for my work”(SMH 89).
This shows that she wants to prove her own identity. Gauri ma works hard after the sudden demise of Anju’s father. She always tries to keep her daughter and family in happy state of life. She works hard and jobs late into the night for the stability of her bookshop. Anju always questioned why her mother couldn't do better at business. But seeing her mother's tired and worn face on the bed she feels ashamed to realize that she was expecting a lot from her mother. Divakaruni represents the women of her novels as a class who constantly struggle to achieve financial self-sufficiency. Thus Divakaruni states with passion how hard it becomes for a woman to handle home and office at the same time when suddenly she is forced to take up responsibilities. In this section both the protagonists attempt to conform to the traditional feminine roles allocated by the male hegemonic society.
The second part of book titled as “The Queen of Swords”, is not a usual fairytale. When Anju is upset over her miscarriage, Sudha tells her this tale and Anju recovers. Anju suffers a miscarriage and Sunil supports her in this critical time of life. Sudha faces a divorce because, when her mother-in-law discovers that, she is expecting a girl and not a boy baby she wants her to abort the child. Sudha refuses and divorce follows because her husband does not support her and thus Sudha comes to America. As a wife in India, Sudha is expected to follow a certain pattern of life, wake up early in the morning and join her mother in-law for the days planning. Even she does not allow her to become her financially independent. In this approach she is an archetypal victim of an arranged marriage. In arranged marriage, an effort to schedule an expression of female sexuality to coincide with institutional structures of marriage renders impossible an articulation of women’s desires. Her commodification is complete within the imbrications of patriarchal structures and economic systems. She is a victim of depreciation of desired feminine virtues- care, nurturance, self-denial, self-sacrifice, tolerance that brings her life to a standstill and she finds herself unable to move on.
Divakaruni opines that when the expectations based on role models and ideals to be followed are belied by the realities of life, stress and depression set in. The role models and ideals come down to them through traditions, faith, dogma and mythology. As Madhu Kishwar opines, the mythical ideal woman is presented as a selfless giver, someone who gives endlessly, gracefully, smilingly, whatever the demand, however harmful to herself. She gives not just love, affection and ungrudging service but also, if need be, her health and ultimately her life at the altar of duty to her husband, children and rest of the family. Through Sudha, Divakaruni endeavors to construct woman as an individual, who breaks loose from the traditional constraints and refines one’s identity in tune with the changed social ambience of the modern times. And at the same time, she can have some significant control over their relationships and professions.
Both the protagonists worked hard to be good wives, and performed their duties as well. Though their husbands were not supportive but they tried hard to make the happy family. Anju is comfortable in living a decent life with her creative writing and Sudha becomes financially independent as a nurse of an old man.
Conclusion:
In this novel Divakaruni has proved the empowerment of women characters through hardships. She portrays that a woman can live an independent life. The choices that the characters of Divakaruni make and the interaction they maintain with the immigrant community force them to question their existence and morality. The writer portrays her women through their lives, loss, depression, surprise, joys and prolonged separation and proves that these ups and down of their lives hold a universal thread with which women of many cultures can easily identify. Her characters struggle to release themselves from a tradition bound society in order to gain an independent identity. Divakaruni presents her protagonists’ desire to adopt western culture, though they are firmly embedded in tradition, find it hard to break the bounds set by patriarchy, to experience what has so far been restricted in their life, and resolve the psychological conflict that is accompanied with the new situation. Her women characters are the representation of sentiments of women within traditional bounds and outside traditional bounds. The characters of Divakaruni‘s novels make the present day readers to examine and introspect themselves to value the basic concepts of life.
References:
- Agrawal, Beena. Women Writers and Indian Diaspora. New Delhi: Authorspress p. 2011. Print.
- Agarwal, Malti. English Literature Voices of Indian Diaspora. New Delhi: Atlantic.2009.Print.
- Divakaruni, Chitra. Sister of My Heart. New York: Anchor Books, 1999. Print.