RE-SHAPING THE SELF: N THE SHORT STORIES

OF ALICE MUNRO AND SHASH DESHPANDE

Thesis submitted to the Pondicherry

University for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PN1LOSOPHY

in

ENGLISH

BY

H. KALPANA

Department of English

PONDICHERRY UNIVERSITY

MARCH 1995

To my mother indira my father c s rao

my husband prakash my son nikhil

with all my love

Contents

Page

Certificate

Declaration

Note on Documentation

Acknowledgements

Abstract

Preface

vii

xiv

I--MAPPING OUT f

Brief Sketch of Munro and Deshpande, and Their Works 4

Feminine Identity 6

The Short Story Genre and Women Writers 10

Postcolonial Literary Background 20

Postcolonialism and Feminism 24

The Concept of Universal Sisterhood 29

11--A MAN AND A WOMAN

Silent Sufferers

Women in a Predicament

Power Relationships

Extra-marital Relationships

Women Jilted

Male Narrator

Independentmree Women

111--PROVIDENCE

Dead/Absent Mothers

DominantPassive Mothers

Distanced Mothersmaughters

Independent Mothers

IV--VOICES

Family Ties

Sibling Relationships

Friends

Others

V--SUMMING UP: THE PHOTOGRAPHERS

Works Consulted

Dr. P. Marudanayagam Professor and Head Department of English Pondicherry University Pondicherry 605 0 14

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the dissertation entitled RE-SHAPING THE

SELF: FEMININE IDENTITY IN THE SHORT STONES OF

ALICE MUNRO AND SHASHI DESHPANDE, submitted to the

Pondicheny University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the

award of the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPW in English, is a

record of original research work done by Ms. H. Kalpana during the

period of her study 1992 - '95 in the Department of English,

Pondicherry University, under my supervision and guidance and that

the dissertation has not previously formed the basis for the award to the

candidate of any Degree, Diploma, Associateship, Fellowship or any

other simiiar titles.

Pondicheny

Date: 30-3-45

(Dr. P. MARUDANAYAGAM) w~@p:~54:!?@ , s t , 4y,gj

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H. KALPANA, M. Phil Research Scholar Department of English Pondicherry University Pondicheny 605 014

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the dissertation entitled RE - S

THE SELF: FEMININE DENTITU IN THE SHORT STORIES

OF ALICE 0 SIIASHI DESWANDE, submitted to the

Pondicheny University in partial llfilment of the requirements for the

award of the Degree of DOCTOR Of PHILOSOPHY in English, is a

record of original research work done by me under the supervision and

guidance of Dr. P. MARUDANAYAGAM, Professor and Head,

Department of English, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry 605 0 1 4,

and that it has not previously formed the basis for award of any Degree,

Diploma, Associateship, Fellowship or any other similar titles.

Pondicheny

Date: 3s - 3 4 5

~ l - Signature

(El. KALPANA)

NOTE ON DOCUMENTATION

The thesis follows the MLA format of parenthetical documentation,

namely, the author-date system. The short stories, however, are

documented by referring to the collections (abbreviated format), and the

page numbers. Footnotes are used throughout the doctoral thesis to

clarify and suggest any point of view that may arise in the main body of

the thesis. Works consulted are cited at the end of the thesis. The short

story collections of Alice Munro and Shashi Deshpande have been

abbreviated as follows for convenience:

1 96 8 Dance o f n e Happy Shades (1988)-------- DHS

Toronto: McGraw Hill Ryerson Ltd.

197 1 Lives of Girls and Women (1 983)----------- LGW

New York: Plume (Penguin Group).

1974 Something I've Been Meaning To Tell You (1 990)--

-SIB Toronto: Penguin.

1978 Who Do You Think You Are? (1981)------- WDY

Toronto: Penguin.

1982 The Moons ofJupiter (1983)----------------- MOJ

England: Penguin.

1 9 8 5 The Progress of Love (1 98 7) ----------------- POL

New York: King Penguin.

1990 Friend of My Youth ........................... FOY

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc.

Deshpande' s works

1978 The Legacy .................................... Leg

Calcutta: Writers Workshop.

1986 The Miracle and Other Stories ------------- Mir

Calcutta: Writers Workshop.

1986 fiwastheNightingaIe-------- ----------- - ---- Gale

Calcutta: Writers Workshop.

1986 If was Dark .................................... Dark

Calcutta: Writers Workshop.

1993 The Intrusion and Other Stories ------------ Int

New Delhi: Penguin.

Many political and historical developments have influenced the

countries of Canada and India. The effects of colonisation have nurtured

an ambivalent sense of identity among the people of the two countries.

Besides this, the Canadians have also dealt a feeling of displacement.

This problem of identity is reflected in the literary work of the two

countries, and the issue is intensified in writing by women. Women

have been threatened not only by colonial influences, but also by the

existing patriarchal ideologies. Women writers, therefore have begun to

question the concept of self and the nature of feminine identity. The

aim of the thesis is to analyse this concept of feminine identity, and the

re-shaping of self that is undertaken by the women characters in the

short stories of Alice Munro, and Shashi Deshpande. The thesis is

structured into five chapters preceded by a preface:

Chapter One: Mapping Out charts the background of the thesis,

and touches upon the important areas that underlie the study. Beginning

with a brief introduction of the authors and their works, the chapter

proceeds to study the concepts: feminine identity; the short story genre

and women writers; postcolonial literary background; postcolonial ism

and feminism; and the concept of universal sisterhood.

Chapter Two: A Man and A Woman discusses what it means for

women to be brides/ wives/ lovers and draws upon some of the short

stories of Munro and Deshpande to understand the nature of man-

woman relationships. At the same time, it also ponders and speculates

on the existing relationship in terms of sex and sexuality.

Chapter Three: Providence examines the short stories dealing with

mother-daughter relationships. It discusses the influence of mothers,

and the bond that exists between mothers and daughters in families.

Chapter Four: Voices realises that women characters in the short

stories have allowed other voices to nurture, and grow within them

while they have thrust down their own true selves. This realisation

becomes conspicuous when they view their childhood, or generational

connections, or intercultural connections, objectively. They realise the

problems of class and society, political bureaucracies, religious and

moral values, history and time, nature and place, fear and madness,

death and alienation as they develop self-awareness and review their

places in society.

Chapter Five: The Photographers is the concluding chapter that

assesses and sums up the writers' works and their ability, in portraying

women characters realistically. The writers are similar to photographers,

for they capture all the nuances of womens' lives. The chapter discusses

the characters who move from a loss of identity to a phase of self-

realisation. It consolidates and attempts to explain the re-shaping

undertaken by them.

PREFACE

As I begin to write this thesis, I recollect my participation in the

Canadian Workshop organised at Baroda in March '92. That was my

first acquaintance to Canadian literature. In that month long proceeding,

I was greatly impressed by Alice Munro's Pi740 Do You Think You Are?

Being a woman and being aware of society's pressures on women, I was

instantly struck by the plethora of experiences, honestly and truthfully

expressed in the portrayal of Rose, the principal character in the book. I

instantly felt an urge to explore Munro's writing, but my enthusiasm

was short-lived when I realised that securing her works was very

difficult. I, however, pursued my interest, and made a nuisance of

myself in all places in the country having even remote links with

Commonwealth literature. Finally I had managed to read not only four

collections of Munro, but also secured copies of some secondary

material which was an encouraging factor.

This progress was enhanced by the occurrence of two other related

incidents--a talk with Prof. Susie Tharu, and the discovery of the work

Women Writing in India, edited by Tharu and K. Lalitha. The richness

of Indian women's literature was a revelation and I was ashamed of my

ignorance of these writers. These related incidents initiated me not only

to survey Indian women's literature, but also to include an Indian writer

in the doctoral thesis. The final decision I reached was to explore the

writings of Alice Munro and Shashi Deshpande, and the short story

genre. To make my stand clear I have chalked out a long introduction,

but at this point, I prefer to make just three statements with regard to my

fascination for Munro's and Deshpande's works. The main

considerations were:

* The experiences within the works of these writers were easy for

me to relate to, and sympathise with.

* The works of these authors seemed ordinary superficially but

hidden within the texts were inner realities and truths.

* There was not much research done in the area of short stories,

and particularly so when it came to the short stories of Deshpande.

The task undertaken was not an easy one as the writers belonged to

two different set-ups--Munro was from a Euro-centric, white, middle

class society while Deshpande was a 'third'' world writer, and belonged

to a brown, brahmanical, Hindu, middle class society. Yet, what

motivated me was the ability of these two women writers to create an

awareness of the.. self within their women characters, and their ability

I The term third world is not used in any political or derogatory way but more in terms of being a functional description:

Peter Worsley in his 1967 study The Third World gives one of the more plausible ways of handling this still undefinable but no longer marginal phenomenon: "the definition and composition of the Third World, indeed, was always situational and complex, an operational rather than analytical term, ..." (qtd in Gugelberger, 1991 : 5 10).

in portraying characters' relationships with others. I diligently pursued

the project for two years amidst various setbacks--family pressures, lack

of material, the dubious attitude of people who thought that a body of

Canadian and Indian literatures hardly existed, the dilemma of locating

the writings from a specified point of view, and the fear that I may not

be able to achieve my goal. Finally, the encouragement and

interest,displayed by many well-wishers who argued, discussed, and

stressed the importance of pursuing such a cross- cultural research

project convinced me of the validity of the project. The project's

significance and worthiness was further proved when I received the

Graduate Research Award by the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute in

1993. This grant has helped me considerably in continuing the work and

completing it.

CHAPTER I

MAPPING OUT

Older, they become round and hard, demand shapes that are real, castles on the shore and all the lines and angles of tradition are mustered for them in their eagerness to become whole, fit themselves to the thing they see outside them, while the thing they left lies like a caul in some abandoned place, unremembered by fingers or the incredibly bright stones, which for a time replace their eyes.

--Page, P.K. (1985: 6 )

The introductory chapter "Mapping Out" charts a background for

the thesis. It opens the discussion with a brief sketch of the authors,

Alice Munro and Shashi Deshpande, and their writings. The women

characters in the short stories of Alice Munro and Shashi Deshpande are

not pictures of Canadian or Indian women en masse, but are only

depictions of some women who belong to the upper/lower middle class

society of the two countries. Thus, the thesis is located specifically in

dealing with middle class women's experiences 2 .

2The thesis is not based on a chronological classification but is oriented thematically and metaphorically in considering relationships

The sketch of the authors and their works leads to the topic of

identity, and the nature of feminine identity. The explanation attempts to

comprehensively view the nature of women's consciousness', and their

concepts of self. It is perceived that their ability in understanding their

selves is located in their relationship with others.

The section on feminine identity leads to the appraisal of the short

story genre and women writers. This is followed by a brief sketch of

postcolonial literary writing, relating to the Canadian and Indian

backgrounds.

The section on postcolonialism and feminism points out

intersecting trends existing between these two theories. It then proceeds

to argue that the concept of universal sisterhood has to change, for

women's oppression in all societies differs based on environment and

other factors.

This long introduction leads to a reading of the short stories of

Alice Munro and Shashi Deshpande. It hopes to gain knowledge of the

true self of women, by examining the various relationships presented in

between women characters and others in society. Only stories signifying such relationships are considered which also means that each and every story from these collections are not considered. At times, closely linked stories bearingiilluminating similar links are discussed together.

the short story collections--Munro's Dance ofthe Happy Shades (1 9681,

Lives of Girls and Women (1 97 1 ), Something I've Been Meaning To Tell

You (1 974), kt710 DO You Think You Are? (1 978), The Moons of Jupiter

(1982), The Progress ofLove (1987), and Friend of My Youth (1990);

and Deshpande's The Legacy (1978), The Miracle (1986), It was the

Nightingale ( 1 986), it was Dark (1 986), and The Infmsion and Other

S ~ r i e s (1993). The succeeding chapters are divided on the basis of

various relationships that exist between the women characters and others

in the short stories.

Chapter 11--A Man and A Woman3 discusses women's desire and

need for relationship with men. It examines the short stories where

women characters are wives/lovers of men and the nature of women's

sexuality.

Chapter 111--Providence4 views the relationship between mothers

and daughters, in the various short stories by Munro and Deshpande.

Chapter IV--Voices depicts all other human relationships in the

short stories such as friendship, hostility and family ties, and also

3This is the title of one of the stories in Deshpande's collection, Gale.

4This title is taken from Munro's story in the collection, WDY.

analyses experiences such as death, fear, and alienation.

Chapter V--The Photographers5 is the concluding chapter which

consolidates the various ideas and analysis put forward, in the earlier

chapters.

Brief Sketch of Munro and Deshpande, and Their Works

Alice Munro was born, and brought up, in Wingham, Ontario. She

studied at the University of Western Ontario, and afterwards moved to

Vancouver and Victoria. In 1972, she returned to Southwestern Ontario,

and now lives in Clinton. Her first collection of short stories, Dance of

Z%e Happy Shades, was published in 1968, and it got the Govemor-

General's award. 1971 saw the release of the collection, Lives of Girls

and Women6 and in 1974, her third collection, Something I've Been

5 This title is borrowed fiom a story in Munro's collection, LGW.

6LGW and WDY are sequence stories, i. e. they are "a volume of stories, collected and organized by their author, in which the reader successively realizes underlying pattern and rheme7' (1 989: 148). (Munro has described LGW as a novel but I consider it as a short story sequence. Munro herself has admitted to writing the parts at different times and not continuosly in a sequence as a novel is generally done. Moreover critics have viewed it both as a collection of short stories and as a novel, thereby endowing an ambivalent identity on this book.) Robert M. Luscher in "The Short Story Sequence: An Open Book" makes some very interesting observations on such sequence stories. He refutes Calisher's idea that the identity of the the short story is threatened, he

Meaning To Tell You was published. This was followed by Who Do You

Think You Are (1978), which was also chosen for the Governor-

General's award. (This collection was published with a different title in

the United States-The Beggar Maid and it was the runner-up for the

Booker prize.) Her fifth collection, The Moons of Jupiter was released in

1982. Munro was recognised a third time when she won the Governor-

General's award, for the collection The Progress of Love (1985). Her

latest collection, Friend of My Youth was published in 1990. Munro

presents a honest, sensitive and sympathetic view of women in her

stories and has been an experimenter and innovator in the genre of short

story writing.

Shashi Deshpande is the daughter of the renowned Kannada

playwright, Shriranga. She was born in Dharwad, Kamataka, and

graduated from Bombay University. She has in recent years settled

down in Bangalore. She started writing in earnest only from 1970. Her

initial writings were short stories which were published in various

magazines. They were collected and compiled by the Writers Workshop

points out that instead in linked stories the stories gain contexts, characters, symbols and themes, thus providing a richer identity to the format. He adds that they act as unique hybrids providing the pleasure of the "patterned closure of individual stories and the discovery of larger unifying strategies that transcend apparent gaps between stories" (1 989: 148- 1 50). Therefore there is more room for subjective interpretation and active participation; the reader's task thus becomes simultaneously more difficult and more rewarding" (1 989: 158).

in Calcutta--The Legacy was published in 1978, and in 1986, the Writers

Workshop brought out three volumes viz; The Miracle, i t was the

Nightingale, and It was Dark. Penguin Books in 1993, released The

Intrusion and Other Stories. Some of the stories in this collection had

already been published in the earlier coiiections brought out by Writers

Workshop. Shashi Deshpande has also authored six novels--The Dark

Holds No Terrors ( 1 980), Come Up and Be Dead ( 1 983), Roots and

Shadows ( 1 983), That Long Silence (1 986), if1 Die Today ( 1 987), and

The Binding Vine (1993)--and she gained recognition when That Long

Silence was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award in 1987.

Feminine Identity

The theme of feminine identity takes a new meaning when we

encourage ourselves to understand works of other countries by

transporting ourselves into new lands, and questioning the literary works

based on the sociological background and settings of that particular

region. Such a process is not an easy one, and it may give rise to a

number of unresolved trends in postcolonial writing. There is

satisfaction, nevertheless, in raking up this rich mass of literature, and

attempting to understand it. I am not overtly concerned at the moment

with solutions to the problems that the women characters in the short

stories of Mun1-0 and Deshpande experience, but with the ability to

atleast minimally understand and sympathise with the nature and

complexity of the problems that the women characters in these stories

face. To clarify this aspect further it is better to state that the purpose of

this doctoral thesis has been to learn the "nature" of the subjugation or

victimisation based on the society' that these characters (in the texts of

Munro and Deshpande) are rooted in. It is not possible to make a

generalised comparison between the works of Munro and Deshpande,

and therefore the thesis is located within two focal areas: i) the

intersection of middle class women and identity; and ii) the

development o f self within the relationships that exist between women

and others in society. The growing awareness of women and their role in

society has allowed both these writers* to create women characters, who

7 Stimpson validates the argument illustrating that cultural history has revealed the genderised ways in which people portray themselves as writers is mainly as a product of society. Many women writers try to deny their social conditioning, and some of them have consciously rebelled against this conditioning in their writings. The significant outcome of this denial has been that women writers have created characters who are different and who attempt to overthrow the coded structure in a bid to establish themselves (1988:95).

A point that Stimpson makes is of interest here: ... feminist critics have recognised that every woman, as language user, has multiple relationships with chosen audiences. Each will embody its own sense of language, of her place in the world, and of the possibilities of change in that place. At times, women may speak or write only for themselves. Their motives may be weariness, fear, or insecurity. More cheerfully, they may be claiming a private

explore the possibilities and the potential of being women, and their

abilities to reshape themselves.

Feminine identity or the consciousness of woman is rooted in her

relationship with others. Carol Shields states that while Canadian men

have written about "man and landscape, man and history, man and

moral issues", women have written about "relationships between people

and particularly between men and women" (1993535). What Carol

Shields mentions about Canadian women writing is to a great extent true

of all postcolonial women's writing. In their writing, Alice Munro and

Shashi Deshpande adopt a subversive9 style reflecting the strategies

women writers employ to deal with oppression; they visualise characters

who make compromises, or who try to gain respect and a sense of self-

actualisation by reversing the general image of women in that society

and at times, the writers also depict characters who intentionally resort

space in which to experiment with style, to test perceptions, to play with fantasies. Whatever the cause, the effect is to reinforce an impression of the apparent solitude of language (1988:119).

9Breen's definition of patriarchy and subversiveness may help in understanding these terms. She states that when men are dominant in all positions of power, then it can be referred to as patriarchy; subversiveness is depicting the "status quo" without supporting it. Therefore, in subversive writing the writers consciously or unconsciously undermine the established concept that men being superior should dominate women (1 990:x).

to being weak and powerless, in order to exist in a peaceful and

harmonious relationship with others.

My emphasis on identity is thus motivated by the feeling, that

women are suppressed, and are subjected to pressures of societal taboos

and prejudices. I also recognise that women's experiences can be

located at four stages of their growth:

* maturing from a girl into a woman.

* development of a sexual/intimate relationship with men.

* entering into matrimony.

* conception and giving birth.

During these developments women feel separated, and they

develop a self-awareness of what they lose. This revaluation of self

leads to a consciousness which in some cases motivates action. The

attempt to act which may be negative in terms of society is what I term

as re-shaping. In the process of the doctoral thesis I will argue that the

characters in these short stories of Munro and Deshpande move towards

self-awareness and a re-identification of their selves.

I, thus, perceive identity to be an awareness of the gendered roles

and strongly feel that the notion of identity is something nurtured by

society. Society creates certain images and women mould themselves

into these roles by the process of socialisation and domestication. They

are told that they are inferior to men, they are weak, passive and it is

feminine to be gentle, obedient and sacrificing. It is, therefore, essential

to identify, and to know the true nature of oneself. In this context, an

awareness of femaleness and an identification with other women can

lead to an understanding of the gendered power relations existing within

the institution, termed society.

The Short Story Genre and Women Writers

The short story has been in existence for a long time, and at various

points of time in history it has been judged to be close to forms like the

romance, and the oral narrative. In spite of being an ancient art, the short

story is not considered a work of art such as the novel and the poem; it

has in fact been neglected. Moreover, there has been no consistent

pattern established as far as short story writing is concerned. This may

be due to two factors, namely, the fact that short stories have existed in

all societies fi-om a long time, and that short stories, in later times, have

been published in non-literary magazines which have been considered as

cheap commercial journals. Another factor, according to Valerie Shaw,

is that short stories are not linked to the writer's works and she quotes

Elizabeth Bowen's words to clarify this point: "when a man engages

himself in this special field his stories stand to be judged first of all on

their merits stories, only later in relation to the rest of his work"

The final problem that one faces is in the definition of the short

story. Norman Friedmanlo thinks that all narrative fiction in prose which

is short can be taken into this category. He proceeds to use two methods,

namely, inductive and deductive methods to classify this category. He

adds that if an a priori definition is needed to understand the genre, then

it can be termed as deductive. On the other hand, if one takes it for

granted that one has a rough idea of the structure and the only thing - ~'

necessary is a way of conceptualising it, then it can be termed as

inductive methodology. He further states that "The first approach fits the

evidence to the definition, whereas the second fits the definition to the

evidence". He does mention that both of these approaches have their

drawbacks--the deductive method already assumes there is a point

which cannot be wrong and the inductive method implies assumptions

and defines characteristics that one may be looking for. Therefore it is

good to realise that there cannot be only one definition, as "a definition

is always relative to the context and purpose of the inquiry, which in

turn will determine which traits we select for the initial two steps of the

definition" (1989: 15-17). He concludes his study of the various short

story theories with the statement that while the short story as narrative

prose is short, it can have a number of possibilities with regard to the

"size of the action, the manner of representation, and the nature of the

lo For a thorough understanding of his ideas see "Recent Short Story Theories" in Lohafer's Short Story at the Crossroads (1989: 13- 3 1). What is stated here is only a brief summary.

end effect" (1989:30). Thus, the important point is to keep the definition

constant but to vary and combine the other traits to get different types of

short stories (eg, the biblical short story, the modem short story, etc)

which differ extragenerically but which could help in showing how the

form differs from other stories. The definition has to be suited to the

facts and not the facts to the definition. (1989:30-3 1). Mary Rohrberger

tries to define the short story but she too finds that the form cannot be

easily pinned down and she thinks that the whole issue moves around in

a circle without coming to a central point. She therefore emphasises two

ideas: i) Robert Scholes theory that "'generic study.. . [is] the central

element in a poetics of fiction"'; ii) "Another is that as long as we

articulate and exchange information, we live, continuing to define

ourselves and our creations in the only ways we can. We have no

options. We simply go on from where we are, somewhere between

shadow and act" (1989:45).

A theory close to Friedman's inductive and deductive approach is

put forward by Austin M. Wright in "On Defining the Short Story: The

Genre Question". He feels that defining the short story has two

problems, namely, historical and theoretical. He explains these terms by

referring to Tzvetan Todorov's distinctions. According to Todorov's

theory (which Wright surnmarises) the theoretical genre is "established

by a congruence of characteristics derived from a system" while a

historical genre is disclosed by the "observation of an existing body of

works or characteristics which are seen to have recurred together". Thus

to state that 'short story' is a story that is short is a theoretical category

while different versions of stories, such as the modem short storyhhe

lyrical short story are historical categories (1989: 46-47). He, too,

finally concludes that defining the short story is difficult and that only

trying to know the meaning of 'genre' may help in clarifying the

differences (1 989: 53).

It may, therefore, be more relevant to find out in this context the

function of the short story instead of trying to define the forrn. This

aspect becomes significant when I discuss women writing the short

story. Women writers, are able to dream, fantasise, and weave an

imaginary world by using the form in innovative ways. Other forms like

the novel too may be able to achieve all this and more" but the short

l 1 It is not essential for me to defend the short story or acclaim it in terms of its pros and cons, or to redeem it from a position of neglection and place it in contrast to the novel. What I am more interested in is finding out what the short story is able to do, and how this helps women writers.

I would like to draw the reader's attention to William O'Rouke's essay, "Morphological Metaphors for the Short Story: Matters of Production, Reproduction, and Consumption" where he makes three central analogies that point out the difference from the novel: i)The short story has an exoskeleton that one has to adhere to and this restrains its size. Therefore the story is always in view while the novel does not present such a view. ii) The other analogy is that the "the concept of length...must be replaced by the concept of space and time intertwined".

story seems to be ideal for women writers in terms of time and space;

For women, being burdened with a number of chores have little time

and space to spend on writing.12

When he refers to time, he means not the length of time but more the distance that the text creates between the observer and itself. Thus the space of the novel is more and therefore it takes longer for one to comprehend it. iii) The third analogy is taken from economics and he states that the novel is macro form while the short story is micro form. Thus the "short story is a micro-form, space-time, exoskeletal phenomenon ..." (1989: 193-198).

This argument is supported by many writers: Di Brandt in an interview states that when her children were born, it was a problem for her to find time and space to write (1993:44). Atwood, too, shares this anxiety and wonders if one could be a woman writer and at the same time be happily married with children. Her answer to this is an interesting revelation. She points out that many earlier women writers-- Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, the Brontes, Jane Austen, Christina Rossetti--were unmarried or chidless or had died early. She feels that the husbands' demands could thwart the progress of the art (Scheier, 1990: 17). One notices that Deshpande's earlier works were short stories and also that she began writing late in life. The biographical note to The Intrusion and Other Stories mentions that the early years of her marriage were largely devoted to the care of her two young sons. Gail Scott in her essay, "Shaping A Vehicle For Her Use" queries:

How does a woman choose a form to write in? Is there a connection between the form she chooses and the circumstances of her life? ... So, in answer to the question, is the story really to be privileged over longer fiction, the materialist in me is tempted to reply: a woman's socioeconomic situation may be a determining factor. Maybe she has a job; maybe she has children. In terms of time, a

I would like to divert a little here, as there is an interesting

observation made by Suzanne C. Ferguson in "Defining The Short

Story: Impressionism and Form". She feels that the short story is not a

different genre from the novel. The short story like the novel has been

affected by impressionism and being a manifestation of impression it

cannot be studied as a separate genre. It exhibits, like the novel, the

following characteristics:

* Highlighting the point of view.

* Emphasising sensation and inner experience.

* Changing or abandoning traditional plot elements.

* Description of events using techniques like metaphor and

metonymy.

* Disrupting the chronological time order.

* Economisation of formal and stylistic patterns.

* Foregrounding of style

(These are qualities that one notices largely in many women's

woman's life is never simple; she must put aside her writing to do a million other things. To make matters worse, her socialization has trained her to keep her mind so cluttered with details that concentration on a longer work is often, at least initially, difficult ....( 1983 : 69-70).

The meagre yet reflective data tell us that women writers do not have much time and space to write, and the short story form is particularly suitable for the brevity of the forrn is easier to handle in terms of time and space.

writings). The only difference is that due to the brevity of the short

storylj, these impressionistic characteristics seem to be intensified.

Therefore, she argues that the modem short story is not a separate genre,

but just a different form of impressionism (1 982: 14- 15).

Moving back to the link between short stories and oral narratives,

one notices that the oral narrative projects a sense of togetherness and an

atmosphere of a community gathering. This aspect has helped in

recreating an environment of closeness in short story writing by women.

(An illustration of this is the understanding among women that one

notices in Munro's and Deshpande's short stories). On the other hand,

Joyce Carol Oates has linked the short story to a dream. She feels that it

is like a verbalised dream that is arranged in space, and thinks that as the

dream represents desire, the short story must, therefore, be a

representation of desire (May, 1976: 79). One cannot help recollecting

Freud's theory on dreams where he states that dreams are manifestations

of repressed desires (1 900). Continuing Oates comparison and linking it

to Freud's theory, one notices that women's short stories can thus

l3Friedrnan, however, finds fault with her ideas and thinks that "Her way of handling this problem is to argue that since modernism is in part a matter of leaving things out, and since the short story has fewer parts to begin with, modernism affects the story more sharply than it does the novel" (1989:21). My reason for mentioning Ferguson is to point out the traits which, I strongly feel are apparent in women's writing.

become portraits depicting women's repressed desires or wishes.

Other theorists of the short story like V. S. Pritchett argue that it is

a hybrid because:

It owes much to the quickness, the objectivity and the cutting

of the cinema; it owes much to the poet on one hand and the

newspaper reporter on the other; something also to the

dramatic compression of the theatre, and everything to the

restlessness, the alert nerve, the scientific eye and the short

breath of contemporary life. It is the art of the short

expectation of life (May, 1976: 1 16).

Similarly, Valerie Shaw presents the speciality of the form to

integrate other art forms like painting, lyric poetry, or photography. She

feels that it is "a highly self-conscious form" that is "instinctual" and

that brings "the character to full consciousness for the first time in his

life" (1983:2). It is easy to see the affinity that women have with this

form--women are subjected to intemalising their experiences and hence

they are highly self-conscious. Moreover, women are generally

considered to be 'instinctive' and 'sensual' in comparison to men, and 3

because of these traits they are able to relate easily to the form of the

short story which is intense and compressed. Also, being sensual and

sensitive, they absorb more of what happens around them and they are

able to portray the predicaments1 oppressions/ injustices/ joys of women

with intensity and with a comprehensiveness that allows them to use the

form to turn inwards, and depict the feelings and the emotions of the

inner body and mind. "The woman writer", Whitlock thinks, "finds it

appealing as a means of questioning and reinventing womanhood; a way

of asserting a different voice and a different view" (1989: xxii). Women

live at various levels--modem women are not only housewives, but are

also educated and hold careers. They exist in two spaces and their

constant effort to do well at both levels causes tension and friction,

giving rise to different personalities. It is not possible to reconcile all the

different personalities, and it becomes a significant search for women to

know who they are. This type of tension has given rise to what can be

called the new short story which has been well defined by Susan

Lohafer:

What makes the "new" short story different is its flattery of

the self as the axis of a world. It may be a small world, a fake

world, a tragic or a crazy one; it may be familiar, bizarre,

tangible, abstract, reported, or dreamed. It may be but the

weirdest fragment, yet it will cast a rounded shadow on our

minds. It will revolve on a self. Whose? A single character's

often; the author's always; the reader's -- but that is

speculation for another time. To the list of essentials we will

add the one that makes the historical difference: "I" - matters -

to - you(1983:12).

Riemenschneider, discussing the short story and Indian women,

thinks that women writers in India confine themselves to portraying a

woman's step to liberate herself from the shackles of traditional roles.

Writers like Deshpande provide a new concept of women--women who

are at times able to say 'No' and who move into new spheres that they

would not be able to occupy in reality. just the point that writers in India

are able to create such situations, he feels, is because of the ability of the

short story to combine "the epic art of extension with the 'poetic art of

ellipsis"' (1986: 177).

Davey in the article, "Genre Subversion in the English-Canadian

Short Story" feels that contemporary Canadian short stories writers have

mixed genres and "the concept of mixed, blended, blurred, or

interplaying genre signals receives considerable validation" He links

this concept to Munro's works which, he states, contain non-modernist

features, and thus feels her writings to be close to realism (1 988: 147).

This could be the reason for the difference in Deshpande's and

Munro's short stories. (I do not wish to come to a closure about the

genre's abilities on the basis of just two writers but would like to leave

the subject open so that there can be a firther probing and analysis in

these areas).

Postcolonial Literary Background

The past decade has witnessed a change in the literature produced

in the English language. Literary output from countries other than

Britain and U. S. have made a big impression world wide. This is

illustrated by the acclaim received by writers like Michael Ondaatje,

Vikram Seth, Ben Okri, Derek Walcott, Githa Hariharan and others.

Accordingly the markets have opened wider to receive such literature,

and critical readings of these writings have also increased. Yet, one has

to admit that much of the critical writing has been misconstrued, as

these writers are judged by the critical standards of the imperialist

countries. This stance has to change because such writing needs fiesh

approaches, and judging by critical standards prevailing in the West

only distances the works. In recent years this perception that Western

literary theory is insufficient to judge the national literatures of non-

western countries has motivated a number of debates, and an illustration

is Frank Davey's words in his essay "Reading Canadian reading" which

applies to postcolonial writing:

One consequence of Canadian misreading of other national

criticisms has been the privileging of particular bodies of

writing and of literary theories partially generated by this

writing. Less obvious has been the disguising of such

privileged texts as 'international' literature; the creation of the

illusion that British, French, American and Russian literatures

constitute both the international canon and the source of 'real'

literary theory. A third consequence has been the illusion that

national concerns are unconnected to literary theory and that

the latter's principles are somehow relevant to all writing

(1 988:9).14

Australian, African, Canadian, and Indian works have been rooted

in their respective cultures and traditions, and to evaluate such works

without understanding the origins and the growth of the people is

inappropriate. Therefore "our minds as well as our economies must be

decolonised if we are to understand the decolonising fictions created by

postcolonial writers whose works question the values once taken for

granted by a powerhl Anglocentric discourse" (Brydon & Tiffin,

1993:ll).

Postcolonial discourse has arisen from the context of imperialism

and colonial tensions that the people have undergone. This is a

commonality that these literatures share. Ashcrofi et al, tracing the

development of post-colonial writing note two trends in postcolonial

discourse: i) colonial power is represented by writers who stress not

only the civilised society but also the beauty of the colonialists'

I4 For further discussion see Davey.

countries. (This can be witnessed in the writings of writers like Rudyard

Kipling, E. M. Forster.) ii) The natives adopt the colonialists' attitudes

and thus, become outcasts within their own land (1989:4-5). These

writers write of experiences alien to them, and their texts were written to

gain approval from the imperialists. (Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt,

Sarojini Naidu.) This stance of writing to please or gain approval has

changed in recent years and writers adapted the colonial tongue to strike

back at the rulers. Postcolonial writing uses innovative techniques and

creates a new language separate from the standard language of the

imperialists. This is illustrated by Rushdie's Midnight's Children or

Raja Rao's Kanthapura. Postcolonial writers have ably used the English

language to create today not only an English language, but a number of

English languages. The writers are doubly endowed by being able to

straddle two worlds--their homelands and the colonisers land--by the

use of this language. They use the coloniser's tongue to write

"'decolonising fictions', texts that write back against imperial fictions

and texts that incorporate alternative ways of seeing and living in the

world" (Brydon & Tiffin, 1993: 11). Pico Iyer in a discussion of

postcolonial writing15 remarks that the idea of centre and periphery has

postco colonialism does not mean anything political and it is more concerned with the discourse that has arisen from a colonial context. It is a term used to "cover all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day7' (Ashcroft et al, 1989: 2).

been turned upside down and what was the "eccentric" world is today

the world's centrel6. Postcolonial writing, thus tries to revisualise reality

and rejects the established order in the process of decolonising

(1989: 4-5).

Maxwell discussing the impact of language in colonised countries

notes two parallel developments; In the first instance, the colonialists

implanted their language in the conquered land and made it the new

language of the country. (Such a growth is observed in Canada.) In the

second instance the colonialist's language was not implanted but it

became a major language along with the existing vernaculars in the

country. (An illustration of such a development is India) (1965: 82-3).

Thus, one notices that India and Canada fall into two categories of the

colonial rule. Besides these influences, the literature produced has also

been promoted by the historical and ideological circumstances of which

the people have been a part. India has produced bilingual writers like

Arun Kolatkar, Dilip Chitre, Chudamani Raghavan, and Kamala Das

and also writers who write only in English--Nissim Ezekiel, Raja Rao,

R. K. Narayan, Anita Desai, and Shashi Deshpande. Similarly, in

Canada one witnesses French-Canadian writers such as Gabrielle Roy,

and Marie Claire Blais, as well as English-Canadian writers such as

16Iyer's article in Time magazine made an analysis of the rise of literary writing in postcolonial countries and the change in power relationships between the ruler and the ruled (1 993: 8).

Atwood, Margaret Laurence, Robert Kroetch, Ethel Wilson, and Alice

Munro. At the same time the concept of multiculturalism has developed

writers of other origins too. A few that can be mentioned in this context

are Michael Ondaatje, Joy Kogawa, Daphne Marlatt, and Claire Harris.

What is the main focus of these writers? Vassanji, talking about

Immigrant writing, mentions that the writers must write about

experiences true to their age and lifestyle. Such writing invariably

produces themes like alienation, social and political turmoils, racism,

economic struggles, subjection and exile (1985:3). Ruminating on this

statement one notices that most postcolonial writing too discusses such

themes. The postcolonial writers, moreover depict their rootlessness and

glorify their marginality while trying to locate themselves through their

writing.

Postcolonialism and Feminism

The idea of survival and identity has encouraged the growth of a

number of women writers in Canada. These writers have attempted to

discuss in their works the status and role of women within society.

English, however, has been an alien language for women writers in the

Indian sub-continent, and therefore the number of women writing in the

English language are very few. Nevertheless, the past one decade has

seen an increase in literature produced in English by women writers. At

present one finds that there is not only a body of creative writing, but

also a body of criticism spearheaded by critics and academics such as

Susie Tharu, Kumkum Sangari, Ketu H. Katrak, Meenakshi Mukherjee,

Arun Prabha Mukherj ee, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, K. Lalitha,

Tej aswini Niranj ana, Kalpana Ram, Raj eswari Sunder Rajan, and

Gayatri Chakravarthi Spivak. Some of these women are rooted in India

while others are in Western countries from where they are able to

introduce their ideas into the large body of western criticism. These

critics have not only created an awareness of Indian women, but also in

a generalised way of 'Third' world women too.

At this juncture it is important to concern ourselves with the

concept of feminism and its impact on the literature of the postcolonial

countries. Feminism is generally perceived as a political agenda that

developed in the United States after 1960s. Many developing countries

are disturbed by this concept and do not want to commit themselves to a

political ideology17 which they feel demands equal rights for women,

17A point that is of interest in the present context is Sartre's view on Beauvoir's feminism. Discussing this aspect Tori1 Moi states:

... Sartre rightly assumes that simply to discuss women's social situation, their sexuality or their identity is not in itself a feminist entreprise. To be a feminist is to take up a political position: it requires the capacity to posit certain goals and to define one's enemies, and the will and ability to attack them. Feminism, one might say, requires us not simply to describe the status quo, but to define it as unjust and oppressive as

and which is moreover far removed from their circumstances. In

countries, like India, there has been the additional claim by some

women that they don't need feminism, for Indian women gained

political and legal rights with independence. Another factor promoting

this theory is that the Indian constitution has not made any

differentiation in gender.

What is to be considered at this point is what feminism is and how

one can define it. It cannot forever be connected to the establishment of

equality between sexes. It has steadily gained a number of connotations,

and also has invited a large number of critical theories variously labelled

as Marxist feminism, psychoanalytical feminism, socialist feminism,

radical feminism, French feminism, etc. What is relevant at this juncture

as far as feminist concepts are concerned is to feel, to know, and to

understand the predicament and dilemma of women within the context

of the society and culture to which they belong. This can be defined as

feminism18 because such an ideology creates a conscious awareness of

well. It also requires a vision of an alternative: a utopian perspective which inspires and informs the struggle against current oppression (1 994: 185).

l8This feeling is authenticated by the words of Smaro Kamboureli in Sounding Dzfferences:

Let me say first that feminism doesn't have to do only with women. Quite the contrary: it has to do with all aspects of culture. In other words, it is a political movement that seeks,

women's problems. Mohanty points out that feminist struggles can

occur simultaneously at two interconnected leilels: "an ideological,

discursive level which addresses questions of representation

(womanhoodifemininitS.), and a material, experiential, daily-life level

which focuses on the micropolitics of work. home, family, sexuality,

etc" (1 99 1 :2 E ).

Passing from feminist theories to postcolonial theory, one notices

that there are many points of intersection between the two concepts.

Both postcolonialists and feminists are faced with the question of

identity, problem of language, the theme of displacement, and the sense

of loss. The problem of language is intensified in feminist writing

because women in society are always the other, the "second sex" and

they, like the postcolonialists, are forced to use the language of their

masters. Women writers experience a void, a vacuum as they have to

use a language that has been created by patriarchy. One may argue that

postcolonial countries do not have a language, but as Ashcroft points out

there is a preexisting language in all societies, and it is women who

among other things, to undo the political rhetoric of our tradition, which is a rhetoric of polarities, as Lola said. So feminist writing as an activity is - has to be - iconoclastic .... that we should move away from our obsession with identity to a concern with difference, from wholeness to incompleteness, from representation to presentation. This kind of movement is, for me, a political gesture that deflects the status quo, be it literary or social (1 993 : 13 7- 138).

have no language at all ( 1 989:25 ). Therefore \yomen gvriters ha1.e to

create a new language'o from the existing one. The construction and

perception of such a language, says it'hitlocl;. can be called "female

naturalism" (a term she bonou~s from Kay Ferres) kvhich means women

writing about sensual experiences such as touch, taste. hearing, and

smell, or referring to details like food. and clothing, or attempting to

chronicle their lives in terms of events like birth, death, and marriage

(1989: xxxi).

Viewing the theme of displacement, one finds that postcolonial

feminist writing deals with power relations, that constraints women. In

certain instances women's position changes and they may assume a

powerful role. Such power transferences are witnessed in Indian

households where women are socialised and domesticated, within the

family, by the dominating attitude of the mother-in-law, who becomes

the defender af a tradition which had earlier circumscribed her. The

connections between the two concepts can also be noticed in terms of

not just language and hegemony, but also in the political set up of the

society, the experience of being silenced, and the attempt to gain a

voice.

I9For a more enlightening discussion see Kate McKlunkie's argument in the article, "Women's Language and Literature: A Problem in Women's Studies" (1983: 5 1-6 1).

Feminism and postcolonialism try to understand the marginaiised

and they try to shift the roles of the oppressor and the oppressed.

Postcolonialist feminist writing has now hegun 1~jtl-1 "questioning of

forms and modes, to unmasking the assumptions upon tj*hich such

canonical constructions are founded, moving first to make their cryptic

bases visible and then to destabilise them" (i\shcroft et al. 1989: 175-

176). Feminism's agenda is not only to oppose sexism but also to make

women think of their roles or their images. Postcolonial feminist

writing, thus discusses the position of the victim, and here I restate very

briefly what Atwood has discussed at great length in her critical work

Survival: there is the position where you deny the fact that you are the

victim or acknowledge that you are a victim but explain your position as

the will of God, fate or the dictates of biology. There is also the position

where you acknowledge the fact that you are a victim but refuse to

accept that the role is inevitable (1972: 36-37).

The Concept of Universal Sisterhood

Most writing dealing with women assumes a universality, a

women's group bonded together in their systems of oppression and

suppression. Class, race and society are de-emphasised in such writings,

and the major assumption is that men are the perpetrators of violence

and domination, whereas women are the victims and subjects of these

atrocities. This is not to state that all writing pursues this role model, but

this image has clearly been the one mast projected when dealing with

man-woman relationships in societies. .A growing body of women

protesting against the fact of women all m7er the world being a

"coherent group with identical interests and desires" has in recent years

been challenged by many women. These women argue that "sisterhood

cannot be assumed on the basis of gender; it must be forged in concrete,

historical and political practice and analysis" (Mohanty, 1984: 337 &

339).

I too, disagree with this system of universality because I feel that

feminism can locate "the differences within the relationships and

practices it explores, treating them not as unified and homogenous, but

as contradictory to the degree that they participate in the uncertainties,

incoherences and instabilities of the cultures where they are found"

(Meaney, 1993: viii). I also wish to emphasise that the reaction of

women to male domination varies depending on the class and status that

women occupy in society. Thus, an Indian woman from the lower class

is not restricted by social customs and taboos, and knows the dominance

of man and can act accordingly, while an educated middle class woman

may know what is happening to her, but is restricted from acting

because of social conventions. There may be other women who are

totally ignorant of what is happening to them, and may accept the power

relationship matter of factly. Also the position of women in India is

different from that of western women--the former are economically

dependent on men. and are very much circumscribed by cultural -values.

Given this picture of women in India one cannot expect to equate the

problems of western and Indian women. Canadian women are

economically independent, and more educated, than their Indian

counterparts. Nevertheless, they too, are dominated by the values of the

male, at work and at home, and feel the categorisation of class.

The assumption of a universal sisterhood also typecasts women

based on their nationalities. Thus women from developing countries are

thought to be submissive, passive, willing, ignorant, and domesticated.

In a similar vein, women of developed countries are judged to be smart,

loose, unsteady, outgoing, dominant, educated, individualistic, and

sexual20. Creation of such stereotypes can be dangerous for one

presumes characteristics without considering the values, the traditions,

and the backgrounds of women in different countries. Therefore,

feminist studies should not construct a homogenous patriarchy, but

evaluate and study the differences based on gender and other

relationships.

2oAfter writing this I happened to discover that Chandra Talpade Mohanty in "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses" takes a similar viewpoint. However, she implies that the concept/idea of the western women as educated, dominant,etc, is a (implicit) self-representation by the western women themselves (1984: 337).

One should at this point remember that "the iiterar! traditions of

post-colonial nations share ... thematic interests. metaphysical concerns.

changes in language pattern. experiments in form" because of their

"collective historical experience ..." (Tiffin, 1983 :12). These similarities

have been stressed in comparative studies done by various writers. What

is ernphasised here within the limits of this particular research project is

to view women's writing not as a monolith but to see how "these

literatures bear the imprint of the material forces of politics, economics,

and culture which acts upon them within the imperial construct and of

how this is bound up with the replacing of the improved language in the

new geographical and cultural context" (Ashcroft et al 1989:27). Within

the presence of the coloniser and the colonised, feminist studies become

significant as they engage in assessing the women's role within society,

and bring into sharp focus the link of power and domination, that exists

between coloniser and the colonised. Thus, in many ways women

writers of postcolonial countries become important not only in studying

this image of a victim, but also in the study of the predator who is also

circumscribed by the society. Is the woman able to raise herself from the

position of the victim and is she able to rebel and assert herself is what

concerns the study of identity. Therefore, I cannot hope to universalise

the women's experience, but locate the difference and understand

women from this difference. Finally it must be noted that by

universalising women's experiences21. one would only be, once again

2iArun Prabha Mukhejee arguing in the context of academic

assuming a position of power and domination, thrreblh becoming the

coloniser as Mohanty points out:

Western feminists appropriate and "colonise" the fundamental

complexities and conflicts which characterise the lives of

women of different classes, religions, cultures. races and

castes in these countries. It is in the process of homozenisation

and systemisation of the oppression of women in the third

world that power is exercised in much of recent Western

feminist discourse and this power needs to be defined and

universalisation, feels that Western literary criticism focuses solely on "form and character7' ignoring other factors. She supports her argument by pointing out that most works are judged on "available classification" (such as the questipastoralibildungsrornance), ignoring the factor that the work maybe rooted in more "formal complexities" of a society's "experience of colonialism, legends o f heroes and villains, deeply held belief systems, rhetorical pronouncements of local elite such as politicians, businessmen and movie stars" (1 988: 13). Meenakshi Mukherjee too agrees with this point of view but she thinks that the case of literary theory, especially in a country like India, is complicated by various other factors such as colonialisation for a long period, deep rooted traditional and cultural heritage, plurality of linguistic tongues and cultures, and limited access to literary pursuits due to low literacy rate, and therefore the printed text becomes the preserve of the privileged (1989:45). This is not the means to understand and read literary texts, especially of postcolonial countries where not only problems of caste, and class intervene but also political and economic bureacracy exists. Within this space exists the body o f women's writing

which forms the focus of the thesis.

named (1 99 1 :351).

Katrak's statement too validates these differences: "women writers'

stances, particularly with regard to glorifjvingidenigratin traditions,

vary as dictated by their own class backgrounds, levels of education,

political awareness and commitment" and they search for alternatives to

the acts of oppression within the most "revered traditions" (1989: 173).

She adds that most of the texts question patriarchal notions that existed

before colonisation, and that also exist afterwards. She feels that women

writers locate their predicament within the economic system that bas

become capitalistic because of colonization (1 989: 173). Therefore

women writers tend to decolonize themselves by using new narrative

methods as witnessed in the set of linked short stories of Alice Munro:

Lives of Girls and Women and Do You Think You Are, or by

converting myths and legends as illustrated by Shashi Deshpande's

story, "The Inner Rooms" (Dark), or by displacing the roles of the wife/

motheddaughter.

In conclusion I would like to clarify that I am hereby

deconstructing the subject of women within the context of short story

fiction and not trying to prove theoretically that women's awareness of

identities in the Canadian and Indian context is the same. Within the

purview of this chapter I have tried to delineate the various influences

that underlie women's writing and in future chapters will attempt to

discuss women and their relationship with others. The aim of the project

has been "to make an important contribution to our understanding of

ourselves and others, and of the complex processes by which different

cultures make meanings" (Brydon & Tiffin, 1993 2 1 ) .

CHAPTER II

N AND A WOMAN

Now, what specifically defines the situation of woman is that she - a kee and autonomous being like all human creatures - nevertheless discovers and chooses herself in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other. They propose to turn her into an object and to doom her to immanence since her transcendence is for ever to be transcended by another consciousness which is essential and sovereign. The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspirations of every subject - which always posits itself as essential - and the demands of a situation which constitutes her as inessential.

--Beauvoir (1 98429)

Beauvoir's statement points out the existing inequality between

men and women. This viewpoint is shared by many others and it has

forrned the basis for a large body of feminist studies. Munro and

Deshpande, too, in their writing portray the unequal relationship

existing between men and women. The present chapter proceeds to

examine women's relationship with men as wives or lovers. The study

of the stories questions and probes the concept of marriage, the concept

of sexuality and the awareness that is nurtured in women through these

bondings.

Before attempting to read the stories, it is significant to understad

what the concept of marriage implies in the two societies. Generally

speaking "marriage" is understood as an ever-lasting relationship

between two people. It also connotes men and women sharing love,

affection, companionship, understanding, security, sex, etc.

Nevertheless as many feminist theorists have pointed out maniage i s a

bond that thrusts women into the role of sen.ants/slaves and creates a

negative image within them.

This relationship in the Indian context has gained considerable

sanctity. Thus, manied women are given importance and treated

respectfully. The qualities of piousness, chastity and generosity are

thrust on them and married women are expected to emulate mythical

archetypes such as Sita and Savitri. A girl-child in India is brought up

with the view that she is to be ultimately married.

In Canada, on the other hand, marriage does not gain such

importance. Women are empowered with a greater amount of freedom

as compared to the Indian women. The Canadian women are allowed to

choose their partners and in many cases, women even choose to live

singly and separate from their partners due to incompatibility. Yet, even

in such a society where women have greater freedom to choose their

life-styles, one finds that within the relationship itself there is

considerable amount of gender differences and women are dis-satisfied

with the struggle for power and economic stabilit!..

Marriage as The Feminist Dictionafy explains can be seen:

(1) as a woman's trade, (2) as a system of economic exchange,

(3) as a system of legalised rape and/or prostitution, (4) as a

union to be entered into for countless practical, economic,

spiritual, legal, political, emotional, or other reasons, not

necessarily between a man and a woman, with many

possibilities for form and structure, (5) as the material

appropriation by men, (6) as a social contract between

individuals who have some freedom to determine its terms, (7)

as slavery and servitude, (8) as freedom and escape fiom

family, community, or class, (9) as a power struggle between

two differently sexed individuals whose power is unequal and

whose conduct is judged differentially, (10) as a mutual

negotiation of rights, needs, joys, and responsibilities, (1 1) as

a trap which promotes both security and disability, and (12) as

no longer required of women for economic support or social

approval (1 985:252).

Some of these concepts are portrayed in the stories of Munro and

Deshpande. A point that is to be remembered at this junction is that

marriage continues to be an essential goal that women strive for in most

societies. Women are still considered weak and powerless. and an

unconscious ideology of protecting them esjsts in both societies. The

growth of literacy and awareness of social conditions should have

brought greater awareness among women. But, still many women desire

marriage. This is because women still consider it to be a means of

gaining social approval and recognition in society. The trend as noticed

in some of the stories is gradually changing and women especially in

Indian middle classes are becoming aware of what marriage means.

The readings are grouped22 according to the identity struggle that

takes place among the women characters. Some of the women characters

in Munro's and Deshpande's stories are silent sufferers while others are

aware of the trap they have entered into. In some other stories women

recognise the power struggle and while some of them try to accept it,

others attempt to overthrow it. Women dis-satisfied and unhappy with

their life-styles also attempt to form relationships with other men.

Women characters are also betrayed by men in few of the stories.

Interestingly both the writers also attempt to narrate stories from a male

22This division is not very rigid and I am aware that one story can h c t i o n in two or more categories. My aim has been to take the most prominent idea that the story depicts. A second factor that has to be considered is that though I discuss rnarital/sexual relationships, the story may at the same time reveal other relationships too.

point of view and such stories rel~eai the masculine concept of women.

A final type o f portrayal i s that of the independent or free women by

both the writers. These women are able to outgroiv and distance

themselves from the bond of marriage. They depict the women who are

able to shape their individual personalities and exist as New &'omen.

Silent sufferers

Only two of Deshpande's stories can be grouped into this category.

None of Munro7s characters portray such subservient, obedient attitudes

and this could be due to the awareness that women already have in

Canadian society.

The image of such traditional women is reflected in the two stories,

namely, "And What's A Son" (Gale), and "A Wall is Safer" (Dark).

"And What's A Son" (Gale) discusses a wife who assumes an extremely

subservient and obsequious personality. On the other hand the wife in

"A Wall is Safer" (Dark) is quite aware of her position, is educated and

yet does not want to change.

The husband in "And What's a Son" (Gale) is a "dignified and

respected" old man. He has an illicit relationship with a woman from the

lower class. Consequently she conceives, and he keeps her at his place

claiming that she is the widow of his dead son, Harsh. The toiyn people

do not n7ag their tongues because "it was as much his reputation for

absolute integrity as his wife's staunch acceptance of the younger

woman that kept scandalous tongues at abeyance" (Gale : 21). One day,

some months after the death of the old man, the child falls ill, and the

doctor diagnoses the problem as asthma. It is only then that the widow

of the man remarks that the child's father was not her son, Harsh, but

her own husband. She had known the truth when the woman had come

to their home, and had also been aware of her husband's weakness for

women from the lower classes. Even though she knows his weakness,

she is silent about the whole affair. Moreover she is pleased about her

husband's virility and thinks that "At his age ... it was a miracle, no less7'

(Gale: 24).

"A Wall is Safe?' (Dark), too, discusses marital relationships at

two levels--the middle class portrayed by Hema and her family, and the

lower class illustrated by the maid-servant, Sitabai and her husband,

Ramchandra. Sitabai feels that her name23 is the source of trouble. Her

husband lives with another woman, not caring about her. She works,

even though she is pregnant because she needs the "money and the

food". For her it is a question of survival because her husband gives all

23The Indian epic Ramayana portrays that Rama's wife, Sita undergoes a number of hardships and has been projected as the symbol of an ideal woman in India.

his pay to his mistress.

Hema, on the other hand, is a lawyer usho has donned the role of a

typical housewife doing jobs such as cooking, cleaning, ironing, and

taking care of the children. She is not interested in taking up a

profession as she feels that this would cause disruption in the family.

She is aware that she has become an insignificant being as her thoughts

reflect:

Everything here is limitless immense. Your eyes go easily a11

the way to the horizon. The immensity makes nothing of you

and your concerns. Sometimes it soothes me, this idea of my

own insignificance. Often, however, I am angered that it

makes so many years of my life take on the grey colour of

futility (Dark: 67).

In the first story, the housewife displays pride in her husband but

she does not think even once of the other woman. The reason for this

may be the hierarchial power structure existing in Indian society. When

a woman mistreats another woman, she enhances the total power of men

as a group within patriarchy. In other words women are able to get

power only as agents of domination and oppression within the male

dominated family structure. The woman who comes to gain the upper

hand is usually one who has the backing and the approval of the

powerful men. The story plays not only on the comventional self-

sacrifice of the wife but it also reveals the poiver of man and the need

for a male child. A third factor is the exploitation of people from the

lower classes.

The second story reveals that women like Sitabai when illtreated

are unable to offer effective resistence because of their dependence and

vulnerability. No alternative sources of support are available to most

women outside their family in the Indian society. There is nowhere else

they can go, if they suffer abuse and neglect. The other woman, Hema,

suffers and gives up her career for maintaining the harmony of the

family. She does have aspirations but is able to forfeit it. In the process,

she thwarts her own selfhood and becomes a self-effacing personality.

One wonders, (at this point) why women are silent and bear all

problems stoically. It is true that they are trained to undergo suffering

and a secondary role without resistance: Still the question is why do

they put up with it? The answer may be found in the words of Beauvoir

as expressed in The Second Sex. She thinks that the young girl though

aware of the injustice does not complain because, "she is too much

divided against herself to join battle with the world; she limits herself to

a flight from reality or a symbolic struggle against it" (1984: 375). She

Eurthers states that:

Woman plays the part of those secret agents who are left to

the firing squad if they get caught. and are loaded r ~ i t h

rewards if they succeed; it is for her to shoulder all man's

immorality: all women, not only the prostitute, senre as sewer

to the shining, wholesome edifice where respectable people

have their abode. qTbenen, thereupon, to these bvomen one

speaks of dignity, honour, loyalty, of all the lofty masculine

virtues, it is not astonishing if they decline to 'go along'

(1984: 625-6).

Women in a Predicament

Generally many women are unable to get out of their relationship

due to a number of reasons. At times they may be economically

dependent or emotionally dependent on their husbandsilovers. In other

instances as illustrated by the Indian women the restraints imposed by

society makes it very difficult for women to move out. Also the women,

in most cases are aware of their positions and roles as can be seen in

Deshpande's "Why a Robin" (Leg), "A Man and A Woman" (Gale),

"The Valley in Shadow" (Dark), and "My Beloved Charioteer" (Dark)

and h h x o ' s "How I Met My Husband" (SIB), and "Bardon Bus"

(MO*

The husband and wife in "\brhy a Robin' (Leg) are distanced

because of a dead child. The wife is unable to communicate with her

husband as he blames her for the child's death. She feels the rift and his

silence freezes her: "But his silences, more eloquent than any anger,

freezes me. And I don't really need to ask the question-why me?

Because I know" (Leg: 51). She is, therefore, filled with a sense of guilt

and thinks that she is a failure, "as a wife as a companion, as a mother.

Between my husband and myself there is a blankness--we never even

quarrel" (Leg: 52). Her life is made miserable by her low self-esteem,

which is intensified by the difference in their status. The marriage had

not been successful fiom the beginning due to the wife's feeling of

inferiority. She thinks of her presence as an intrusion when she says: "I

dawdle over my work deliberately so that I am late going to bed. Two

single beds. Two islands that nothing can bridge. Not the child. Not

even the bridge of passion. It is his special place, his retreat, the place

where he can be most alone. I will not intrude" (Leg: 52).

The main problem she realizes is that she has denied and sacrificed

so much that she has lost herself. She fails to recognise her desire and

wants. She realises that without wantsidesires of one's own, a person

loses one's ego! "That without wants, there is no I". In contrast to the

women characters in "And What's a Son" (Gale) and "A Wall is Safer"

(Dark) the wife here is conscious of what is wrong and is also aware of

her own loss of identity.

"A and A Woman" (Gale) describes the agony and anguish of

Lalita, a widow. Lalita recognises that with the death of her husband,

life has become dead. She notices that small joys of life become big

issues in the eyes of society. Her desire for "a red and blue sari" meets

with such astonishment that she feels that as if "she had danced naked

on the street" (Gale: 37). Her delight and laughter at her child's attempt

to stand up is greeted with the words, "...My God, Lalita, You! ... You

think it looks nice to laugh like that?" (Gale: 30). And thus she had been

made to sacrifice all joy of living as her husband was dead. Lalita's

agony is increased when her repressed physical desires are kindled by

the sexual advances of Ajit, her seventeen year old brother-in-law. She

feels guilty about her sexuality and also feels imprisoned by the kind of

circumscribed life that she has to lead which provides "no outlet for her

vitality, her energy" (Gale: 37).

In an attempt to share her agony and guilt, she discusses the issue

with Manu, her dead husband's friend who has been crippled by an

accident. Her sense of guilt is nurtured by her Indian upbringing which

has invoked the feeling in her that physical desire is evil. Manu, on the

other hand, explains to her that the act of sex is natural, and one need

not feel ashamed of it. Inspite of his explanations she is not convinced

of what she has done and tells him:

Nothing can convince me that what I've done is not Krong. If

it were not for Ramesh, [her son] f would kill myself. But you

know what they would say of me afien~rards and how that

would hurt Ramesh, when he grew up. So I haye to live with

this weakness. A slave to my own body. I disgust myself. I'm

dirty, abnormal (Gale: 3 7-3 8).

Manu suggests that she could leave the place, but she knows that

she is trapped--her parents are dead and she cannot live on her brother's

sympathy. Moreover her in-laws won't allow her to take away Ramesh,

whom she loves. Manu understands that "she was like a restive colt in

an enclosure struggling to get out. But there was no gate. She had to

jump. And she had lost her legs. Welt, if there was no gate. She had to

make one" (Gale: 39). Finally, Manu suggests to her that they could get

married, for both of them are maimed in life--one physically and the

other mentally. He thinks that they could share their experiences and

fight against society, as both of them had faced "living death", they

could now make life more meaningful. He thus wishes to help her and

erase the guilt within her. He offers her a new beginning, but is Lalita

able to thrust aside her traditional upbringing and accept him is the

point.

Marriage for the sake of economic gain is the basis of "The Valley

in Shadow" (Dark). The protagonist here is a woman crippled by polio,

and neglected by her husband. She craves for love, and attention but he

does not care for her. He neglects her and she rraiises that he had

married her for her money. He had also slept with her initially, only

because he wished to have a heir. She recollects that he had married her

for the money she earned. She realises after the birth of their son that he

finds her distasteful. He had only put up with her "because of his desire

for a son". After the son was born he had avoided her and she "had shut

out forever all hopes of any human contact" (Dark: 40).

This disregard by him for her sexual needs makes her weave sexual

fantasies. These fantasies are also curbed when she becomes conscious

of her crippled body, she feels guilty for indulging in such dreams. The

story has a cliched ending because the wife in spite of being wronged

feels sony for her husband.

In Munro's "Bardon Bus" (MOJ) the narrator, a divorced woman,

pictures the romantic notions that women possess about men. She traces

the life of a woman like herself who could be pleased by just a man's

intimate touch or an intimate tone of voice, With memories of such

intimacies, she could exist and thrive in secret pleasure: "A life long

secret, life long dream-life. I could go round singing in the kitchen,

polishing the stove, wiping the lamp chimneys, dipping water for the tea

from the drinking pail7' (MOJ: 11 1). This fantasy of hers is partially

realized when she meets an anthropologist whom she refers to as X. She

stays with him and enjoys a feeling o f "leisureb domesticitj- with a

feeling of perfect security" (IMCIJ: 113). kloreover, they recogise the

happiness that they share for the short period and as she states:

We were not afkaid to use the ward lave. We lived without

responsibility, without a future, in freedom, with generosity in

consent but not wearying celebration. We had no doubt that

our happiness would last out the little time required (MQL

Even after both of them separate and go back to their respective

lifestyles, the narrator keeps dreaming and thinking about 'X'. On the

other hand her friend, Kay is constantly falling in and out of love: "To

her, it seems an adventure and whenever she falls in love, she takes up a

man and his story whole heartedly" (MOJ: 116). The narrator realises

that her friend's behaviour is not exceptional and she understands that at

least she is not condemned to living with reservations and withdrawals,

long drawn-out dissatisfactions, inarticulate wavering miseries as she

herself is forced to.

She then meets a friend of X's called Dennis. The hopes to gain

some infomTion about X through him, but Dennis is too wrapped up in

his own theories which he wishes to discuss with someone. He talks

about men and women's way of life and tells her that men even when

they are aging love a wider choice and can get younger Ivomen while

women cannot do the same. Thus, women are at a disadirantage. He

further states that men by such choices are able to renew themselves and

gain vitality while the women are removed from life. He, however,

changes his view in the final part of his talk and states that Fwmen are

lucky as they are able to accept loss and death more easily than men. He

concludes by emphasising this point:

I've seen so many parts of the world and so many strange

things and so much suffering. It's my conclusion now that you

won't get any happiness by playing tricks on life. It's only by

natural renunciation and by accepting deprivation that we

prepare for death and therefore that we get any happiness.

( M r n 122)

This talk makes the nanator realise that her life is not meant to

dream about men such as X. She, thus, realises that she has to let go:

"What you have to decide, really is whether to be crazy or not, and I

haven't the stamina, the power, the seething will, for prolonged

craziness" (MUJ 127). Her distancing herself from the man she loves,

she feels, is the way to be reassured of oneself.

This story reflects the predicament that the woman goes through

and how she is finally able to raise herself from the dilemma she

undergoes through.

"Material" (SIB) by Munro discusses how women are used as

materials to construct stories. The narrator is diirorced from her first

husband, Hugo who is a writer. Her second husband Gabriel, notices the

book published in Hugo's name and buys it so that Clea, the daughter

learns about her father. When the narrator reads the biographical note

she thinks that Hugo leads a false life. It is then she realises that to him

life has always been unrealistic and dramatic. To him women are just

material from which lies and stories could be fabricated. It is this

realisation that strikes her and she also perceives that Hugo and Gabriel

are alike as they both have the ability to label and compartmentalise

thingsheings without caring for their individual personalities:

At the same time, at dinner, looking at my husband Gabriel, I

decided that he and Hugo are not really so unlike. Both of

them have managed something. Both of them have decided

what to do about everything they run across in this world,

what attitude to take, how to ignore or use things. In their

limited and precarious ways they both have authority. They

are not at the mercy. Or they think they are not. I can't blame

them, for making whatever arrangements they can make

(SIB: 43-44).

The idea of entrapment and release forms the theme of

Deshpande's "My Beloved Charioteer'' (Dark) and Munro's "How I Met

My Husband" (SIB). The old woman in Deshpande's stov has no love

for her husband because she had felt very restricted by his authoritative

manner. In fact she had been like a puppet who had been manipulated by

her husband according to his desires. She had lived with him for twenty

five years and had learnt to know his likes and dislikes, yet he had never

troubled himself to know her likes and dislikes. She thus feels liberated,

free and happy after his death.

Edie in "How I Met My Husband" (SIB) is infatuated by a pilot and

waits after he goes away for a letter from him. She waits eagerly for the

letter but as she awaits she realises that he is never going to write. She

understands that her waiting was futile:

... till it came to me one day there were women doing this with

their lives, all over. There were women just waiting and

waiting by mailboxes for one letter or another. I imagined me

making this journey day after day and year after year, and my

hair starting to go grey, and I thought, I was never made to go

on like that. So I stopped meeting the mail. If there were

women all through life waiting, and women busy and not

waiting, I knew which I had to be. Even though there might be

things the second kind of women have to pass up and never

know about, it still is better (SIB: 65).

Finally she marries the mailman who sees her ~ ~ a i t i n g for the post

everyday.

Deshpande's story "My Beloved Charioteei' (Dark) discusses the

entrapment of a wife due to the social conditions imposed by a

patriarchal society, while Munro's "How I Met My Husband" discusses

the romantic trap that women may get into. The story "A Man and A

Woman" (Gale) displays the authority of the in-laws. It also reveals the

amount of freedom an Indian widow enjoys. The fact is that women are

caught in a vicious circle by family and society which makes it difficult

for women to even attempt to free themselves. In this story though

Manu offers her a solution, one wonders if Lalita is able to accept it.

This predicament arises because a woman who wishes to escape needs

to be able to withstand alienation. How many women are strong enough

to withstand such an ostracization is the question. A final point that is

raised in this story as well as others is the rigid attitude towards sex and

sexuality that women display as opposed to the extremely open attitude

revealed by the women characters in Munro's stories.

The story "My Beloved Charioteer" (Dark) once again portrays the

trap that marriage becomes for an Indian wife. The woman is unable to

get out of the situation while Munro's three stories "How I Met My

Husband" (SIB), "Bardon Bus" (MOJ) and "Slaterial"" (SIB) depict the

ability of the Canadian women to m o w out of their predicament.

Though Eddie in "How I Met My Husband" (SIB) waits for the man of

her dreams, she realises that he may not return. Once she becomes aware

of this fact, she marries the postman and settles down. Similarly in

"Bardon Bus" (MOJ) Kay and the narrator are divorced. Both these

women realise the meaning of love. While the narrator in the story has

recognised the illusionary nature of the man-woman relationship, her

friend Kay seems to play around with men, falling in and out of love.

The concluding story in this section "Material" (SIB) displays the

enlightened view that the narrator has of men. The story reveals not only

men's exploitation of women but also their inability to come to

conclusions and decisions. Women, it is pointed out, are unable to

decide and acknowledge priorities. This could also be beneficial for

women who are then able to be flexible and adapt themselves to

different circumstances.

Power Relationships

Kate Millett in Sexual Politics points out that the basis for all

power relationships is the male-female relationship. She fiuther states,

"Social caste supercedes all other forms of inegalitarianism: racial,

political or economic, and unless the clinging to male supremacy as a

birthright is finally forgone, all systems of oppression will continue to

function simply by virtue of their logical and emotional mandate in the

primary human situation" (1970: 25)

Male control and power over women in all spheres of life is mhat

constitutes patriarchy and therefore, one needs to eliminate it. But this is

not easy as patriarchal ideology, says Millett has made it certain that

men always love the dominant roles while women love the subordinate

roles. By such a conditioning, men are able to gain the approval of the

women that they oppress. Their oppression is carried out through

institutions such as the academy, the church and the family". These

24Power is generally consolidated by conditioning women. Conditioning is generally done by shaping women's appearances, behaviours and attitudes. One method adopted often in Indian households is differentiation. A new bride is usually taunted and the differences between her father's place and her husband's place pointed out thus creating a feeling of inferiority within her. She is considered an alien and the rules of submission are thrust on her, mainly by her mother- in law. The mother-in-law becomes the enforcer, as she is now given the authority to rule. She has the right by convention, to dominate and exhibit power over the new daughter-in-law.

It may be argued that in present times a change in the traditional family structure has been disrupted as more families are becoming nuclear. Moreover, the practice of purdah in most of the households is gone. Nevertheless one notices that the appearance of the nuclear family and the disappearance of purdah has not changed the status of relationships, Authority is still vested with the father-in-lawimother-in- law or other males close to the husband. The idea of confinement and

institutions rationalise and justify women's subordi-nation to men and in

most cases, women develop a sense of inferiority.

Millett also noted that contemporary feminism attempted to destroy

the sexlgender system and she looked forward to a society in which

equality of the sexes was established (1970: 62). Marilyn French, too

like Millett, believed that patriarchy is the cause of all oppression. She

stressed that "Stratification of men above women, leads in time to

stratification of classes; an elite rules over people perceived as 'closer to

nature', savage, bestial, animalistic" (1985: 72). She traced in her book

Beyond Power : On Women, Men and Morals the origins of patriarchy

and explained that over a period of evolution, men had become the

authoritative figures and held 'power-over' the women.

Mary Daly taking this concept further, states in Pure Lust that

women must create and adopt new understanding, different from men

and thus, develop themselves. She analyses different types of passions --

genuine passions, plastic passions and potted passions. She feels that

genuine passions such as love, hate, despair, anger and fear activate and

inspire women, while plastic passions such as guilt, bitterness, boredom

and hostility make women passive and ruin them. She also mentions that

enclosure still plays a major part in the lives of women. These aspects are part of the issue of domination and socialization as can be witnessed in some of the stories.

emotions like 'love' when packaged and doled out as pulp romantic

fiction can harm women and she terms such passions that are idealised

and marketed by society, as potted passions.

In this section, the various power relationships existing between

men and women in some of the short stories of Munro and Deshpande

are examined.

Deshpande's "Intrusion" (Leg) is a powerful story dealing with the

awareness of a newly married woman. The newly married couple come

to spend their honeymoon at a small sea side resort. The wife dreads this

trip as she feels that her husband is a total stranger to her. She is upset

by his sexual intimacy and is repulsed by his expectations. She feels like

a whore and the atmosphere of the place creates in her an uneasy

feeling:

There was something furtive about the place, something dead

pan about the servant's face, which made me feel that the men

who came here did so with 'other women'- girls, perhaps,

bold-faced and experienced, who would laugh and chat with

men, not go through what I was enduring now. Fears. Tremors

(Leg: 41).

Her anxiety is increased as the day proceeds and she reviews her

marriage to the man. She feels that she has been marketed as a woman

who is "simple and sophisticated. Her desires and feelings are not taken

into consideration by her parents before marriage or her husband. She

has doubts about the marriage but her father brushes them away by

uttering two practical statements; "what's wrong with him? I have two

more daughters to be married" (Leg: 43). She is unable to defend and

argue against these statements and she, therefore quietly submits to the

marriage. After the wedding, the couple go to a small fishing village for

their honeymoon. The newly married bride is however sick of what the

night holds for her and wishes to escape. But she has no choice. On the

other hand, the husband is not troubled by any such thoughts and is keen

on satisfying his lust. His attempt to hold and kiss her i s shattered by her

attempts to ward him off. The protagonist wishes to know more about

him before she shares her privacy with him. She also hopes that he

would talk to her and familiarise herself with her tastes, her likes, and

her dislikes. But she understands that he is not interested in her inner

feelings and the bond of marriage has given him the power to conquer

her body:

I could do nothing. He put his hands, his lips on mine and this

time I could not move away. There was no talk, no word

between us-just this relentless pounding. His movements had

the same rhythm, the same violence as the movements of the

sea, yet, I could have borne the battering of the sea better, for

that would hurt but not humiliate like this (Leg: 38).

This act shatters her as it is an intrusion. a move that is against her

being as a woman.

Another story that foregrounds such helplessness of a woman is

Deshpande's "I Want" (Miv). In this story, Alka, the protagonist is to be

married. She, too, like the narrator in "Intrusion" (Leg) realises that her

wants and needs are not important. Her parents decide the husband for

her, while her future husband chalks out what he wants in his .future

wife. No one bothers to find out what her wishes and desires are.

Munro's "Friend Of My Youth" (FOY) provokes a number of

questions on the husband-wife relationship. It questions the validity of

marriage, and the way society views women who are not married. An

incident is narrated as a story by a mother to a daughter, thereby

endowing it an air of fiction. The incident narrated is a portrayal of the

lifestyle of two sisters Flora and Ellie. The mother recollects the fact

that though Ellie had married Robert Deal, the house had not taken up

the name of Deal.

The views of the mother and daughter differ when they discuss the

way they would have told Flora's story. The mother titles the story as

"The Maiden Lady" and shrouds it with stateliness and reverence". In

her story she wishes to "make her [Flora] into a noble figure. one who

accepts defection, treachery, who forgives and stands aside, not once but

twice" (FOY: 19). The daughter views the story in a different way: "I

had my own ideas about Flora's story ... I would take a different tack. I

saw through my mother's story and put in what she left out. My Flora

would be as black as hers was white. (FOY: 20). The reason why the

daughter is against her mother's visualisatio~l is because she feels that

Flora may be evil as she turns away from sex. The story also points out

the sexual power men have over their wives. Robert Deal, Ellie's

husband is aware of the delicate health of his wife, and yet he has sex

with her which results in repeated pregnancies and miscarriages.

Weakened by these miscarriages she finally dies. Robert Deal remarries

the nurse who had been hired to nurse his wife instead of marrying Flora

to whom he had been engaged at the very beginning.

The extra ,marital relationship of Brenda with Neil in "Five Points"

(FOY) is not founded on love but is carried on because Brenda enjoys

the secret power she holds. She enjoys the moment of meeting Neil

secretly. The secrecy and excuses that she has to make up excites her. In

order to meet Neil she does good deeds such as "cleaning jobs around

the house that she was putting off, mowing the lawn, doing a

reorganisation at the furniture barn, even weeding the rock garden"

(FOE 31). This sense of power makes her feel like the girl in the story

that Neil tells her where the girl used to have sex with young boys by

paying them. The paradox is that she like the young girl in Neil's story

is trapped in her condition. Brenda feels that the absence of Neil, the

possibility of his defection, his denial of her could turn any place, any

thing, ugly and menacing and stupid" (FOK 36).

She has the affair as she wants to have freedom and in the

beginning was reminded when she saw Neil's bed that it was "not a

marriage bed or a bed of illness, comfort, complication". She also "loves

the life of his body, so sure of its rights. She wants commands from him,

never requests. She wants to be his territory" (FOE 41). Brenda by the

end of the story becomes aware that Neil had "lost some of her sheen for

her" (FOE 49) and she comes to the conclusion, that every relationship

can finally turn out to be just a continuation of life.

The strength of power and its impact on men is discussed in

Munro's "Hold Me Fast, Don't let Me Pass" (FOY), and in Deshpande's

"First Lady" (Leg). Hazel after the death of her husband, Jack comes to

Scotland hoping to meet Jack's girl-friend, (of younger days),

Antoinette and his cousin. During her stay there she notices the changes

that have occurred in Antoinette and Dobie. This revelation reminds her

of how she and Jack too had changed. She realises then even before

Jack's death she had a nervous breakdown and after that incident she

changed her life into one of "action, exercise, direction" (FOJ". 83).

She knew that when she had got out of bed (this is what she

doesn't say), she was leaving some part of herself behind. She

suspected that this was a part that had to do wit11 Jack. But she

didn't think then that any abandonment had to be permanent.

Anyway it couldn't be helped. (FOE 83).

She realises that Jack too had changed from a quiet young

charming man, into a braggart. One distinct ~nernory she has of him is

what she had noticed in him one day when she had been travelling to

college. She feels that he had become a dull, grey and insubstantial

person. She thinks of the routine life he led spending a couple of nights

at the legion and other days watching television. His life had become a

mechanical routine filled with "chores, routines, seasons, pleasantries".

She had only then realised that day that his loss of power had been

replaced by "a ghostly sweetness7' (FOE 104).

Deshpande's "First Lady" (Leg) depicts the accumulation of power

and the changes it can wrought in a man when he gains power. The story

is also a remark on the sexual constraints that women have to face. The

woman character, in this story, is enamoured by a freedom fighter and

marries him inspite of the class differences existing between them. Later

after Independence, she discovers that her husband has turned into a

power wielding politician, leading a powerful life.

She falls in love with the man hoping that he too would reciprocate

her love. But she realises that he has no time for love and he is also not

capable of loving another human being. After the birth of children he

adopts celibacy as he thinks that the purpose of marriage is procreation.

She, however, feels dissatisfied by her life and is attracted to a young

man who dies later. She soon realises that "life has lost its meaning

because it relates to nothing but one's own petty concerns" (Leg: 3).

Rather cynically she thinks of a line from the Bible at the end of the

party as she and her husband go up to bed which states that old men

have dreams and young men have visions but now she realises that old

men neither have visions nor young men any dreams. Ironically her last

statement as they go to bed falls on deaf ears as he has removed his

hearing aid and consequently cannot hear her. One finds as one goes

through the story the need for love, the illusory nature of women's

desires and dreams, the craving for comfort and the feeling that there is

no one even to listen to them.

The question of power is once again focused upon in Munro's

"Labor Day Dinner" (MOJ). Roberta is married to George, a man

younger than her. The story reflects on Roberta's love for George, and

her attempts to please him. Roberta does not wear skirts and caftans,

because George dislikes them. His contention is that such dresses

"announce to him, ... not only a woman's intention of doing no such

serious work but her persistent wish to be admired and courted" (MQA

136). Roberta is moreover conscious of her age and feels that being

older than George he may despise her. She realises that for her to be

herself she has to get away and live alone.

George, on the other hand, feels that Roberta spoils her children.

He thinks that she placates them, and begs them to do small chores at

home and thereby indulges them. He unconsciously thinks that "if either

of his sisters had ventured on such a display, his mother would have

belted them."(MOJ: 144). This reveals George's conventional attitude.

His authority is emphasised in Eva's statement when she asks him to

take care of her cat: "But will you & Mom take care of Diana when

we're gone?" (MOJ: 145).(ernphasis added). .

Roberta's elder daughter Angela also recognises that her mother,

has become self effacing after her marriage to George. She feels that

George holds power over her mother. She remarks in her journal entry:

I have seen her change ... from a person I deeply respected into

a person on the verge of being a nervous wreck. If this is love

I want no part of it. He wants to enslave her and us all and she

walks a tightrope trying to keep him from getting mad. She

doesn't enjoy anything and if you gave her the choice she

would like best to lie down in a dark room with a cloth over

her eyes and not see anybody or do anything. This is an

intelligent woman who used to believe in freedom

(MOJ: 147).

Lydia in Munro's "Dulse" (AIOJ) is abandoned by her lover,

Duncan. She goes to the maritimes and during her stay there she

analyses her relationship with Duncan. She realises that after her final

talk to a psychiatrist about Duncan she had felt like "an egg carton,

hollowed out in the back" (MU 41). She at that point of time had felt

"deprived and powerless and she had an overwhelming feeling "to cover

her head and sit wailing on the ground" (MOJ:53). She scrutinises their

relationship and reflects, "What gave his power? She knows who did but

she asks what and when - when did the transfer take place, when was the

abdication of all pride and sense?" (MOJ 55). She had been humiliated

and embarrassed by Duncan's remarks which were objective analysis of

"her person and behaviour". He did not just mention them but he had

listed them precisely. Some of his remarks had been very intimate in

nature and she had "howled with shame and covered her ears and

begged him to take back or say no more" (MOJ: 53). Lydia understands

that she had given him the power and was now complaining about it.

At the conclusion of the story Lydia has a discussion with one Mr.

Stanley who is also staying there about Willa Cather, the writer. Mr.

Stanley tells her about the advice Cather gives an young man about his

marital life and Lydia can't help pointing out to the old man that Cather

had not married and was staying with another Lvoman. Therefore she

thinks that she could not have advised him properly.

bfunro's "Oranges and Apples" (FOI? sketches the suspicious

behaviour of Murray towards his wife and his way of taking it out on

her. Murray befriends Victor, a Polish man who comes to live close to

their place. Victor soon breaks up with his wife, Beatrice, and Murray

not only gives him shelter but also finds a job for him. Soon however

Murray starts having doubts about his wife and Victor. To know the

truth one rainy night he insists that Barbara should take some

bedspreads for Victor. He knows when she returns that Victor has had a

relationship with Barbara. Victor, the day after this incident leaves the

place. One can notice in the narration Barbara's innocence. It is Victor

who views her body, while she is sunbathing. Murray makes Barbara's

body the scene of battle, thus scarring her.

"Prue" (MOJ) too discusses the sexual outlook portrayed by

Gordon. Gordon desires to marry Prue after he is finished being in love

with a younger woman. Prue, narrates this idiosyncrasy of his to others

in a cynical and light hearted manner. Within her heart however she is

angered by his remarks. She therefore begins to take things from

George's house and stores them. As Martin says in Paradox and

Parallel: "She does not have the passion to throw an overnight bag at

Gordon , so her response takes a devious form, apparently obscure to

herself because she shows no sign of recognising it for the revenge it is"

(MOJ: 145).

One finds in this section that women are treated as

beings necessary for satisfying the male ego. Stories such as

"Intrusion" (Leg), "I Want" (Mirir), "Prue" (MOJ), "Dulse"

(MUJ), "Labor Day Dinner" (MOJ), and "Oranges and

Apples" (FOY) highlight the gender inequalities present in

both the societies. The stories throw light on the oppressive

environment that the women have to live in.

Extra-marital Relationships

Marriage, women realise, is not as romantic as they had

anticipated. It becomes a life of duties and responsibilities and fulfilling

various expectations. In order to escape such constricted/burdened

lifestyles they resort to having affairs with other men. At times they are

married but at other times they are not married and have relationship

with married men in order to experience security and comfort without

being committed. Many of Munro's stories focus on the adulterous

affairs of women in stories such as "Oh, What Avails7' O Y ) ,

"Differently" (FOY) and "Eskimo" (POL).

Joan in "Oh what Avails" (FOI') walks out on her husband arld

children and begins a new life. She explains her desertion by stating that

at that time many parents underwent the phenomenon of separating.

Marriages which had started innocently without any misgivings had

split up (FOE 207). Joan is amazed at the love affairs she has had. Joan

realises as she thinks of her past that that her brother and she had been

taught some values: "They were taught a delicate, special regard for

themselves, which made them go out and grab what they wanted,

whether love or money" (FOE 215). But the difference had been that

while she had not been good in money matters and had grabbed love,

her brother, Morris had grabbed money and had not had a good love life.

Georgia in "Differently" (FOY) divorces her husband, Ben and

lives with an instructor of creative writing, with whom she had taken a

course. She meet her ex-husband's friend Raymond some years later at

Victoria. This meeting reminds her of her ex-husband Ben and

Raymond's wife, Maya who had been her friend. Maya and Georgia had

sex with other men and had kept it a secret from their husbands. Maya

had an affair with another doctor, Harvey and had also had an abortion.

Unlike Georgia she had not divorced Raymond and had continued a

double life. Georgia had not been able to lead a life of lies and hypocrisy

and had therefore blown up her own secure, happy life. But she had

been ashamed to reveal to others her happiness with Ben and had always

insisted that she had never been happy:

She had entered with Ben. \i7hen they were both so young. a

world of ceremony, of safety, of gestures, concealment. Fond

appearances. More than appearances. Fond contrivance. (She

thought when she left that she would have no use for

contriving anymore.) She had been happy there, fro111 time to

time. She had been sullen, restless, bewildered, and happy.

But she said most vehemently, Never, never. I was never

happy, she said (FOE 242).

Now, when she meets Raymond she realises that he still thinks that

his dead wife as an ideal wife and tells him to take death differently.

Two stories that discuss the relationship of married men to women

are "Eskimo" (POL) and "Accident" (MOJ). Mary Jo in "Eskimo"

discusses very ironically her relationship with Dr. Streeter for whom she

works as a nurse. Mary Jo, while on a trip to Tahiti, slowly understands

the relationship that exists between her and the doctor. She realises that

she is after all just a mistress . She had faithfully served the doctor for

ten years but she knows that though she had worshipped and adored

him, her place in his life would always be secondary. Carrington

discussing the story concludes that "Mary Jo can do her work because a

nurse's work traditionally defines her role as secondary to a man's.

Thus, Munro uses the traditional doctor-nurse relationship as a paradigm

of the secondary position of some of her earlier characters" ( 1990: 163).

"Accident" ( M O a is a story with a different ending. Here Frances,

a school teacher, has an affair with Ted, a married man. The story takes

a twist when Ted's son has an accident and dies. This incident disrupts

his marriage and he divorces his wife and marries Frances. What is

striking about this story is Frances' awareness of her relationship with

Ted. From the beginning of their relationship she is aware that love is a

sham: "There had been a dreadful air of apology and constraint and

embarrassment about the whole business the worst of it being the moans

and endearments and reassurances they had to offer" ( M U 1 83). She is

also conscious of Ted's involvement with his own self. He thinks of

"himself and his beliefs" (MU& 103) and Frances dislikes this self

centredness. She now understood that in her affair with Ted "she had

been involved in something childish and embarrassing". She also

understands that she had managed it all for her own delight seeing him

as she wanted to, paying attention when she wanted to, not taking him

seriously, although she thought she did" (MU 103).

Only one story of Deshpande's reflects an extra-marital affair and

even in this story the woman character is so conditioned that she lets go

of her relationship. The protagonist in "An Antidote to Boredom" (Leg)

is married to a man who is hardly aware of her presence. He is aware

only of his life and does not care for her, feelings or desires. He lives

every day by routine and she kno\vs how each moment \\.ill be like: "I

knew what he would do next, after eating. He would wash his hands, sit

down with the newspaper in his hands, for exactly five minutes, while I

moved restlessly, wishing he would go away so that I go on with my

day's work ..." (Leg: 67).

Her life changes when one day at her son's school she meets a

widower. Their relationship grows and her dull, mechanical life changes

into an exciting adventure for her. She looks forward to her rendezvous

with him and when he thinks that she must be having guilty feelings, she

explains that she does not because her husband had never cared or

thought of her. This feeling that her husband does not know anything

about her prompts her to arrange for her lover's stay at her place, when

her husband proposes to go to Delhi on an official trip. But on the day of

departure he asks her to accompany him and when she refuses he tells

her that she better decide to accompany him. By his manner, she knows

that he has become aware of her relationship.

The words sounded suddenly menacing and I looked up

startled. The same face, the same voice, but for a brief second

I saw a challenge, ... And then I knew that he knew, he cared, as

if a dam had burst, a flood of shame, of guilt swept over me,

drowned me. I let go the mirage that I had tried to grasp all

these days, and now I realised, when it was too late, the most

piercing thought of all--that it had been no mere antidote to

boredom, but the best part of my life. And I let it go (Lcg: 76).

Women Jilted

The theme of cheating and taking up a relationship is witnessed in

"Postcard" (DHS), "Tell Me Yes or No" (SIB) and "Winter Wind" (SIB).

The narrator, Helen in "Postcard" (DHS) dates a rich man, Clare and

hopes to many him eventually. However, while on a trip to Florida he

marries another woman. Helen's mother thinks that it is her daughter's

fault as she had already slept with the man. She thinks that because of

her sexual relationship with him he had lost respect for her. This belief

is also echoed by Helen's friend, Alma who mentions that "Men are

always out for what they can get" (DHS: 26).

The narrator in "Tell Me Yes or No" (SIB) after the death of her

lover visits his town from where she used to get his letters. Over there

she visits the book shop that his wife runs and his wife learning that she

is her husband's girlfriend gives her the packet of letters. Only later the

narrator learns that the letters are not addressed to her but are written for

another woman.

"Winter Wind" (SIB) refers to the married lives o f the narrator's

grandmother and aunt Madge. Aunt Madge, the narrator states, is

happily n~arried. Aunt Madge's husband was a farmer politically

conscious and he was determined, stubborn and entertaining. She

behaves as the perfect wife. She could have been held up as an example,

an ideal wife, except that she gave no impression of "

resignation, of doing one's duty, such as is looked for in ideals".

(emphasis added). In fact she was "light hearted, impudent sometimes,

so she was not particularly respected for her love, but held to be lucky,

or half- dotty, whichever you liked" (SIB: 199).

On the other hand, the grand mother had assumed a martyred air

about her as she is angry with her lover and to spite him marries another

man. Even after marriage now and then she met the other man but "no

one ever accused them of misbehaviour". The grandmother seems to

believe in proximity, impossibility, renunciation and the narrator points

out that "this seemed to make an enduring kind of love!" And I believe

that would be my grand mother's choice, that self-glorifying dangerous

self-denying passion, never satisfied, never-risked, to last a lifetime. Not

admitted to, either, except perhaps that one time, one or two times,

under circumstances of great stress (SIB: 200).

Male Narrator

The ideas that men have about women are etlidenced in many of

the stories as can be seen by the perception of the male narrator or the

male views.

"Uncle Benny in "The Flats Road" (LGF] marries Madeleine, who

has a eighteen month old baby, Diane. When Madeleine runs away

Del's father consoles Uncle Benny by pointing out that she had not

made Uncle Benny's life exactly "comfortable and serene. He did this in

a diplomatic way, not forgetting he was talking about a man's wife. He

did not speak of her lack of beauty or slovenly clothes" (LGW 17).

"Lichen" (POL) is a story that reflects on men's selfishness. The

main character, Stella is aware of the defect of her ex-husband, David.

David has relationships with various women but the fact is he can't get

younger. He visits Stella with his new girl-friend, Catherine. He thinks

that since Stella has no man, she has turned into a shapeless woman. He

remarks to Catherine, "Look what's happened to Stella ... She's turned

into a troll". He is angered when Catherine defends Stella and he thinks

of her as ('the sort of woman who has to come bursting out of the female

envelope at this age, flaunting fat or an indecent scrawniness, sprouting

warts and facial hair, refusing to cover pasty veined legs, almost gleeful

about it, as if this was what she'd wanted to do all along. Man-haters

from the start" (POL: 33).

David is bothered about age and appearance and this is e~idenced

by his description of Catherine too: "When David first met Catherine ,

about eighteen months ago, he thought she was a little over thirty. He

saw many remnants of girlishness; he loved her fairness and tall

fragility. She has aged since then. And she was older than he thought to

start with-she is nearing forty" (POL: 34). David has already begun to

have another affair with a younger woman, Dina. He not only mentions

his new relationship to Stella but thoughtlessly remarks, "You know,

there's a smell women get ... when they know you don't want them

anymore. Stale" (POL: 40).

David is ready to humiliate himself by begging for Dina's love.

When he rings her up he begins to assume shameful ways of begging

and in this way humiliates himself. His affair is based totally on sex and

this is illustrated by his revelation to Stella of Dina's photograph. When

Stella sees the picture of Dina, naked, she is only able to think of lichen,

the stale weed that clings. David, while leaving, forgets to take the

photograph with him and it lies on his table, where it gets spoilt due to

the sun's rays. When Stella sees the spoilt photograph, she feels:

... the black pelt in the picture has changed to grey. It's a bluish

or greenish grey now. She relne~nbers what. she said it looked

like lichen. But she knew what it was even when David put his

hand to his pocket. She felt the old cavity opening up in her.

But she held on. She said, " Lichen". And now, look, her

words have come true. The outline of the breast has

disappeared. You would never know that the legs were legs.

The black has turned to grey, to the soft, dry color of a plant

mysteriously nourished on the rocks. (POL: 55).

It is her awareness of the effect of age and the realisation of her

husband's material attitude that had made her divorce and had helped

her to keep the "flow of the days and nights. (POL: 55).

Edgar and Sam have a relationship with Callie in "The Moon in the

Orange Street Skating Rink" (POL). In the story though Edgar and Sam

don't display it they have a sort of superior sense of their selves as once

they remark, "Because she was a little slavey, forever out of things,

queer looking, undersized, and compared to her they were in the

mainstream, they were fortunate" (POL: 142). Callie, however, has a

superior sense of herself and proves it by daring everything:

It was her scrapbook, and pasted in it were newspaper items

about herself. The newspaper had invited people to enter into

competitions. Who could do the most bound buttonholes in

eight hours? Who could can the most raspberries in a single

day? Who had crocheted the most amazing ~ ~ u r n b e r of

bedspreads, tablecloths, nmners, and doilies? Callie, Callie,

Callie, Callie Kemaghan, again and again. In her own

estimation, she was no slavey but a prodigy pitying the

slothful lives of others. (POL: 143).

She finally even goes to the extent of having sex with both of them

and in the act, too, they are the ones who feel inferior. Later on Edgar

proceeds with his sexual intercourses and finally fearing that his sexual

acts may have resulted in consummation, he and Sam run away. But

Callie is too smart to be outwitted, and figuring the young men's

intentions she pursues them . it is at this point that Sam understood,

"Callie's power, when she wouldn't be left behind--generously

distributed to all of them. The moment was flooded --with power, it

seemed, and with possibility" (POL: 157).

Years later Sam goes to Gallagher and meets Edgar and Callie. In

their house he sees a photograph of Callie and Edgar and "Callie looks a

good deal older than on her real wedding day, her face broader, heavier,

more authoritative. In fact, she slightly resembles Miss. Kemaghan"

(POL: 158). The story ends stating that Edgar is happy. He seems to be

happy because he is a man who is mentally dependent on someone and

being with the hard-working efficient Callie has given him happiness.

The title reflects the femininity associated with the moon and the power

of this female self at times of need. As Pappington remarks, " Thus,

Callie's association are not always true, for her infinitely complex

symbol reveals another contradiction. Callie has power, but she does not

seem to have used it to humiliate her husband7' (POL: 170).

"Queer Streak" (POL) discusses the story of Violet. Violet is to

marry a clergy man but the marriage does not take place as Violet's

father starts getting anonymous notes. When Violet finds out that it is

her own sister she reveals the truth to her fianck and he refuses to marry

her as he thinks that there may be a streak of lunacy in her family.

"Thanks for the Ride" (DIIS) is told from the male narrator's point

of view. The narrator is a teenager just out of school. The story portrays

the barrenness existent in the town as well as in individual lives. The

desolation and barrenness of the town is narrated. " It was a town of

unpaved, wide, sandy streets and bare yards. Only the hardy things like

red and yellow nasturtiums, or a lilac bush with brown centred leaves

grew out of that cracked earth. " (DHS: 46). The narrator's new girl

friend Lois too is a symbol of this bare, desolate atmosphere. She is also

hardy like the nasturtium as she is able to survive the sexual relationship

she has with various men. The narrator is initially upset as she

introduces him to her mother. He wonders if she " might have done it

then to mock me, to make me into the caricature of the Date, the boy

who grins and shuffles in the front hall and waits to be presented to the

nice girls family" (DHS: 50). The narrator after talking to the mother

notices the grandmother and realises that these people are different.

They are not innocent like their mothers or like his cousin George. They

are on the other hand born " shy and sad and knowing". This point is

stressed when Lois tells him about the earlier boyfi-iend, " He just went

around with me for the summer. That's what those guys from up the

beach always do. They come down here to the dances and get a girl to

go around with for the summer they always do" (DHS: 54). She hrther

adds that one has to behave grateful to these boys because otherwise

they would go around and say that these girls are bitching.

Deshpande's "Rain" (Leg) is narrated by a man who is in love with

his cousin, Radha. But later on she marries another man. Twelve years

later she comes to stay with the narrator who is now a doctor. She comes

to Bombay because her husband is sick and needs treatment. While her

husband is in hospital, Radha's relationship with her cousin develops

into sexual intimacy. One evening as the narrator and Radha are making

love they receive a phone call informing them of the husband's death.

Later, Radha goes back to her parents, but the narrator cannot forget her,

and he eventually marries her. Their life is quite satisfactory but one day

when they are making love, the phone rings and he is reminded of his

love making on the day her first husband had died. This haunts him and

after that things are not the same between them. He wonders:

It has never been any good again. Always, the same. I spend

hours wondering what is wrong with me. Has the guilt of that

rainy night scarred me so deeply? Meanwhile I wait for

something to release me from the cage of guilt and fear, for

something to set my manhood fiee. But nothing happens. And

all the time I remember her words ... "To live like this

forever.. ." (Leg: 66).

Independentmree Women

"What woman essentially lacks today for doing great things is

forgetfulness of herself; but to forget oneself it is first of all necessary to

be firmly assured that now and for the future one has found oneself'

(1 984: 168). These words of Beauvoir indicate the path that women need

to follow to be fiee and independent women. The stories discussed in

this section reveal the total removal of women characters from the

traditional issues of society and their determination in following new

paths.

Jayu in Deshpande's " It was the Nightingale" (Gale) has been a

working woman, who has taken up the opportunity to further her career

prospects by being away from her husband for two years. She desires

like other women , "to give ambition and success the go by and stay

with him, [her husband] throttled by his love" (Gale:12). Jayu is

tormented by the thought of deserting her husband, and of not fulfilling

her duty as a wife. She has known from her mother that it is the

woman's sacrifice and self-effacing personality that pleases the society.

At this point she is tormented, and wonders if her decision is right.

Although she loves her husband, she knows that she along with her

husband form a whole, and "though their lives are intertwined yet they

are two distinct strands. But to keep her light burning is her

responsibility and hers alone" (Gale; 13).

J a y ' s decision to leave her husband for two years to further her

career prospects; creates a feeling of guilt in her. It is not possible to

wipe out in a few days what has been nurtured within her for a number

of years i.e., the image of a wife. Similarly the husband, though a loving

one, cannot comprehend her as she is so different fi-om the grand-aunt

who nurtured him as a child. His construct of a woman is one who is

"totally selfless and totally loving" (Gale: 14). Jayu knows that her

mother-in-law does not like her, though her husband asserts that she

does. She senses the disapproval of the mother-in-law in the single

statement: "I never went even to my mother's house once after my

mother-in-law died, because if I did, who would look after him" [her

husband] (Gale: 13).

To adopt a new way of life breaking the traditional boundaries is

rather difficult for Jayu, and yet she knows that she has to and she will

live her own life. She is aware of the hurt that she has caused--the hurt

that may never heal. She realises that two years is a little too long, and

the physical distance established between them may ultimately become

a mental one , and yet she decides to do what she has to.

Deshpande's "A Day Like Any Other" (Gale) portrays a

housewife's predicament, when she learns through a female informer

that her husband has an affair with another woman. The housewife's

reaction to this news is rather unusual. She dislikes the informer's

gossip, for she has the feeling that she is trying to wreck the happiness

of other people. Moreover she does not feel cheated or unhappy with

what has happened; she knows that " no one can cheat her out of what

she alone had created for herself' ; she has not sacrificed anything for

she has " always wanted to marry, to have children". She had what she

wanted and she saw no meaning in " life without all this" (Gale: 81).

She momentarily doubts if by any chance she is bothered about her

comfort and security, and hence does not want to take the information

seriously. She is aware that it has taken years for her and her husband to

develop a relationship, and it would take only "minutes to destroy" it.

She wonders if, "This face, this body .... is that all I mean when I say 'I' ?

Is that all. he says when he says 'my wife'? The thing that we have built

between. does it all depend on this face, this body? Love ... I wish I knew

what it meant" (Gale: 82). She rings up her husband, only to find that he

is in a conference. Initially she plans in dressing up, making something

special for tea, hugging him, kissing him and saying 'I love you' when

he returns as counter measures for winning back his love. But she is

proud of her individuality, does not wish to change, and desires that her

personal traits be "careless, a little untidy and incapable of socialising,

of dissemblingy'. She thus decides that, her husband will have to "accept

her as she is" (Gale: 83).

She calmly tells her husband when he returns home the information

that she has received. He is frightened by her calmness and sets out to

reassures her, "promising her a lifetime of fidelity, of loyalty" (Gale:

85). Yet he never speaks of love, and she knows then that he has never

loved her, and at night "as she lay gathering into herself all the trends of

the day" she realizes that her life is her own, and this fact does make her

happy (Gale; 86). She is therefore not bothered about his infidelity as

she had gained whatever she wanted in life. She knows that her life is

her own: "the words the thought grew in her, filling her with a rare arid

fearful happiness, a feeling of being suspended in space and time all by

herself' (Gale: 86). Once again the reaction of the housewife in this

story is totally different from that of several others. She does not rave or

become hysterical on learning of the 'affair', she does not accuse her

husband and, in fact, it is her silence that unsettles her true self, even in

the face of such a serious situation as her husband's infidelity. The story

also foregrounds the fact that the husband has an affair inspite of the fact

that he is happily married, has a nice wife and three kids. This is

motivated by the knowledge that he can get away with this flirtation and

also that he can drop the girl once she loses the cham and glamour she

holds for him.

"Death of a Child" (Leg) is a story that depicts a man's lack of

understanding and sympathy. The woman has decided to do away with

an unwanted pregnancy and it is too much for her to go through this as

she already has three children She knows that he i. e. her husband can

get away from all this but she can never get away as it is something that

she is tied to; " I can never get away-fiom me, not even f?om my own

body. I am tied to these things in a way he will never be" (Leg: 47). He

does not understand her but she feels like an animal as this is the third

time in four years. He thinks that the whole issue is simple and there is

nothing complicated about it but she, she knows that one cannot iisolate

the child from her life" (Leg: 44). For her it appears that breeding is just

not the purpose of life. She tells him that children stifle and stunt your

personality and he dismisses her telling her that she is parroting words

out of the books. She finally decides not to have the baby and goes in

for an operation. Taking such a decision is hard for her and yet she opts

not to have it because she knows that she can give all of herself or

nothing at all to the baby but she also wants as she says "to reserve some

part of myself, my life" (Leg: 47).

Munro's "A Trip to the Coast" (DM') has a structure and tone

similar to "The Beloved Charioteer" (Dark) by Deshpande. In "My

Beloved Charioteer" (Dark) the two women are widows and while the

grandmother feels happy that her husband has died, giving her fieedom,

the young daughter feels cheated as both her father and husband are

dead. She therefore has no time for her daughter and the daughter grows

closer to the grandma. The story, "A Trip to the Coast" (DHS) too

discusses fieedom and escape but only in terms of the grand daughter,

May who feels restricted by the grandmother. Her grandma dies finally

trying to get hypnotised. Nevertheless, May cannot cherish her freedom

because she feels her grandma is the one who has won.

She sat with her legs folded under her looking out at the road

where she might walk now in any direction she liked, and the

world which lay flat and accessible and full of silence in front

of her. She sat and waited for that moment to come when she

could not wait any longer, when she would have to get up and

go into the store where it was darker than ever now on account

of the rain and where her grandmother lay fallen across the

counter dead, and what was more, victorious (DHS: 189).

"An Ounce of Cure" (DHS) discusses the rejection of a young girl

by her boy friend. The young girl on one of her baby-sitting nights

drinks a lot and shames herself. She is infatuated by her schoolmate,

Martin Collingwood. The boy later drops her and starts dating a girl

with whom he is staging the play " Pride and Prejudice". The young

disillusioned girl moons over him and she spends "ten times as many

hours thinking about Martin Collingwood- yes, pining and weeping for

him- as I ever spent with him; the idea of him tormented my mind

relentlessly and after a while, against my will" (DHS: 77). Finally at the

end of the story when she is grown up she realises that she is a grown

woman and her catastrophe is now forever buried.

Munro's "Baptising" ( L o portrays the status of marriage, the

status of bodies and the status of boy-girl relationships. Del's

relationship with her friend Naomi changes when Naomi develops

feminine attitudes and learns to discuss, "diets, skin-care routines, hair-

shampooing methods, clothes, diaphragms ..." ( L G E 149). Del

discovers that she can't talk about such aspects and she also finds her

own identity threatened when she reads an article by a American

psychiatrist on modes of thought in men and women. The psychiatrist's

article mentioned that the vision of a full moon triggered different ideas

in boys and girls: "a boy would think of the universe the mystery and

magnificence of it while the girl would think of washing her hair. Del is

upset as she does not think in this way and wonders if she is abnormal.

Ironically enough the article also states: "For a woman, everything is

personal, no idea is of any interest to her by itself, but must be translated

into her own experience, in works of art she always sees her own life or

her daydream" (LGW: 150). Del recognises the difference between her

friend and her and she wonders:

I was amazed and intimidated by her at her boring and

preoccupied new self. It seemed as if she had got miles ahead

of me. Where she was going I did not want to go, but it looked

as if she wanted to; things were progressing for her. Could the

same be said for me? (LGW: 150)

Naomi's aim is to get manied which is assumed to be the normal

life for girls. "It was the life of the girls in the creamery office, it was

showers, linen, pots and pans and silverware that completed the

feminine order, ..." (LGK 16 1). Del rejects this goal and aims at gaining

grade 'A's in her studies. At this point of time she is attracted to Garnet

French. Her relationship to him opens to her physical aspect of life. She

continues her relationship with him, abandoning her studies. She

realises Garnet's oppression when he wants her to be baptised and she

becomes aware of the freedom that she will lose.

"The Beggar Maid" (WDY) casts the protagonist Rose in the role of

a poor woman having to be dependent on the king. The king in this story

is Patrick Blatchford who is from a rich home. The beginning of the

story announces that he is in love with Rose. Rose's relationship with

Patrick is very similar to that of Del's in "Baptising" (WDY). Del could

spurn Garnet and realise that her personality was being drowned. But

Rose is unable to drop the relationship, because Patrick is too gentle, too

honest and "good and guileless". Therefore, she marries him. Later

when she reviews her marriage and her separation, she wonders if she

had entered the relationship because of vanity, greed, and economic

security. The answer to that lies in her words: "What she never said to

anybody, never confided, was that she sometimes thought it had not

been pity or greed or cowardice or vanity but something quite different,

like a vision of happiness" ( WDY: 99).

bbMischief' and "Providence" (WDY) throw light on Rose's affairs

with Clifford and Tom respectively. Rose has affairs with other men but

she finally realises that her identity is not within these relations with

men but in her own being. "Wild Swans" (WDY) has sexual implications

similar to what Del experiences in "Lives of Girls and Women" (LGFV).

Mr. Chamberlain's sexual act is objectively viewed by Del and in a

similar fashion Rose undergoes the whole lecherous behaviour of the

clergyman thereby becoming both the "victim and accomplice" (1 08).

Thus,

Del in Lives and Rose in The Beggar-Maid are the inheritors

of this tradition of repression and guerrilla warfare, practised

within the bound of social conformity, but their difference is

that through their intelligence and educational opportunities

they have the chance to deviate openly from gender

stereotypes, resisting not only the maxim of the masculine

tradition but also of feminine cultural traditions, imagining

newer and more ambitious plots for their own stories

(Howells, 1990: 5).

In this bid to "carve a living space" women had for long "colluded

in their own oppression" as is seen in the case of the wife who accepts

another woman in "And What's A Son" (Gale) ;but gradually women

have become more and more conscious that they need to change. It has

been noticed that "women are not weak but oppressed and powerless,

not incapable but uninitiated, not inadequate but unacknowledged,

unrecognised and rendered helpless due to denial of opportunity,

subjugation and suppression" (ChitnisJ987: 237). The fact that a

woman is strong, adequate and an individual with an identity is

highlighted in these stories.

In the West, individualism has played a great role and in a way this

has helped women to step out of their role-models and achieve an

independent life. In Indian societies women have been greatly restricted

by the community. Women are pushed away into the inner sanctum of

the house and are taught to practise propriety and obedience. They are

taught to deny, and sacrifice instead of asserting their selves. Individual

talents, skills, capabilities were pushed backwards. Women are not

allowed to pick and choose their partners and marriage is more a

convenience than one of love and affection.

Malashri Lal feels that the essential difference between the Western

and Oriental concepts of Womanhood rests upon the interpretation of

the word, "self-actualisation". In India a woman's roles as wife, mother,

mother-in- law are modes of self-actualisation; while the west tends to

perceive self-actualisation as an individual goal. (1986: 43) Feminist

consciousness in the last decade has led to a blurring of conventions

even in India but more and more feminist thinkers argue that the

universal objectives of the women's movements are to be specially

defined within a specific sociological context and that desirable social

change has to be strategically introduced within the system. The

slowness of the process is preferable to the instant rejection often

activated by an obvious infiltration of new ideas.

The ideas that one witnesses in some of the stories dealing with

Indian life reveal that a woman once married is the man's property. The

other factor is that marriage is a bond for the purpose of procreation.

This proprietal air of man is extremely well brought out in the story

"Intrusion" (Leg). The aim is to please the man and women are whores

needed to appease men's physical desire. The total disregard of

women's need for sex and her body desires can be noted as already

pointed out in "The First Lady" (Leg), "A Valley in Shadow7' (Dark),

and "Why A Robin" (Leg). Irvine observes that "feminization, assumed

by the male writer in a colonial situation to be synonymous with

powerlessness, does not have the same political implication for women".

She further mentions that "although within gender divisions, femininity

connotes passivity", within political materialist structures it can assume

an entirely different approach to governance (1 989: 1 1). Thus she thinks

that the story of feminization can at one level be a different version of

colonialism portraying the female voice. This factor is true of many of

the stories that are discussed under the section "Power Relationships".

Deshpande's stories are subverted in terms of theme while Munro's

stories foreground diverse range in terms of not only themes but also

language and structure. In Munro7s stories one becomes aware "that

stories are being told, sometimes by splitting and doubling, allowing

description and commentary to function together at other times by

didactic tones meant to help readers achieve a new perspective" (Irvine,

1989:12). Deshpande's stories play on the silence of women and reveal

the inner strength and awareness present within this silent, mute

framework (eg. "A Day Like Any Other" (Gale), "Why, A Robin"

(Leg), "Intrusion" (Leg) and "A Valley in Shadow" (Dark). Thus "the

reader is taught to take women's texts seriously, to recognise not just the

surface of the female body but its hidden meanings" (Irvine, 1989: 14).

Munro's women characters--Del and Rose are endowed with a total

lack of sexual inhibitions. In fact it assumes a clinical curiosity more

than a human desire. One good illustration of such a view is the way Del

sees Mr. Chamberlain's penis:

Raw and blunt, ugly coloured as a wound, it looked to me

vulnerable, playful and naive, like some strong-snouted

animal whose grotesque simple looks are some sort of

guarantee of good will. ( the opposite of what beauty usually

is.) It did not bring back any of my excitement though. It did

not seem to have anything to do with me.

Women also assume the role of the desirers and this is noticed in

the scene where Rose forces Patrick to have sex with her. Rose realises

that love is a fantasy, an illusion: She had always thought this would

happen, that somebody would look at her and love her totally and

helplessly. It was a miracle. It was a mistake. It was what she had

dreamed oE it was not what she wanted. (WDF8 1).

This awareness of what she actually wants makes her a symbol of

the new woman. The reader is also made aware that one should not get

attached and that the way to achieve fieedom and liberty and be whole

women is to be indifferent to men as well as others. Thus Roberta learns

that she has to distance herself from George in "Labor-Day Dinner"

(MOJ) while Joan abandons her children and husband in "Oh, What

Avails" (POL). Similarly Deshpande's "It Was The Nightingale" (Gale)

portrays this attitude .

Stories like "Dulse" and "Bardon Bus" (MOJ) also depict the

division between fact and fiction. Irvine commenting on "Dulse" states

that "the narrator uses Lydia's dilemma to describe the aesthetic tension

between creativity and experience, between living in an ivory tower and

living in the actual world". The character in Bardon Bus feels that "the

moment when you give yourself up, give yourself over, to the assault

which is guaranteed to finish off everything you've been before, a

stubborn virgin's belief, this belief in perfect mastery; any broken-down

wife could tell there is no such thing" (MU 11 1)

Yet the major drawback is that it is very difficult to achieve this

distance as women have been trained from ages to nurtured care for

others. Coral Ann Howells rightly points out:

Women are deeply implicated in the existing structures of the

social world as mothers, daughters, lovers and wives so that it

is a paradox of most women's position that any search for new

ways of restructuring their lives and their stories has to

acknowledge their genuine need for affective relations and

responsibilities at the same time as they register resistance to

such constructs (1 990: 28).

This is validated when Irvine discusses the responsibility of the

women writers:

Because women tend to stress relationship over autonomy,

webs rather than hierarchies, women writers are faced with

establishing satisfactory ways of distancing themselves &om

the events of the story, of giving the narrative voice authority,

of separating the creating self from the characters in the text

(1 989: 1 10).

Thus, one notices that each of these stories reveal various facets of

the power that men wield. In "Intrusion" (Leg) one notices that the

newly married bride is unable to overcome the boundaries of society and

is only mutely able to share her agony with her readers. On the other

hand "First Lady" (Leg) depicts the misuse of political power and the

changes that it can wrought between a husband and a wife.

Munro's stories are more varied and endow women with more

power and independence. The two readings by the mother and daughter

depict the plurality of the readings in the story "Friend Of My Youth"

(FOY). The unsavoury nature of love and the need to be aware of one's

potential is the basis of the stories "Hold Me Fast, Don't Let Me Pass"

(FOY), "Labour Day Dinner", "Bardon Bus" (MOJ), "Oranges And

Apples" (POL) and "Dulse" (MOJ), while "Five Points" (FOY) reveals

the power that women too can display.

CHAPTER III

PROVIDENCE

The problem, the only problem, is my mother. And she is the one of course that I am trying to get; it is to reach her that this whole journey has been undertaken. With what purpose? To mark her off, to describe, to illumine, to celebrate, to get rid, of her; and it did not work, for she looms too close, just as she always did.

--SIB (246).

The bond between a mother25 and daughter is primordial. The

mother is reborn with the child and grows along with her. They grow

and experience each other and at times, their experience converges but it

could diverge also, leading to communication gaps. The mother figure

can assume a number of variations--she could be dead and yet hold a

strong aura of her self over the child; or she may be dead and therefore a

deadlabsent mother to the child. Sometimes the child may try to revoke

25It is good to be reminded of Adrienne Rich's words in this context: "Motherhood--unmentioned in the histories of conquest and serfdom, wars and treaties, exploration and imperialism--has a history, it has an ideology, it is more fbndamental than tribalism or nationalism" (1 976:34).

the mother. At other times, the mother may be the power figure, namely

the strong dominant mother who may makeibreak the child; or in some

cases a weak, submissive, powerless mother whom the child may

sympathise witwdislike. She could also be an independent woman

asserting herself and the child may realise that she is different from

other mothers.

In the fiction of contemporary world, however, the mother has been

portrayed as a monster. Such a situation arises because the daughter

begins to see her own self reflected in the mother. Karen Elias-Button in

The Lost Tradition uses the metaphor of the evil mother as the symbol

of the Medusa. She feels that the "Medusa is the dark side of the mother,

the grasping mother, representative of the entanglements mothers and

daughters encounter" but she states that this figure could also become "a

metaphor for powers previously hidden and denigrated, collective

powers that we are finally beginning to reaffirm and claim for

ourselves" (1 980: 194). Hindu mythology too portrays such an image in

the depiction of the Goddess KaliiDurga. The Hindu Goddess, the

energetic mother can become a symbol of either benevolence or

malevolence26. Mother, especially in Hindu society is acknowledged

26 This division can also be seen in a different way in the perception of the institution of motherhood by society--women are considered LC' impure, cormpt, the site of discharges, bleedings, dangerous to masculinity, a source of moral and physical contamination" but another

great importance. In fact, the purpose of marriage is procreation which

is illustrated by stories such as 'The First Lady" (Leg), and "The Valley

in Shadow" (Dark). The initial reaction, thus, in many stories is a

negation of the mother which changes later into a recognition of the

mother and a reconciliation with the mother. It is this fluidity existing

between them and the centring of the mother as a subject that is the

focus of this chapter, which is sectioned as follows :

* The deadabsent mothers.

* The dominant /passive mothers

* The distanced rnothersidaughters

* The independent mothers.

The Dead/Absent Mothers

Women are perpetually attempting to establish their identities.

Identity can be defined as the "stable, consistent and reliable sense of

who one is and what one stands for in the world. It integrates one's

meaning to oneself and one's meaning to others; it provides a match

between what one regards as central to oneself and how one is viewed

by significant others in one's life (Josselson, 1987: 1 0). Deshphande's

aspect that society projects is the image of them as "beneficient, sacred, pure, asexual, nourishing" beings well suited for being benevolent and nurturing mothers (Rich, 1 976: 34).

"Lucid Moments" (Int) is one such story that discusses the identity crisis

experienced by an ailing mother. It portrays the anxiety of the mother to

know herself and in her quest for identity she tries to connect her own

dead mother with a name. Sujatha, the daughter is able to acknowledge

her mother's struggle to know herself, and she connects her mother's

quest with her own identity.

Sujatha initially identifies herself with her father whom she

perceives as the nearest symbol of power and authority. She recollects

that "To be admitted to his companionship had been the greatest

honour" and she had "pitied Akka her mother and Shilpa her sister for

being left outside the magic circle" (Int: 72). Sujatha's perception of her

father changes when she notices that he is unable to cope with his wife's

illness and instead of being strong and independent he becomes a weak,

helpless person. She perceives that he is a self-centred man when she

discovers that he does not know anything about his wife, and that she

has always been just a wife, and nothing more to him. Sujatha's

conversation during lunch illustrates this apathy of his:

"One of her better days actually". I tell him, during our lunch

when his question comes up. "She's been talking today ..."

"Of what?"

"Her dead mother. She was asking me for her name. Isn't it

odd? Baba is pushing his food about on his plate; he seems

disinterested not only in his food but in my talk as well.

"Baba, do you know it?"

"What?"

' 'Akka's mother's name?"

Irritably he says, "No, how could I?" It sounds as if he is

saying-why should I? (Int: 73).

Sujatha as a woman can now understand the need of her mother

and she is in empathy with her. Her mother's echoing question makes

her aware for the need to know one's self. She, as the daughter, is also to

be blamed as she has subverted her mother's image by calling her

"Akka" (sister) instead of "Amma" (mother). She knows that her mother

is troubled as she wants to know who she is. Her mother is anxious and

grieved because she is not able to recollect her mother's name. Added to

this misery she is also troubled by her own double identity for she does

not know if she is Sumati or Girija--possibly two identities thrust on

her--one by her father and another by her husband, thereby erasing her

true inner being. This loss of identity is equated with her degenerating

body: "Since the metastasis, there seems to be almost nothing of her old

self left. The shadows that began under her eyes have captured the

whole of her face, the lower portion has caved in, her eyes have sunk

into two deep, dark wells" (Int: 72). Yet, there is a point of

identification, interestingly enough, the "bindi" that adorns an Indian

woman's forehead. This mark of tradition is seen here as foregrounding

the self.

Sujatha can now realise her mother's silence and she realises that

women are continually erased by society. She remembers the pre-

wedding rite when the names of the fore 'fathers' are uttered but not of

the mothers or their ancestors who are just forgotten. She thus gains

identity experiencing and sharing her mother's pain and suffering. She

feels that she shares her mother's death as she had once shared her birth

with her. Dale Spender's remarks about the process of naming are valid

in this context:

Practically it means that women's family names do not count

and that there is one more device for making women invisible.

Fathers pass their names on to their sons and the existence of

daughters can be denied when in the absence of a male heir it

is said that a family 'dies out'. One other direct result of this

practice of only taking cognisance of the male line, because it

becomes almost impossible to trace the ancestry of women -

particularly if they do not come into the male defined

categories of importance (1980: 24).

Sujatha's final act of hanging up the framed and enlarged

photograph of her mother bestows not only an identity on her mother

" .

but also attempts to locate the centralit

fortified by her when she makes her little

name as well as her own. Thus the final linking of the

names with oneself decolonizes women and re-frames them; this act can

be recognised by the words of Daphne Marlatt:

Like the mother's body, language is larger than us and carries

along with it. it bears us. it births us. insofar as we bear it. if

we are poets we spend our lives discovering not just what we

have to say but what language is saying as it carries us with it

in etymology we discover a history of verbal relations (A

family tree, if you will) that has preceded us and given us the

world we live in. the given, the immediately presented, as at

birth-a given name a given word ... here we are truly contained

within the body of our mother tongue (1987: 224).

Mothers pass on their sense of guilt, weakness, and helplessness to

their daugbkrs. "Peace of Utrecht" (DHS) is an autobiographical story

as Munro herself admits in her interview with Geoff Hancock, that the

illness of a parent changes the relationship and it gets to become

27Dale Spender states that not only males name their experiences but also insist that those who don't share that experience use those names. When women are endowed with the power to name then there may arise a more "accurate classification of the world" (1989: 189-99).

significant: "And so her illness and death and the whole tension between

us ... was very important. The first story I think of as a real story was

"Peace of Utrecht". It's about the death of a mother'' (1987: 215). The

daughter's visit to her mother's house after her death reminds her -of the

cry of her mother which had been "shamehlly undisguised and raw and

supplicating" (DM: 198). The narrator, Helen and her sister, Maddy

had learnt to deal with these cries of helplessness by growing cunning

and cold. They took away fiom her, as Helen narrates, "our anger and

impatience and disgust, took all emotion away from our dealings with

her, you might take away meat from a prisoner to weaken him, till he

died" ( D m 199). She had demanded love from her daughters but they

had not enough reserves to draw from and had increased her sense of

isolation and imprisonment. She had, by her illness, changed into a

demanding ghoulish mother:

Our Gothic Mother, with the cold appalling mask of the

Shaking Palsy laid across her features, shuffling, weeping,

devouring attention wherever she can get it, eyes dead and

burning, fixed inward on herself; this is not all (DHS: 200).

The mother in this state shifts from normalcy to abnormality. Thus

if one day she has behaved like a housewife, taking care of the plants or

baking, another day she is demanding the daughters to dress her up and

get clothes stitched for her. Helen escapes this picture of the mother by

moving away and distancing herself. Maddy's letters now no longer

produce in her the "once-familiar frenzy and frustration which my

mother's demands could produce" (DHS: 200). The ordinariness of life

forces her to forget the "Gothic Mother" who had begun to be imaginary

to her. By revisiting her she tries to recapture her but she can't. Finally

the paper that she finds with the words "The Peace of Utrecht, 1713,

brought an end to the war of the Spanish Succession" creates the

necessary vision for her to reconcile not only with her mother's spirit

but also to recognise the fact that Maddy too has a life of her own.

The mother could also act as a spur influencing and enabling the

woman to change her lifestyle. Such a change is witnessed in

Deshpande's "it Was The Nightingale" (Gale). Jayu, the protagonist,

takes a bold step to further her career as she does not want to be like her

mother. Initially she feels " dislike and contempt" for her mother

because she had "tried to live her life through her husband and

daughters". To Jayu she seems like a woman "who had made her own

hell and gloried in it" (Gale: 14). Therefore, she battles and finally gets

her own self out from such an image. She changes from the self-

sacrificing and self-effacing mother into an independent woman.

Dominant/Passive Mothers

The girl-child in Indian society is a marginal figure and it becomes

more evident if the child is born out of wedlock or to another man. This

differentiation is brought out in "The Awakening" (Mir). Though the

story deals not with a mother-daughter conflict it becomes significant to

examine it, as the narrative throws open the helplessness of the mother

and also reveals her attempts to shield the child. The child is treated in a

different manner from the others as she is not her father's daughter. She

is sent to a different school, and the father is distant and does not

communicate with her. He punishes the child for the dishonour that he

associates with the mother. She is excluded fiom all the activities that

the father and her siblings undertake. She thinks that by scoring good

marks in her tests she can please her father, but she finds out that the

father cannot be placated that way. She has learnt silently that her birth

itself is the cause of all the anger and punishment. Her final outcry,

"Whatever they say, I was born. And I am. I am" (Miv: 63) reveals that

she cannot be defeated and that she overcomes her alienation. Mukta

Atrey in "The Girl Child in the Fiction of Shashi Deshpande" notes:

Deshpande unveils the subtle processes of oppression and

gender differentiation at work in the family and in the male-

centred Indian society. Her feminism does not uproot the girl

child from her given context, but tries to understand and

define her in the framework of the various factors that shape

her. These include cultural aspects like myths and legends,

rituals and ceremonies as well as social and psychological

factors such as the family structure, the woman's position in

it, female sexuality and the traumas of menstruation,

childbirth and abortion (1990: 246).

Another story that reveals the helplessness of the mother and

displays the mother as the passive onlooker is Deshpande's "It was

Dark" (Dark). The story reveals the ostracization by society that a

woman has to undergo. The girl in the story, a fourteen year old is raped

and the trauma of the parents is portrayed. The mother is blamed as the

father feels that she had not taken the responsibility to educate the child.

The mother, on the other hand, had faced so many restrictions and

boundaries that she had desired for her daughter's freedom:

I had been warned enough as a girl. "Don't, don't,

don't ...y ou're a female." They had taught me to build a wall

round myself with negatives from childhood. And then

suddenly, when I got married, they told me to break the wall

down. To behave as if it had never been. And my husband

too--how complete his disregard of that wall had been; I had

felt totally vulnerable, wholly defenceless. I won't let my

daughter live behind walls, I had thought (Dark: 23).

Mukta Atrey commenting on the story thinks that stories such as

"Why a Robin" (Leg) and "It was Dark" (Dark) reveal the changing

attitude of mothers towards their girl children. She thinks that the

understanding and sympathy between the daughters and the mothers

grow. She adds that "It was Dark" reveals the "young girl's

vulnerability which no amount of knowledge of the sexual act can erase.

The young girl cannot cope with the crisis and is numbed into a state of

indifference and withdrawal" (1990: 251). To the victim the whole

trauma is associated with a dark room and there is complete blankness

within her. The mother feels as if her daughter has witnessed a solar

eclipse with naked eyes and lost her vision. She understands that she is

the person who has to bring the daughter out of this darkness and lead

her towards light. She finally manages to draw her daughter out and

make her aware of the light around her: "Sunlight poured into the

room, ... And now at last her eyes moved from her spot to a glimmering,

moving circle ... They rested on that shining light for a moment, then

moved to me. She saw me" (Dark: 25).

In the story the moment of the rape is not revealed to us and

Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan commenting on the depiction and happening

of rape28 thinks that "the fact that the enactment of rape takes place in

private and secret places requires the author to conduct his readers into

the innermost recesses of physical space" (1 993: 76). She further points

out in this context that feminist texts of rape counter narrative

determinism, in different ways: namely by making the raped woman the

subject rather than as a victim of the act; by showing strategies of

survival instead of establishing the issue around myths of chastity; by

portraying and placing the raped woman in a system of heterosexual

love and oppression through rape; by presenting the literal facts of the

act rather than weaving a mystifying atmosphere around the whole issue

and finally by representing the cost of the act in complex perspectives

rather than displaying the extinction of the victim. (1 993: 76)

Deshpande's "Can You Hear Silence" (Dark) sketches the hustle

and bustle of a metropolitan city. It also foregrounds the life that a

working mother undergoes. The story exemplifies the'dangr a girl-child

may encounter and the socialisation that the mother has initiated her

into. The daughter tries to link herself to the past of the mother and

savour the silence that her mother has talked about. The image of silence

can assume a number of symbols: "Silence as withheld communication

produces mystery and enigma" (Sunder Rajan, 1993: 87); it can also

reveal displeasure as noticed in "The Shadow" or it could display

28 For a more detailed discussion on the issue of rape see Sunder Raj an's Real and Imagined Women.

secretiveness, (illustrated by "It Was Dark" (Dark) or "Red Dress - 1946" (DHS)). In other instances it could be an index of heroism or can

show self-discipline or resistance.

We are once again made aware of the importance of names and the

significance of telling stories by Munro's "Progress of Love" (POL).

Unlike the daughter in "Lucid Moments" (Int) the daughter, Fame here

has always called her mother, 'mother' and to her the personal name that

her mother has seems strange. She also develops an identity with the

mother by becoming a part of her personality and is constantly reminded

of her: "But I had a sense of her all the time, and would be reminded of

her by the most unlikely things--an upright piano, or a tall white loaf of

bread" (POL: 9). Even though the idea seems a little exaggerated, what

is revealed here is the sense of space that the mother occupies in the

daughter's psyche. The mother's presence becomes a strong one as the

mother becomes apart of the daughter which is a feeling not felt by the

narrator's brothers:

I always had a feeling, with my mother's talk and stories, of

something swelling out behind. Like a cloud, a poison, that

had touched my mother's life. And when I grieved my mother,

I became part of it ... .It seemed as if she knew something about

me that was worse, far worse, than ordinary lies and tricks and

meanness; it was a really sickening shame (POL: 13).

The daughter is here aware of the mother and her body and she

feels the bond breaks when she herself later on has only two sons and no

daughters. The story of the mother's suicide becomes a link to her

mother's past. Redekop remarks that Munro7s exploration of "maternal

ancestry is intimately related to language and to the process of

storytelling" (1992: 176). She adds that the naming of the mother and

the aunt constructs the subjects of the story and the two versions of the

story that Fame hears take up two positions, namely, the mother's story

is a story about the mother herself while the aunt's story loses the

matrilineal power and is a "challenge" issued by her (1 992: 176).

The mother in "The Moon in the Orange Skating Rink" (POL) is

not the true mother yet she assumes a demonic form, for one finds that

the adopted daughter, Callie is always slaving away and finally gains the

title of slavery Kemaghan. She is a substitute mother about whom there

are lot of stories and the two boarders, Sam and Edgar think that the sex

act that they have with Callie might have taken place with Miss

Kemaghan. But the story that Miss. Kemaghan tells them about Callie's

birth is bizarre and unbelievable. The truth of the story is not what is

important, "What mattered was Miss Kemaghan7s cold emphasis as she

told this, her veiled and surely unfriendly purpose, her random ferocity"

(POL: 151). The story questions the romantic notion of mother, her

love, affection and her sacrifice for the daughter. Munro achieves this

effect cleverly by positioning a mock mother and thus, makes a mockery

of the conventional notions of motherhood.

The questioning of conventionality and tradition is perceived in

"White Dump" (POL). It reveals the intricate story line filled with the

perceptions of the grandmother, Sophie; the daughter-in-law, Isabel and

Isabel's daughter, Denise. The grandmother, Sophie's naked appearance

displays the embarrassing performance of the mother to shame her son.

Redekop thinks that such exhibitionism "challenges our notions of

innate motherhood and this, at the same time, results in a transgression

of the boundaries between stories. Both stunts are necessary for

survival" (1 992: 177).

The narrator in "Moons of Jupiter" (MUJ) is linked to the birth of

her daughters and the life she had with them when she comes to visit her

father who is in hospital. She knows that her daughters, Nichola and

Judith would have discussed her and tried to establish their connections

to her: "They would have talked about me. Judith and Nichola

comparing notes, relating anecdotes; analysing, regretting, blaming,

forgiving" (MOJ: 222). She thinks that daughters being women are

closely tied up with the mother and know all about the mother. She is

reminded that at Judith's age she had been in college discussing issues

with her friends and at Nichols's age she had been a mother. She

remembers the talks she would have with her neighbourhood friend,

Ruth Boudreau:

We talked about our parents, our childhood's, though for

some time we kept clear of our marriages. How thoroughly we

dealt with our fathers and mothers, deplored their marriages,

their mistaken ambitions or fear of ambition, how competently

we filed them away, defined them beyond any possibility of

change (MOJ: 222).

She had felt offended by her father when he had told her that he

could not remember the days when she grew up. She realises that the

same is true when she becomes the mother. All that she can remember

are "hanging out diapers, bringing in and folding diapers.. .I was sleepy

all the time then;. . .wives yawning, napping, visiting, drinking coffee and

folding diapers; ..." (MOJ: 223). She realises that they had become like

cartoons and had aged by the responsibilities. The story once again

points out the need for detachment and distancing oneself in order to

survive. The mother remembers that Nichola had been tested for

leukaemia and frightened that she may lose her, she had tried to attain a

distance: "There was a care--not a withdrawal exactly but a care--not to

feel anything much. I saw how the forms of love might be maintained

with a condemned person but with the love in fact measured and

disciplined, because you have to survive" (MOJ: 230). The whole issue

is always a secret to the person who is sentenced to death. The fact of

Nichola's life had stayed with her and by this secret the mother is

empowered as she gains a wider vision of what life and death means.

This mental picture that she sees is a "releasing one"

(Redekop,1992:171) as she is able to reconcile to her father's death.

Carrington's conclusions about the story are valid:

Thus, the experience of withdrawal that Janet's father reads

about and that Janet actively seeks unifies the story both

thematically and psychologically by shaping the

characterisation of the narrator whose experience embodies

the theme. Her split into two personae, the observer and the

participant, defines her double roles as her father's daughter

and as her daughter' mother. In participating in her own life,

Janet has been only the observer on the periphery of both her

father's life and her daughters' lives, and they have been

observers of hers (204).

The Parkinson's disease that we find is the cause of the mother's

death in "Peace of Utrecht" (DHS) is in "The Ottawa Valley" (SIB) here

in its initial stages. The story begins with a return home to the mother's

place, the Ottawa valley. The story reflects on the instance when the

mother sacrifices the safety pin to hold the daughter's panties. This very

feminine act reveals the mother's ability to uphold her daughter's

secrets forgetting her own troubles. Yet, the daughter is unable to tend

and care for her mother as already witnessed in "The Peace of Utrecht".

To illustrate this fact she remarks "I was very much relieved that she

had decided against strokes, and that I would not have to be the mother,

and wash and wipe and feed her lying in bed, as aunt Dodie had had to

do with mother" (SIB: 244).

The sense of power and dominance is depicted by the mother figure

Flo in the sequence stories WDY. Flo in "Royal Beatings" and the other

connected stories of WDY assumes the role of the story teller. Flo liked

to imagine and she liked "the details of a death: the things people said,

the way they protested or tried to get out of bed or swore or laughed ..."

(WDY: 4). Even the way she tells Rose about the death of Rose's mother

is quite ridiculous.

There is from the beginning a dislike and a mongering for power

between Rose and Flo. As Rose points out: "There was a long truce

between Flo and Rose in the beginning. Rose's nature was growing like

a prickly pineapple, but slowly, and secretly, hard pride and scepticism"

developed in her. To Rose in the beginning her vision of Flo is one of

extraordinary softness and hardness; "The soft hair, the long, soft, pale

cheeks, soft almost invisible fuzz in front of her ears and above her

mouth. The sharpness of her knees, hardness of her lap, flatness of her

front" (WDY: 11). These images of hardness, flatness and sharpness

finally lead to the image being put into action. Flo uses her power and

authority, thus leading to the royal beatings that Rose receives fiom her

father. Even before the beatings the power of Flo is displayed by the

body image: "Her legs are long, white and muscular, marked all over

with blue veins as if somebody had been drawing rivers on them with an

indelible pencil". Flo's scrubbing is seen by Rose as endowed with "an

abnormal energy, a violent disgust ..." (WDY: 15). All these images flow

finally into the question of who do you think you are:

Flo speaks of Rose's smart-aleck behaviour, rudeness and

sloppiness and conceit. Her willingness to make work for

othws, her lack of gratitude .... Oh, don't you think you're

somebody, says Flo, and a moment later, Who do you think

you are? ( WDE 15).

Flo in the story not only exhibits theatricality and power but also

assumes the role of a martyr. She finally manages to rouse Rose's

father's ire and Rose is vanquished by the royal beatings her father

resorts to. Rose in her new state of the injured victim feels that "She has

passed into a state of calm, in which outrage is perceived as complete

and final". In such a state she finds that her choices are clear--"She will

never speak to them, she will never look at them with anything but

loathing, she will never forgive them. She will punish them; she will

finish them" (WDY: 20). These thoughts make her forget herself and her

responsibility. This drama of hatred and violence29 is then followed by

~ 1 0 ' s bid to appease Rose. Flo, now sure of her power, tries to woo Rose

by getting her a jar of cold cream for her wounds and a tray of

appetising food--a large glass of chocolate milk, little sandwiches,

canned salmon, butter tarts, chocolate biscuits. Rose "will turn away,

refuse to look, but left alone with these eatables will be miserably

tempted, roused and troubled and drawn back from thoughts of suicide

or flight ..." (WDK 26 ) She finally decides to eat one for strength but,

unable to resist, finishes everything thus losing her advantage.

This whole picture changes and in "Spelling" (FDY) Rose is the

woman in control while Flo loses all her power. The story is a reversal

of "Royal Beatings" (WDY) and here Rose does not have to resort to

violence as Flo is already a victim because of her age. Her senility

makes her a child and there is one moment where mother and daughter

are reconciled. After Flo has been admitted into the aged home, Rose

cleans up their place only to discover a wig of Flo's. She takes the wig

and offers it to Flo, thus bridging the gap between them: "'A wig' , said

Rose, 'and Flo began to laugh. Rose laughed too"'. Rose then assumes

the role of the entertainer, sticks the wig on her head and continues the

29 The power relations that one notices in some of the stories are a reflection of the physical power that women notice in men and which they intemalise in their selves. This could explain the show of violence and power by Flo in "Royal Beatings" ( WDYJ.

comedy making Flo laugh so that "she rocked back and forth in her

crib" ( T D E 191). Flo is once again able to tell her stories and she tells

Rose about the removal of gall stones from her body. This bond that is

established between Rose and Flo makes Rose think later in life of

telling her what she had heard about Hat Nettleton. But, Flo has lost her

power of speech which had given her the power of exhibitor and now

"She had removed herself, and spent most of her time sitting in a comer

of her crib, looking crafty and disagreeable, not answering anybody,

though she occasionally showed her feelings by biting a nurse" (WDY:

24). Redekop remarks that "the dialogue of stories that move back and

forth between Flo and Rose is a structural acting out of this strange face

to face experience of fool and nonfool, infant and mother (1 992: 121).

This reconciliation between Rose and Flo helps Rose later to

understand the power of mothering in the story "Providence" (WDY).

Rose's relationship with Anna, her daughter, is one of love but for the

first time Rose realises the responsibilities of being a single parent. She

also understands that to the child, the parents are the most important

people. Anna's life revolves around her parents, as Rose remarks in her

narrative: "Yet for Anna this bloody fabric her parents had made, of

mistakes and mismatches, that anybody could see ought to be tom up

and thrown away, was still the true web of life, of father and mother, of

beginning and shelter" (VDY: 138). Being with Anna she realises that

''For the first time in her life she understood domesticity, knew the

meaning of shelter, and laboured to manage it" (FDY: 145). She finally

gives up Anna because she learns that her independence cannot provide

the stability that a child needs:

She wanted to take Anna with her, set them up again in some

temporary shelter. It was just as Patrick said. She wanted to

come home to Anna, to fill her life with Anna. She didn't

think Anna would choose that life. Poor, picturesque, gypsing

childhoods are not much favoured by children, though they

will claim to value them, for all sorts of reasons, later on

(WDE 155).

Anna therefore is sent to live with her father, Patrick and his wife,

Elizabeth. Rose finally sees a photo of Anna where she looks demure

and satisfied.

The mother moves from the distance to become a friend in "Friend

of My Youth" (FOY). The story recaptures the mother figure, and her

power of entertaining the daughter. At the beginning of the story it is

made clear that the mother died in her fifties. The story begins with a

dream: "I used to dream about my mother, and though the details in the

dream varied, the surprise in it was always the same" (FOE 3). The

daughter is reminded of the mother's debilitating body which had been

afflicted by Parkinson's disease. The mother portrayed in the initial

stages of the disease in the story "The Ottawa Valley" (SIB) and the

mother who is dead due to the affliction in "The Peace of Utrecht"

(DHS) is once again revived here. The daughter is able to capture the

qualities of the mother that she had forgotten. She remembers the

"liveliness of face and voice", "the casual humour she had, not ironic

but merry, the lightness and impatience and confidence?" and her

"matter-of-fact reply" (FOE 4). The mother in the dream is not afflicted

by the disease and the daughter feels relieved and happy to see her like

that. She finally realises from the dream that her mother had exhibited

"options and powers " that she had not known she had possessed. The

mother thus turns into a ghost figure: "She changes the bitter lump of

love I have carried all this time into a phantom---something useless and

uncalled for, like a phantom pregnancy" (FOE 26). The story brings out

the idea of failure and the inability of the daughter's to know the mother

completely. This guilt30 of the daughter to represent the mother becomes

3oMagdalene Redekop's discussion of this story is very enlightening. She feels that "Munro's exploration of the daughter's guilt moves through levels of self-interrogation that are potentially paralyzing" She adds that the title is "listed as one of several salutations written by the mother". She further remarks that the continuing self- interrogation employed by Munro is an "exploration of the workings of our traditional notions about writing as they relate to lives of our mothers". The reference to the mother is Munro's way of "insisting on the fact of referentiality". Thus, the mother's narrative in the story and the failure of the character Flora in theher's storycan be a reference for the failure of the daughter's vision ofihe mother. Therefore Redekop argues that "The thread of referentiality is deliberately blurred towards

a "phantom pregnancy" where the daughter is fated to cany the past of

the mother and is unable to give birth to it.

"Circle of Prayer" (POL) is a story told from the mother, Trudy's

point of view. The story begins by a violent act, namely Trudy hurling a

jug at her daughter, Robin. The violence begins when Trudy discovers

that the bead necklace given to her by her mother-in-law and which she

had forbidden Robin to wear, had been given by Robin to a friend. Her

questions directed at Robin are answered by silence, and in a fit of rage

she hurls the jug. But fortunately the jug falls on the rug. Robin had

given the necklace to her friend and though Robin displays a frightened

look she is according to Tmdy, "stubborn, calculating, disdainful"

(POL: 255). The story is interspersed by the death of a young girl in an

accident. When Trudy hears this she is concerned and is afraid to hear

that a girl might have been "dragged off a country road, raped in the

woods, strangled, beaten, left there" (POL: 256). Her concern is mainly

because she knows that her daughter goes running and her beauty may

cause her harm. Trudy begins to find love and wishes to reconcile with

her daughter. When she hears about the circle of prayer that her f?iend,

Janet believes in, she agrees to join them. What finally alters her view of

her daughter and bridges the gap between her and Robin is a vision she

has *hich portrays to her the importance of detachment. This helps her

the end of the story, it becomes difficult to tell Flora and the mother apart" ( 1992: 21 1).

to be reconciled to the loss of the necklace. The vision she has also

reveals to her the importance of furthering oneself and placing oneself in

the role of a spectator:

She sees her young self looking in the window at the old

woman playing the piano. The dim room, with its oversize

beams and fireplace and the lonely leather chairs. The

clattering, faltering, persistent piano music. Trudy remembers

that so clearly and it seems she stood outside her own body,

which ached then from the punishing pleasures of love. She

stood outside her own happiness in atide of sadness. And the

opposite thing happened the morning Dan left. Then she stood

outside her own unhappiness in a tide of what seemed

unreasonably like love. But it was the same thing, really,

when you got outside. What are those times that stand out,

clear patches in your life--what do they have to do with it?

They aren't exactly promises. Breathing spaces (POL: 273).

The mother in "Oh, What Avails'? (POL) is a lively woman who is

not only independent but also exhibits a certain amount of eccentricity.

She is also pictured by the daughter as a proud woman and though she

does not have money, she does not think of herself as poor. This is

illustrated by the fact that she does not get a doctor's advice for her son'

Morris' eye accident. She treats Morris as a grown up and allows him to

smoke, drink and drive a car by the time he is twelve. The mother here

has a name for everyone in town. She also knows a lot of poetry and at

times "She looks out the window and says a bit of poetry and they h o w

who has gone by" (POL: 183). Joan, the daughter narrator later in life

realises that one needs to act in order to hide the things one sees "in

their temporary separateness, all connected underneath in such a

troubling, satisfying, necessary, indescribable way" (POL: 208). Finally

Joan realises that their mother had taught them to have a "delicate,

special regard for themselves" and because of this gift of hers she and

her brother, Morris had been able to get what they wanted. Joan quotes

the lines that her mother often used to say:

'Ah, what avails fhe sceptred race,

Ah, what the form divine!

m a t every virtue, every grace,

Rose Aylmer--Rose Matilda--all

were thine!' (POL: 2 15).

These lines indicate to Joan that power and beauty are all of no use

and every thing one day fmds its plaee. This global vision is what a

daughter can learn fiom the mother.

The Distanced MotherslDaughters

The distancing and reconciliation of the mother and daughter is

apparent in "Why a Robin" (Leg). The mother here feels that her

daughter is sophisticated and graceful compared to her. This feeling of

hers is also partially nurtured by the distance that has erupted between

her husband and herself. The other factor for her feeling of inferiority is

the difference in status between their two families. She is enamoured by

the beauty of her daughter but cannot reach out to her. She is afraid of

being repulsed and remarks: "I don't have the key to open up this

beautiful child, though she is mine. I don't have the key to her father,

either. It is as if I am, in my own house, confronted with two closed

rooms. I am condemned to sit outside and gaze helplessly at the closed

doors" (Leg: 51). In spite of the distance between the mother and

daughter, in this story there is reconciliation when the daughter finally

recognises the mother as another woman. She needs her mother's

assurance when she matures from a girl into a woman. Thus, the

distance is bridged by the recognition of the female body31 and the bond

31 It is relevant to note the words of Rich here: The nurture of daughters in patriarchy calls for a strong sense of self-nurture in the mother. The psychic interplay between mother and daughter can be destructive, but there is no reason why it is doomed to be. A woman who has respect and affection for her own body, who does not view it as unclean or as a sex-object, will wordlessly transmit to her daughter that a

that exists between women.

Munro in some of her stories depicts the gender divisions that

society and the family inflict on the girl. This is illustrated by stories

like "Walker Brothers Cowboy" (DHS) and "Boys and Girls". The tasks

that the parents perform are illustrations of these gender patterns. The

mother in "Walker Brothers Cowboy" (DHS) is busy sewing, cutting

and matching cleverly bits of cloth to stitch a dress for the daughter,

while the father takes the daughter out for a walk. The story reveals the

daughter's distance32 and dislike of the mother while she is drawn

towards her father. The mother tries to regain her gentility but the

daughter realises that trying to be a lady is enough. To be accepted one

has to possess status too. This realisation makes her hate her mother:

This is entirely different from going out for a walk with my

woman's body is a good and healthy place to live. A woman who feels pride in being female will not visit her self- depreciation upon her female child (1 976:245).

32Munro herself has had this experience being a daughter and also being a mother, she observes :

I think they go through a stage when they don't want a mother who is not shocked by four-letter words; they don't want a mother who reads the underground newspaper they bring home; they want a mother bending over the ironing board saying, " I don't know what this world is coming to", because that's something to define themselves against.

father. We have not walked past two houses before I feel we

have become objects of universal ridicule. Even the dirty

words chalked on the side-walk are laughing at us. My mother

does not seem to notice. She walks serenely like a lady

shopping, past the housewives in loose beltless dresses tom

under the arms. With me her creation, wretched curls and

flaunting hair bow, scrubbed knees and white socks--all I do

not want to be. I loathe even my name when she says it in

public, in a voice so high, proud and ringing, deliberately

different from the voice of any other mother on the street

(rn: 5).

Magdalene Redekop in her study of the image of mothers feels that

in the story "Walker Brothers Cowboy" (Dm the maternal action to be

self-sufficient needs the body of the daughter. She thinks that the father

and mother both give something to the daughter and the only

"difference is that while the mother sews a dress for her, the father

shows her, by example, how to construct a mask. Both parents ensure,

however, that the daughter's idea of reproduction will be one based on

thrift" (1992:38). What is apparent is that the daughter learns from

observing and is aware of the double life that the father leads. The

daughter thus, realises the reality and the illusion that can exist together

in life.

This observation and the awareness of truth is once again continued

in "Images" (DHS). The daughter feels that the nurse, Mary McQuade

has taken over their mother and has "let her power loose in the house"

(DHS: 32). Mary is no goddess but takes the role of the goddess by

making the daughter feel wicked and sinful: "every time she said

Mother I felt chilled, and a kind of wretchedness and shame spread

through me as it did at the name of Jesus" (DHS: 33). The daughter is

aware that "This Mother that my own real, warm-necked, irascible and

comforting human mother set up between us was an everlastingly

wounded phantom, sorrowing like Him over all the wickedness I did not

yet know I would commit" (DM: 33). The daughter finds that the

mother has changed from a story teller and an entertainer into a child

whimpering and crying for Mary's attention. The father once again dons

the role of a quester and a hunter, (who has changed from a roving

salesman in "Walker Brothers Cowboy" (DHS) into a trapper in this

story). Another similarity is that once again the daughter is allowed into

the father's circle and is empowered by his secrets. Thus the daughter at

the conclusion of the story is made aware that:

Like the children in fairy stories who have seen their parents

make pacts with terrifying strangers, who have discovered that

our fears are based on nothing but the truth, but who come

back fresh from marvellous escapes and take up their knives

and forks, with humility and good manners, prepared to live

happily ever after--like them, dazed and powerhi with secrets,

I never said a word (DHS: 43).

Munro's story, "Boys and Girls" (DHS) also depicts the theme of

gender differences, the identification with the father and the final shift

of the daughter from the father to mother. The mother as depicted by

many of Munro's stories is a story teller. The daughter is however

drawn to the father even though he hardly shares his thoughts with her.

She works for him willingly and is proud to be a part of his world as she

feels his authority. She is aware of the number of duties and chores that

her mother handles hanging out the wash, cooking , making jams and

jellies, etc., but the daughter feels that "work in house was endless,

dreary, and peculiarly depressing; work done out of doors and in my

father's service was ritualistically important" (DHS: 1 17). Though the

daughter knows that her mother loves her, she feels she cannot trust her.

She knows that she loved her yet she was also her enemy. She thought

that she was always plotting against her: "She was plotting now to get

me to stay in the house more, although she knew I hated it (because she

knew I hated it) and keep me from working for my father. It seemed to

me she would do this simply out of perversity, and to try her power"

(DHS: 11 8). She never thinks that her mother may have been lonely or

jealous of her. Slowly as she grows up it dawns on her that there is a

change in the perception of what a girl is:

The word girl had formerly seemed to me innocent and

unburdened, like the word child; now it appeared that there

was no such thing. A girl was not, as I had supposed, simply

what I was; it was what I had to become. It was a definition,

always touched with emphasis, with reproach and

disappointment. Also it was a joke on me (DHS: 1 19).

She learns that "girls don't slam doors", that "girls keep their knees

together when they sit down" (DHS: 11 8) and that girls can't ask some

questions. Finally when she allows a horse to escape and her father

dismisses her gesture by the words, "She's only a girl", she cannot

protest as she thinks maybe that it is the truth. This action of hers

bridges the gap between the mother and daughter as it does in

Deshpande's "Why a Robin" (Leg).

Munro's "Time of Death" (DHS) portrays a reversal in the role of

the mother and daughter. Patricia has caused the death of her brother

accidentally but she behaves like a mature adult by not becoming

hysterical like her mother, Leona. Leona develops a hatred for her

daughter and tells everyone she does not want to see her again. She does

finally reconcile to her because for her the daughter is the means of her

livelihood. Patricia is not upset by these remarks of her mother or by her

role as the earner but her composure is finally broken down by the sight

of the 'scissors man' whom her brother had loved to watch. The daily

facts of existence and how they can affect relationships are very well

illustrated by this story.

The mother in the "Red Dress --1946" (DHS) is portrayed as a

mother sewing dresses for the daughter oust as the mother in "Walker

Brothers Cowboy" (DHS) does). The daughter is aware of her body and

loathes the need to stand for fittings feeling "like a great raw lump,

clumsy and goose-pimpled" (DHS: 148). The daughter has begun to

distance herself from the mother and all her stories "which had once

interested me had begun to seem melodramatic, irrelevant, and

tiresome" (DHS: 149). She is like all adolescents insecure and doubtful

about her self, she doubts if she will be happy at the dance she has to

attend later. Her fears soon slip away when she goes to the dance, as she

finds a partner, and things work out well. While returning home she

finds that she had not only been to the dance, but walked home with a

boy had also been kissed by her. She realises that "life is once again

possible" (DHS: 160). Close to her home she sees her mother tiredly

waiting for her return and she realises how much the whole event had

meant to her mother. She herself may never, in her own life, have a

chance like the one the daughter has and to her this may have been a

dream, that the daughter had hlfilled:

She was just sitting and waiting for me to come home and tell

her everything that had happened. And I would not do it, I

never would. But when I saw the waiting kitchen, and my

mother in her faded, fuzzy Paisley kimono, with her sleepy

but doggedly expectant face, I understood what a mysterious

and oppressive obligation I had, to be happy, and how I had

almost failed it, and would be likely to fail it, every time, and

she would not know (DHS: 160).

Deshpande's "The Awakening" [Mir) portrays the daughter, Alka

despising her mother. The hatred is partly nurtured by the fact that the

mother is prejudiced and shows more affection towards her brother,

Shirish. Alka is angered also by their economic instability and by the

noisy, squalid lives that they live. When her mother admonishes her she

has thoughts that are very similar to Del's in "Princess Ida' (LGW) and

the daughter's in "Walker Brother's Cowboy" (DHS). She thinks that

her mother is a "woman with a heavy sullen face and a tongue like a

serrated knife". (Mir: 20). Though she equates her father with a saint,

she feels that he is a fool who does not wish to change his life. Her mind

is also embittered by the difference in status that she notes in the life

style of her maternal grandfather and that of their own. Deep inside she

can't understand how her mother could have given up all that to many

her father. She learns that in spite of status differences, love had brought

them together and that her father's position had not changed even after

the birth of three children. She dreams and weaves fantasies of existing

in luxury which end when her father dies. Her first thoughts are that he

is a failure as he could not even struggle with death. He had left behind

him incomplete duties, responsibilities and empty tears. Therefore she

remarks:

There was no pity in me for him. Only contempt. God, let me

not live like that. Let me not die like that, having achieved

nothing, been nothing. Not once that I could say ... My Baba

said this. He said nothing that was not trivial, did nothing that

had any meaning. I searched and searched the whole of his life

for a meaning and didn't find it (Mi: 25).

Her perceptions of her father change when she notices the letters in

his briefcase and learns of the help he had tried to activate to help her.

This reconciles her to him. The story illuminates the distance between

daughter and mother but the focus shifts to the father and the reaction of

the daughter to the father's image.

The Independent Mothers

The mother in "Connection" ( M O is the link between the

daughter and her maternal ancestors. One confronts the mother who is

proud and thinks highly of herself as witnessed later in "Princess Ida".

The Mother in "Connection" (MOJ) thinks very highly of her family:

"people who thought so highly of themselves in Dalgleish would be

laughable to the leading families of Fork Mill" (MOJ: 6). The mother

and aunts of the narrator try to picture the grandfather and tell stories of

him. Her mother believed that "the grandfather had been a student at

Oxford and had lost all his money7' (MOJ: 7). This mother who is taken

up by her being from gentility is not the only picture presented to the

reader. The mother is also a businesswoman, a trader and dealer as

revealed in the subsequent story, "The Stone in The Field" (MOJ). The

mother here pities her husband's sisters and thinks that they could

change their lives. To her life is full of possibility and change. It is the

image of this mother that is portrayed to us more fully in the story

"Princess Ida" ( L O .

The eccentric mother who is at the same time also an independent

mother (whom one notices in glimpses in "Connection" and the

following story "The Stone in The Field" - MOJ) is encountered in

"Princess Ida" (LGW). The introductory sentence that introduces her is

the sentence "Now my mother was selling encyclopaedias" (LGK 54).

Though Del finds her mother an eccentric, she still feels the need to

shield her mother from the remarks made by her aunts. Del's mother is a

far-sighted woman. She sells encyclopaedias but she believes in selling

them as she thinks that knowledge is "warm and lovely" ( L G E 55). To

Del's aunts the knowledge of the mother is an oddity. Del's mother

knowing about the gathering of information by Del turns her into an

exhibit in order to promote her sales. She also takes courses such as

"Great Thinkers of History" (LGF 662) and writes letters to newspapers.

Though Del is distanced;; from her mother, she finds that her mother

has lot of stories to tell her- stories of the past. She knew that her mother

had not left anything behind: "Inside that self we knew, which might at

times appear blurred a bit, or side-tracked, she kept her younger

selves ...; scenes from the past were liable to pop up any time, ... against

the cluttered fabric of the present" (LGK 62). On the day, she visits

Del's school, Del is ashamed because: "She was so different, that was

all, so brisk and hopeful and guileless in her maroon hat, making little

jokes, thinking herself a success". Del thinks that others pity and

sympathise with her because she has such a strange mother. Del could

not bear "the tone of her voice, the reckless, hunying way she moved,

her lively absurd gestures ..., and most of all her innocence, her way'of

not knowing when people were laughing, of thinking she could get away

with this". This had caused her to hate. She, however, knows the fact

that she herself is not very different fiom her mother but tries to conceal

it (LGW 68).

33 Lorna Irvine in her study "A Psychological Journey: Mothers and

Daughters in English-Canadian Fiction" notes:

The psychological journey that appears in so much of this

fiction reveals the ambivalence that characterizes the

daughter's feelings about her mother (1980: 243).

Del's mother remarks "There is a change coming I think in the

lives of girls and women. Yes. But it is up to us to make it come. All

women have had up till now has been their connection with men. All we

have had. No more lives of our own, really, than domestic animals"

(LGV: 146). She had learned from her mother the need for self-respect.

Initially she had rejected her mother's views but later in life she takes

her advice. Her own self-reflective words illustrate this point:

I would have had to resist anything she told me with such

earnestness, such stubborn hopefulness. Her concern about my

life, which I needed and took for granted, I could not bear to

have expressed. Also I felt that it was not so different from all

the advice handed out to women, to girls, advice that assumed

of carefulness and solemn fuss and self-protection were called

for, whereas men were supposed to be able to go out and take

on all kinds of experiences and shuck off what they didn't

want and come back proud. Without even thinking about it, I

had decided to do the same (LGK 147).

The stories discussed reveal a conflict existing between the

mothers and daughters. The daughter has to be distanced as noticed in

Munro's "Boys and Girls" (DHS), "Why a Robin" (Mir), and

"Providence" (WDY) because she has to find a role model to imitate and

the father's image is a more powerful one. This distancing changes

when the daughter passes through the phases of becoming a woman,

namely passing through the phases of adolescence and puberty and thus,

she recognises the body of the mother and the meaning of femininity.

This recognition makes the daughter accept the mother as perceived in

stories such as "The Ottawa Valley", "The Peace of Utrecht" (DHS) ?

"Friend of My Youth" (FOY), and "Red Dress" (DEB). The daughter in

spite of having a dominantipassive mother recognises that there is a

knowledge flowing between them that is "subliminal, subversive" and

"preverbal" (Rich, 1976: 220). This leads her to get reconciled with the .

mother as depicted in stories such as "Royal Beatings", "Spelling"

(WDY). Writing about the experience of mothering Adrienne Rich

states:

It is hard to write about my own mother. Whatever I do write,

it is my story I am telling, my version of the past. If she were

to tell her own story other landscapes would be revealed. But

in my landscape or hers, there would be old, smouldering

patches of deep-buming anger (1 977: 22 1).

It is this vision that one notices when the daughter becomes the

observer and the story teller but the past can also help to overcome guilt,

and achieve a wider view of the society and the connection between

things as witnessed in stories such as "Oh, What Avails" (POL) and "It

Was The Nightingale" (Gale). This recognition and relevance of life

finally leads to mothers who are able to move from being mothers into

whole women as illustrated by the growth of the characters--Rose

(WDY), Del (LGW), Jayu (Gale), and Alka (Leg). To sum up, it is

significant to recall words from Rich's Of Yoman Born:

We are, none of us, "either" mothers or daughters: to our

amazement, confusion, and greater complexity, we are both.

Women, mothers or not, who feel committed to other women,

are increasingly giving each other a quality of caring filled

with the difhse kinds of identification that exist between

mothers and daughters. Into the mere notion of "mothering"

we may carry, as daughters, negative echoes of our own

mothers' martyrdom, the burden of their valiant, necessarily

limited efforts on our behalf, the confusion of their double

messages (1 976:253).

To achieve wholeness and reshape oneself it is necessary for

mothers and daughters to accept not only one another but also the

different selves that exist within them.

VOICES

Connection. That was what it was all about. The cousins were a show in themselves, but they also provided a connection. A connection with the real, and prodigal, and dangerous world

-- MOJ (6).

These words indicate the need for connections to know oneself.

Women's identity is not shaped individually but in relation to others

around them. The gender pattern of socialisation adopted by society has

resulted in forming different patterns of identification among men and

women. Men learn self reliance, and self dependence while women learn

to take care of others and to thwart themselves. Women, thus, adopt a

lifestyle that bonds them with others. They are intimately linked to other

people and they do not realise the care-taker roles that they adopt. Many

psychologists like Chodorow and Gilligan feel that women are close to

their mothers and that they learn to connect themselves while men adopt

separation (1985, 1990). This may be seen as a disadvantage but the

argument is that one needs to think more positively about this attitude.

Commenting on this problem, Dana Crowley Jack states that "Aspects

of self-development such as creativity, autonomy, competence, maturity

and self-esteem develop within the context of one's closest ties to

others" (1 99 1 : 13).

Through the various relationships within family and outside it,

women begin to understand the split in themselves. They realise that

they have allowed other voices to nurture and grow within them, while

thrusting down their own true selves. This knowledge helps them to

develop their true selves, not in isolation but in connection with others

around them. The strength of their true identities is felt within women

when they connect with other women--their sisters or friends. Feminine

identity is partly nurtured by not only a bond of sisterhood but also in

relation to others in the family or society. It is observed that:

A woman forms images of self. ..that directly reflect her

interpersonal experiences--as able to give and receive love, or

as unable; as worthy of care and support from others, or as

unworthy; as free to be herself while maintaining connection,

or as unfree--a woman's social contexts, both in particular

relationships and in the wider world, fundamentally affect

these images of self (Jack, 199 1 : 16).

This chapter recognises the latent identities present in women

characters and bases the reading of the stories on the various

relationships, such as family ties, sibling relationships, friends and other

various connections.

Family Ties

The two sections of the story "Chaddeleys and Flemings" (MOJ)

present the connections existing between women. The image of women

is portrayed in Connection very vividly when the narrator describes her

aunts. She narrates that the term Old Maids could not be used as "it

would not cover them". Their body contours were richer and they had to

be called Maiden Ladies for:

Their bosoms were heavy and intimidating-a single, armoured

bundle-and their stomachs and behinds h l l and corseted as

those of any married woman. In those days it seemed to be the

thing for women's bodies to swell and ripen to a good size

twenty, if they were getting anything out of life at all; then,

according to class and aspirations, they would either sag and

loosen, go wobbly as custard under pale print dresses and

damp aprons, or be girded into shapes whose firm curves and

proud slopes had nothing to do with sex, everything to do with

rights and power (MOJ: 1).

This picture portrays the sexual apect as well as the power of the

female body. The story deals with the fact that women unmarried and

living their own lives are not to be pitied but are to be appraised for the

free existence that they lead. These aunts are not the ordinary old

maidens restricted by society. On the other hand, they are women who

talk not only explicitly about sex but also indulge in unladylike

activities such as smoking. They discussed the shopkeepers in

Dalgleish, they went berry picking, drank coffee, fished, dressed up in

odd clothes and took pictures of themselves, and made cakes (MOJ : 4).

The narrator recalls that the cousins were "audience and performers" for

each other (MN 5). They brought along with them a sense of drama

and in the larger world they had encountered "Accidents, proposals,

encounters with lunatics and enemies" (MOJ: 5) . These women provide

a connection with the reality of the world. They were people who knew

how to get on in the world: "They could command a classroom, a

maternity ward, the public; they knew how to deal with taxi drivers and

train conductors" (MU 7).

The narrator also learns from the aunts' and her mother's

discussions about the maternal ancestry. Later in life she realises that

they belonged to a decent working class background. She speculates on

this knowledge and thinks that if she had known this earlier she would

be shocked and credulous about it. Or she would have been triumphant

if she had learnt of it at a time when she was trying to strip away all

illusion and false notions. But at the time when she gathered this

information she was past caring ( M U 1 10).

She becomes aware when Cousin Iris is going to visit her that she

wants to show off to Richard, her husband, the relation who is decently

educated, well spoken, and moderately well-bred (MQJ 11). She

wanted the visit to go well:

I wanted this for my own sake. My motives were not such as

would do me credit. I wanted Cousin iris to shine forth as a

relative nobody need be ashamed of, and I wanted Richard

and his money and our house to lift me forever, in Cousin

Iris's eyes, out of the category of poor relation. I wanted all

this accomplished with a decent subtlety and restraint and the

result to be a pleasant recognition of my own value, from both

sides (MOJ: 12).

She h e w that to Richard and his family the background of the

family was important. Richard and his people disliked poverty. They felt

it was like an affliction and since Richard had married a woman fiom

such a background it was advisable for the wife to be amputated fiom

such a past which was like a shabby baggage (MM12-13). The visit of

Aunt Iris does not go well as she is not very subtle and all the facade

that the niece has built up for the aunt tumbles when she notices that

Aunt Iris is different and cannot be the personshe has portrayed:

Nothing fazed her; she was right. Nothing deflected her from

the stories of herself; the amount of time she could spend time

not talking was limited.. .How many conversations she must

have ridden through like this--laughing, insisting, rambling,

recollecting. I wondered if this evening was something she

would describe as fun. She would describe it. The house, the

rugs, the dishes, the signs of money. It might not matter to her

that Richard snubbed her. Perhaps she would rather be

snubbed by a rich relative than welcomed by a poor one. But

she had always been like this; always brash and greedy and

scared; decent, maybe even admirable, ...( MOJ: 16).

After the aunt's departure Richard comments on her talk and in a

fit of anger she throws a Pyrex plate at him. The plate misses him but

the pie in the plate catches him on his face and she is reminded of the

show, "I Love Lucy". At that point she realises that she had been

harbouring illusions and what is thought to be funny in drama is

shocking in reality. One cannot expect to cover up things and try to

change the pattern of life. She realises that life is like a dream and that it

is transformed "by these voices, by these presences, by their high spirits

and grand esteem, for themselves and each other (MOJ: 18).

"The Stone in the Field" (MOJ) reveals the patriarchal connection

of the narrator. The father's six sisters were seen as relics by other

people including the nmtor ' s mother. The description varies here very

much when one compares it to the maternal aunts. The image here is

that of leanness, tallness, plainness, paleness, closeness as opposed to

the roundness, the voluptuousness, the colourfulness, and the openness

of the maternal aunts. While the maternal aunts had used words and

performances to control and manipulate the world, the paternal aunts are

forever immersed in work. To them, work is something that must go on

and that which is never ending. The narrator understands from these

connections that one can never make up stories because as she says,

"Now I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and

communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognise. I

don't believe so" (MOJ: 35). What can be concluded is that life has

connections and that each one draws something fi-om the connections

and the voices of others: "My mother's cousins behaved in another way;

they dressed up and took pictures of each other; they sallied forth.

However, they behaved they are all dead. I carry something of them

around in me" (MOJ: 35).

The mother as noticed in the previous chapter "Providence" (CVDY)

becomes a distinct identity for the child. The narrator in "The Progress

of Love" (POL) recounts her mother's life and the arrival of her

mother's sister, Beryl makes her aware of the name that her mother has.

This awareness results in her thinking : "Marietta, in my mind, was

separate, not swallowed up in my mother's grown up body" (POL: 9).

Later when the narrator recalls her mother's life and the relationship that

existed between her parents she realises the importance of a married life

where the husband and wife realise the importance of each other's

actions: "People doing something that seems to them natural and

necessary. At least, one of them is doing what seems natural and

necessary, and the other believe that the important thing is for that

person to be free, to go ahead" (POL: 30). This revelation makes her

aware of the "moments of kindness and reconciliation" that one must

have:

I wonder if those moments aren't more valued, and

deliberately gone after, in the set-ups some people like myself

have now, than they were in those old marriages, where; love

and grudges could be growing underground, so confused and

stubborn, it must have seemed they had forever (POL: 3 1)34.

The story "The Queer Streak" (POL) by Munro reveals the

34 Commenting on this conclusion E. D. Blodgett states: No matter how fitting this comment is as closure for this story, it does not permit us to forget the relation the narrator establishes between the narration, tkuth and self, and the degree to which narration detkrmines a truth of self, even if its truth is at variance with "facts". The truth is perhaps all the more compelling simply because it includes belief, awareness

' of illusion, and the necessity to narrate one self at the expense of another (1 989: 148).

sacrifice of the protagonist Violet for her family. The protectiveness of

Violet towards her sister breaks her marriage in "The Queer Streak"

(POL). She is engaged to be married to Trevor, a minister. The story

begins like a fairy tale with the words, "Violet's mother--Aunt Ivie--had

three little boys, three baby boys and she lost them. Then she had three

girls". The opening proceeds to narrate the names of the three sisters--

Opal Violet, Dawn Rose and Bonnie Hope. The story has very close

links to the Cinderella myth. Though the mother is not cruel she is

embodied into the framework of the story not as a mother but as an aunt.

Violet's wanderings into the waste ground are reminiscent once again of

the story tale where the unhappy girl takes refuge in the wilderness, but

in this the myth is reverted by the rehge being a waste-land. The picture

of the king in their parlour promises to her the riches that the future

holds for her. "That seemed a promise to Violet; it was connected with

her future, her own life, in a way she couldn't explain or think abouty'

(POL: 209). This reference to a king and a rich future is once again

shaped in a different way in the narration as Violet does not get married

to the prince of her dreams, Trevor. The myth is structured into several

frameworks and one finds that the father is named King Billy Thomas

and there is also a horse called King Billy. The derivation of the title

'King Billy' is cloaked in mystery and is left without an explanation.

Munro by portraying the father as a red head and by highlighting the

fact of Aunt Ivie's long maidenhood and subsequent marriage with the

red head manages to clothe the story in a layer of mystery and credulity.

Aunt Ivie works outside and like Cinderella, Violet is left to take care of

the house and manage the sisters.

Violet later has changes in her life. Her move away from home for

further education changes not only Violet but also her relationship with

the family. She finds that she has lost power over them and can no

longer control them. Also the younger sisters share a secret between

them which finally changes the course of her life. The other change that

happens is in the love that develops between Trevor, a minister and

Violet. Trevor's style of life gives her a vision of a different world

besides her own. The engagement does not take place as Trevor learns

of the anonymous threatening notes written to King Billy by Violet's

sister, Dawn Rose. He thinks that as he was a minister it was not right

for him to marry a girl from a family, where lunacy may prevail. The

door to her future gets closed by this innocent yet evil action of her

sister. She remains unmarried and comes back home. Her sisters,

however, leave home, marry and settle while she gets stuck in the same

place. The myth of Cinderella thus reverses and instead of gaining

riches Violet is back at her place near the hearth.

Munro by freeing Violet from the bond of marriage seems to

endow a particular independence to Violet. In Dane's narration one

finds that Dane remembers her as a professional woman. Dane knows

that:

Nothing in her [Violet] wanted to be overtaken by a helpless

and distracted, dull and stubborn old woman, with a memory

or imagination out of control, bulging at random through the

present scene. Trying to keep that old woman in check was

bound to make her short-tempered. In fact, he had seen her--

now he remembered, he had seen her tilt her head to the side

and give it a quick slap, as people do to get rid of a buzzing,

unwelcome presence (POL: 244).

Thus, one finds that Violet is not broken down by the events in her

life but is able to revive herself and emerge not only as a successful

professional but as also a protector of her family. The fairy tale ending

is changed to depict the freedom and determined spirit of the heroine.

Such a development is also noticed in the sequence stories WDY.

~ o s e ' relationship with her father too is quite different. He attempts to

thwart her pride in "Royal Beatings" (WDY) by his violent beatings.

Rose understands that he is as much the actor in that as she herself is.

Rose when she is slightly grown up ("Half a Grapefruit") never replies

to his general remark, "'Look out you don't get too smart for your own

good"' (WDY: 47). Nevertheless she knows that her father was aware of

all her hopes, ambitions and desires. This knowledge that her father

knows her inner truths makes her feel guilty. "She felt that she disgraced

him, had disgraced him somehow from the time she was born and would

disgrace him still more thoroughly in the future" (WDE 47). The gender

expectations are pointed out by Munro in this context. To him Flo is the

illustration of what a woman is:

Flo was his idea of what a woman ought to be. Rose knew

that, and indeed he often said it. A woman ought to be

energetic, practical, clever at making and saving; she ought to

be shrewd, good at bargaining and bossing and seeing through

people's pretensions. At the same time she should be naive

intellectually, childlike, contemptuous of maps and long

words and anything in books, full, of charming jumbled

notions, superstitions, traditional beliefs (WDY: 47).

Thus, Rose realises that being female was a mistake. She also

realises that she had all the bad qualities that her father felt a woman

should not have. ~hi ;?s that her father had submerged in himself had n

developed in Rose. She is unlike her father, in that she is unable to do

any skilful task with her hands , and is quite clumsy with her hands. She

also knows that in spite of all her father's ideas, her father is proud of

her.

The paternal and maternal aunts that we notice in "Chaddeleys and

Flemmings" (MOJ) are revived in "The Heirs of The Living Body"

(LGW) in the form of Aunt Elspeth and Aunt Grace. They have inherited

the characteristics of hard work as well as playing jokes and telling

stories. These aunts change colours when they are in Del's house. They

would become "sulky, sly, elderly, eager" when they were in Del's

house. Del notices that the relationship between her mother and her

aunts take different twists. They are shocked by Addie's (Del's mother)

"outrageousness", and her "directness". While Addie talked in straight

terms, the aunts talk had many layers to it. They recognised Addie's

ability but they disliked the way she displayed it:

They acknowledged it in their own family, our family. But it

seemed the thing to do was to keep it more or less a secret.

Ambition was what they were alarmed by, for to be ambitious

was to court failure and to risk making a fool of oneself. The

worst thing, I gathered,: the worst thing that could happen in

this life was to have people laughing at you (LGK 32).

The two aunts as they go older appear to Del like two constructed

pieces and appear quite inhuman as they are removed from men who

would have admired and given them life. From her uncle Craig, Del

inherits the tradition of chronicling the lives and being a writer.

"The Cruelty Game" ( k t ) and "And Then" (Int) are stories that

exhibit the relationship between children and their grandparents and

their own parents. Both the stories once again rake up a number of

questions pertaining to the power and the hierarchical structure existent

in Indian families. A widow, Aunt Pramila along with her daughter,

Sharu comes to live in her in-laws house after the death of her husband

in the story "The Cruelty Game" (Int). The story centres around two

happenings, namely the treatment that Aunt Pramila receives from the

other members in the house and the treatment meted out to the young

girl, Sharu by the other children in the house. The socialisation of the

woman is seen in the way Aunt Pramila is alienated and distanced from

all others. The narrator observes, "It was strange how all the women had

become friends since Pramila auntie came home. Prarnila auntie didn't

seem to mind that they rarely spoke to her. Her work done, she went to

her room and stayed there". Her powerless situation is revealed when

the narrator comments that "She never spoke even when she saw us

tormenting Sharu; she just looked at us" (Int: 125). The other children in

the house, too, torment the young Sharu by making her a butt and

tricking her. Their playfulness goes to the extent of making her jump

into a pit and causing physical harm to her. The day Sharu has her

birthday, all the children in the house gather for a simple party but this

is spoilt by not only the children's cruel pranks but by the abuses heaped

on Aunt Pramila by her mother-in-law. Finally unable to find any solace

in the house, Pramila aunt leaves the place along with Sharu.

The bond existing between parents and children and between

gandparents and grandchildren is the focus of "And Then" (Intj. The

grand daughter, Dipali and the grandmother share a bond of friendship

and love, but Dipali's mother, Asha feels that her mother-in-law spoils

her child. The old woman is aware that she is helpless and cannot

change her status in the house though it is her son's place. She realises

that her two children had never cared for her life and her wishes. Her

daughter, Anju leaves home to study in the states and she feels cheated

because she had expected her daughter to get married and have children.

She is unable to move herself out of this expectation and visualises her

own grandmother's life:

What about my life? And I had thought then of my

grandmother who had six sons and two daughters and of her

hard callused hands- . .stopped working. And of how she died,

as she had lived, in the midst of her children and

grandchildren (lnt: 15 1).

These expectations of hers make her conservative and rigid. She is

unable to move out of her son's house and even when one of her

daughter's fiiends requests her to rent her house for her stay, she

behaves snobbishly. Her behaviour i s moulded by the fact that Shaku

her daughter's friend is a woman who has walked out of her marriage

and left her husband. Her open outright behaviour causes anger in the

old woman and she thinks that she is being humiliated, exposed and

shamed by the request of Shaku for a place to stay (Int: 154). Her

"smug, narrow and self-righteous" attitude is reflected even by her son,

Vishwa who approves of her decision. His words reflect the attitude of

what society expects from a woman:

"I'm glad you think that way, Amrna. I didn't want to say

anything yesterday--I saw her speaking to you--but I didn't

like the way she forced herself in. I know she's Anju's fiiend,

but she's a woman who's left her husband. We don't know

why ...." (Int: 156).

Sibling Relationships

Munro's "Visitors" (MQJ) portrays a different sort of connection, a

sort of mysterious strain that exists between the brothers, Wilfred and

Albert and the sisters, Grace and Vera. Mildred, the narrator and the

wife of Wilfred comments that "Brothers and sisters were a mystery to

her. There were Grace and Vera, speaking like two mouths out of the

same head, and Wilfred and Albert without a thread of connection

between them" (MU 212). The story at one level portrays the reunion

of two brothers but at another level it displays the stories that people

weave and how the stories link up some hidden truths. Mildred becomes

aware when Albert narrates a story of the difference in storytelling

between Albert and Wilfied:

In Wilfked's stories you could always be sure that the gloomy

parts would give way to something better, and if somebody

behaved in a peculiar way there was an explanation for it. If

Wilfred figured in his own stories, as he usually did, there was

always a stroke of luck for him somewhere, a good meal or a

bottle of whiskey or some money. Neither luck nor money

played a part in this story. She wondered why Albert had told

it, what it meant to him (MOJ: 21 5).

E. D. Blodgett discussing this story thinks it is like a "comic

puzzle" and the difference in story telling reminds one of "Munro's own

practice in various modes" (1988: 121). The fact is that the story that

Albert narrates is what happens, not a story ( M U 215). Blodgett

emphasises in his commentary the story that "the story 'that happened',

is, of course, no truer than any other, but its telling is so designed,

wittingly or not , that it comes closer to the real than Wilfred's kind,

which has a more perceptible design" (1987:122). The reality strikes

home and the story concludes with Wilfred crying over the loss of the

connection between his brother and himself.

Munro's "Something I Have Been Meaning To Tell You" (SIB) is a

story that portrays the intricate bond that exists between sisters. One is

reminded of the fairy tales with the pattern of a good sister and a bad

sister. Et and Char cannot be thrust into these frameworks of a good

sister and a bad sister and yet the story points at two different

representations. One finds that while Char takes on the role of being a

lady of society, Et is the dressmaker weaving, patterning, and designing

clothes to make her sister the best dressed woman in society. Char is

always the cold, distanced actress whom no one can approach. She is

bent on grabbing attention. This is illustrated by her trying to kill

herself, by drinking blue ink when she hears that her lover, Blaikie

Noble marries a lady ventriloquist. To Et, her sister is a woman who has

the qualities of a legend and she felt that this personality contradicted

because Char and her ethereal beauty did not seem to be able to exist in

the reality of the world. Discussing the story, Carrington feels that Et is

the controller, the voyeur and Char is the controlled. She mentions that

Et controls Char by exposing her to public criticism. The manner in

which she dresses Char who is not just her sister but also the wife of a

school teacher motivates the town people to view her with hostility. The

story also falls upon the myth of Arthur and Guinevere and Arthur and

Char are seen as representations of these characters while Blaikie is

symbolised as Lancelot. E. D. Blodgett, too in his study of the story sees

Et as a manipu1ato1-35, and notes all Et's remarks however offhand are

35Martin, however, specifies a different outlook. He thinks that Et alters and makes do and uses her dress making instincts to exist. He

made to fit into a design. The names of the characters and the town they

live in all signify a certain meaninglessness. The town is called Mock

Hill and it does seem as the story proceeds that Et is mocking Char for

her beauty. The title of Arthur links the teacher with the legendary

figure and in the story Arthur is the school teacher, the man who instead

of being magnificent and splendid looks like a fool. His adoration of

Char changes Char into a mysterious person and Et wishes to tell him of

her suicide attempt, but not wanting him to feel mocked, she does not do

so. Char, the word signifies something burnt and one feels that Char is

burnt and only symbolises a ghostly figure. Et's name in Latin signifies

the conjunction 'and'. One does find that the story has to be linked with

Et and cannot stand on its own. As pointed out by Blodgett, the story

reminds one of c'Mwm"s own preoccupation with the legendary

dwelling in the real, investing the real with qualities that make it

timeless. This again removes fiom the story a sense of time's urgency,

permitting the apparently real to reflect upon legend in both earnest and

game" (1988: 79).

The theme of differences between sisters forms part of the story,

further adds that while dressmaker, Char is the wearer of the dresses. Therefore Et does not have to make do with that of Char's. He states, "The disdainful, statuesque Char gets everything new and served up to her on a 'plate-everything except happiness. Et makes her own things, and achieves her own happiness, in spite of her handicaps" (1987: 120).

"Memorial" in SIB. June and Eileen display different characteristics. On

the death of her son, June does not display any grief but her body is

"humming as always with its separate power". It is Eileen who feels

edgy, and grief-stricken by the death of her nephew. June's kitchen is

organised and managed by "order and logic" while in Eileen's house the

garbage is thrown around and "her cupboards under their surface

tidiness bursting with chaos". Eileen lived irresponsibly. Eileen felt in

June's place "the weight of the world of objects". She thought they lived

a life buying and using which she feels is the "morality of

consumerism". Eileen, herself, not having much money was now a

"spendthrift, slipshod and content" (SIB: 210). June and her husband

having a great deal of money spent it as a "sense of responsibility" and

bought things which they thought were "necessary to the house" (SIB:

21 1). Thinking about their mother Eileen realises that June had got

around the problem of their mother by "majoring in psychology". Eileen

when she studied literature had discovered crazy mothers but she did not

know how to present such a mother to others. June, on the other hand,

"was able to present their mother to her friends with no apologies but

plenty of prior explanations and post-discussion. She made people feel

privileged" (SIB: 2 13). Eileen realises that "June had married Ewart and

set about establishing their life. While Eileen's life took any shape at all,

blown apart by crises, deflected by pleasures, June's life was built,

planned, lived deliberately, filled". In June's life there was "a lack of

drifting and moping" and occasions such as death were made the most

of (SIB: 214).

Eileen realises by the attitude of her sister that June has lost the

sense of values and has allowed herself to be changed. She has the

understanding that people die; they suffer, they die". Incidents such ass

illness and accidents have to be "respected, not explained". Just making

a show by "using words', she thought was shameful (SIB: 221). Finally

when June discusses her son's death with Eileen, Eileen has a

revelation:

In the mirror over the dresser Eileen could see her sister's

face, the downward profile, which was waiting, perhaps

embarrassed, now that this offering had been made. Also her

own face, surprising her with its wonderfully appropriate look

of tactfulness and concern. She felt cold and tired, she wanted

mostly to get away. It was an effort to put her hand out. Acts

done without faith may restore faith. She believed, with

whatever energy she could summon at the moment, she had to

believe and hope that was true (SIB: 226).

Friends

The slow development of friendship between Helen, the narrator

and Myra is the central idea of "The Day of The Butterfly" (Dm. Myra

is in the beginning the target of taunts and jeers by the school girls for in

the school she usually spends her time taking care of her younger

brother. One day, Helen on her way to school, notices Myra and her

brother walking ahead. Helen observes that Myra is glancing back and

feeling important she calls out to her and walks with her to school. From

that day there develops between them a silent understanding. Later,

Myra develops leukaemia and is admitted into hospital. Soon in school

Myra becomes "fashionable" because the girls think that she is fieed

from all the conditions imposed on them by school and life. When Helen

visits Myra in hospital, Myra offers her a small purse as a gift, but Helen

does not wish to take it as she thinks that Myra has lost her importance

for the present.

"Mrs Cross and Mrs Kidd" (MOJ) discusses the differences that

exist in individual lives even though two people may have remained

linked as friends all through life. The first part of the story stresses the

different lives that the two women have led. The narrator comments that

though younger people would think that their being close friends for a

long period of time, they may have everything in common. Yet the two

old women know that their lives are separate and this is illustrated by

the number of things that separates them (MOJ: 161). Martin in Paradox

and Parallels states "The differences seemed total--social, religious,

intellectual, in the way they spoke, in the games they played, and in

almost every conceivable aspect of life, even progressiveness"

(1979:150). Their stay at Hilltop Home brings them together but even

here their lives twist and separate. Mrs Cross takes over Jack, hoping to

control and use her power over him while Mrs. Kidd becomes friendly

with Charlotte who is willing to be mastered by Mrs. Kidd. The two old

women do not have any disagreements but they only resort to spending

less time together. The story reveals the different friendships both

women go through and how finally they are once again united. As

Martin comments, "The old ladies heal the slight breach between them,

and their second coming together reinforces the quite unsardonic irony

that there can be real affection even in old age, when the basis for it is

mutual need and loneiiness" (1987:150). The sisterly affection that

exists between the two women empowers them and enables them to

overcome their differences. Martin's concluding comments about this

story are valid in this context:

Mrs. Cross is a companion able and generous soul whose

goodwill is simple and patent but Mrs. Kidd is more

remarkable. Cultivated, tactful, self-critical--she checks

herself for tending to boss Charlotte--with a pride and dignity

that makes her unwilling to be an object of pity and yet do not

inhibit an uncondescending affection, she is a character of

convincing distinction. With her dignity, insight and reticence,

she might have been inclined to patronise or dismiss Mrs.

Cross as ignorant, prying, and indeed "common" but in the

final incident she unobtrusively risks her life for her,

demonstrating a full sense of sisterly affection (1 987: 15 1).

Munro's "Jesse and Meribeth" (POL) reflects on the feminine bond

that develops between two young girls. The nature of this friendship is

very well brought out by the narrator, Jesse. She thinks that two girls

bound in the web of friendship would never tell each other's secrets and

also would not hide anything from each other. Their bond would be

constant and they would not enter into friendships with others. Even

after marriage their loyalty to each other would remain. Their daughters

would be named after their friends and would be ready to help each

other out whenever they could. Believing in these romantic notions of

friendship, Jesse prevails upon MaryBeth to swear and promise and

confide to strengthen their bond (POL: 163). Their life meanders and

courses through school and then their lives part when they enter into

different courses of study. Jesse takes up graduate school and Marybeth

takes typing and bookkeeping course and begins working at an

insurance agent's shop. During their friendship, Jesse makes up stories

about the people for whom she works--the ,Cydermans. She romanticises

Mr. Cyderman's interest in her and tells MaryBeth about the growing

sexual intimacy between them. When they meet years later, Jesse is

reminded of her lies and her relationship with Mr. Cydeman. She then

realises as she leaves MaryBeth that there are changes as one grows up

from fifteen to seventeen and seventeen to nineteen. She thinks of

Marybeth and her growing sweeter and fatter, while she visualises the

Crydermans fixed in their life while she herself would be "shedding

dreams and lies and vows and errors". But she at that stage of life does

not realise that: "I didn't see that I was the same one, embracing,

repudiating. I thought I could turn myself inside out, over and over

again, and tumble through the world scot-fiee" (POL: 188).

In "Mischief' (WDY) Rose meets Jocelyn with whom she develops

a sisterly bond. Their friendship is like "one of those luxuriant

intimacies that spring up in institutions; in schools, at camp, in prison".

They behaved as in school disobeying and doing things that pleased

them. "They walked in the halls", "they annoyed and mystified the other

women" and "they became hysterical" from what they read. They did

not read any deep philosophical books but stuff like True Love and

Personal Romances (F!DY: 104). They discussed their childhood, their

adolescence, their youth and their marriages. Through Jocelyn she meets

Clifford and the final act of lovemaking with Clifford along with

Jocelyn reveals to her the true nature of her relationship with them.

The friendship of Del and Naomi in LGW is very much like the

friendship between Rose and Jocelyn in WDY. Del realises that having a

fiiend curbs one's freedom but it also extends and resonates life. They

did many things together in school but later they change paths. Del goes

on to higher studies while Naorni moves into the field of secretarial

practice. Another such friendship between two women is that of Del's

mother, Addie and Fern Dogherty. They were friends, in spite of

differences .

"Marrakesh" (SIB) conceptualises the role of a voyeur. Dorothy

and Viola, two old women live together. Dorothy and Viola find it

"economical" to live together, even though they were different types.

"They drew comfort .from each other's presence in the way young

quarrel some do, or long-married apparently uncogenal couples", the

comfort they felt was deep down and on the surface all that they

displayed was "wariness, irritation7' and "comfort for strategy" (SIB:

160). Dorothy is aware of the changing life style around her. She

observes that her grand-daughter, Jeanette's existence is very different

from her own. She is tolerant and takes a positive view of life. Even

when Jeanette thinks that the town is being destructed by all the

technology and new knowledge, she feels like pointing out that the

scientists had worked hard enough to root out diseases which had no

remedy some years back. She strongly feels that one must be thankful

for the life one has. This aspect about thankfulness is finally stressed in

the conclusion of the story when she sees Jeanette and the neighbour

copulating: "Strength is necessary, as well as something like gratitude, if

you are going to turn into a lady peeping Tom at the end of your life"

(SIB: 174).

Anita and Margot's fiiendship ("Wigtime") is another story where

the friendship is rooted in differences. They could not meet at each

other's places for Anita's mother disapproved of Margot and her family

and Margot's house was always in a state of "crowdedness and

confusion" and the presence of her violent father, forced the friends to

meet in the cold at a store on the highway. The store was managed by

Teresa who was married to Reuel, the bus driver. Anita and Margot

generally discussed Reuel and his looks. Margot having a father who

was violent and having noticed the family tensions had a great contempt

for men: "Margot called lovemaking "carrying on7' . . But it had occurred

to Anita that this very scorn of Margot's, her sullenness and disdain,

might be a thing that men could find attractive in a way that she herself

was not" (FOK 251). They also discussed and experienced many

happenings at school together and also went for walks to downtown

where they did window shopping. They thus, passed through a stage

when "they could never be unhappy, because they believed that

something remarkable was bound to happen to them. They could

become heroines; love and power of some sort were surely waiting"

(FOE 253). They also shared their ambitions and family; and also hid

some of their wishes. Anita, though she wanted to be an archaeologist or

a nurse never revealed this desire while Margot never talked of her

home and her father. Later their lives take different turns--Margot gets

married and has kids while Anita, becomes a nurse, gets married and

then divorced, earned money and completes her doctorate in

anthropology.

Anita is reminded of her appendicitis operation and her mother's

contemptuous remarks about Margot whom she believes is sneaky and

oversexed. She tells her that Margot had been having secretive

engagements with Reuel and had finally stayed back with him not going

home in the evening. "Her mother said that she had kept Anita in

ignorance. All this had happened and she had said nothing" (FOE 262).

The whole thing was proved as tmth as Teresa had tried to kill herself

and had now closed down the store. Hearing all this news Anita feels

what her mother wanted to convey is something quite different:

t ' ~ n i t a had a feeling that her mother was angry at her not only

because she'd been friends with Margot, a girl who had disgraced

herself, but for another reason as well. She had the feeling that her

mother was seeing the same thing that she herself could see--Anita unfit,

passed over, disregarded, not just by Margot but by life. Didn't her

mother feel an angry disappointment that Anita was not the one chosen,

the one enfolded by drama and turned into a woman and swept out on

such a surge of life? She would never admit that. And Anita could not

admit that she felt a great failure. She was a child, a know-nothing,

betrayed by Margot, who had turned out to know a lo&RX 262).

Margot had managed to get hold of a house but this was because

she had a controlling power over Reuel. She had seen him with another

woman and had threatened him with exposure of the affair which he

thought had been a secretive one. Anita hearing this secret of her

gaining the house has her own conclusions about Margot:

Anita thought that Margot might have given up on vanity but

she probably hadn't given up on sex ...

And what about Reuel--what had he given up on? Whatever he did,

it wouldn't be till he was ready. That was what all Margot's hard

bargaining would really be coming up against--whether Reuel was ready

or not. That was something he'd never feel obliged to tell her. So a

woman like Margot can still be fooled--this was what Anita thought,

with a momentary pleasure, a completely comfortable treachery- by a

man like Reuel (FOE 271).

Anita had herself divorced as she had the feeling one evening at a

restaurant that she cared more for a man she saw in the restaurant than

for her husband and decided that she can'tlive in such a marriage. This

revelation reminds one of "Differently" where the female character feels

she cannot exist in a make-believe marriage and that she cannot be

hypocritical. "Wigtime" (FOY) too has similar overtones, where Anita

gets out because she cannot pretend and the other, namely, Margot lives

a life where her husband may be cheating her.

Others

Munro's "The Office" portrays the bond that develops

between the writer and the man who rents the place. The story has

intertextual relationships with Woolf s idea of A Room Of One's Own.

Just as Woolf states the problem of a woman being unable to have some

time and space for her to write, the story portrays the anxiety of a young

woman writer to find a space for herself. The relationship that develops

between the landlord and the writer reveals to her the impossibility of

trying to be serious. The landlord's help and his insistence on trying to

meet the writer reflects the society's attitude towards women who wish

to be isolated and alienated from others. Any such pattern is seen by

society as a deviance from the normal. Munro commenting on this story

feels:

It is the landlord's clamorous humanity, his dreadful

insistence, which has to get the better of that woman seeking

isolation. It is also, but rather incidentally, about a woman's

particular difficulties in backing off and doing something

lonely and egoistical (1 993 : 194).

The fact that the writer is young, passive and docile made her the

victim of the man's patronising behaviour. His behaviour is summed up

by Munro when she discusses the writing of the story and the

autobiographical nature of the episode:

The landlord kept making suggestions for my comfort, and

bringing me things I didn't want, and telling me stories, ... My

being a woman, young and apparently docile, made me a

natural target for his heavy, wheedling, patronising, never

quite offensive attentions ... There was also in his conversation

a peculiarly enraging, sanctimonious smuttiness, and the

suggestion that maybe a writer wouldn't find these things he

related as shocking as he found them, because writers were

known to be broad- minded (1993: 193).

"The Turkey Season" (MOJ) sketches the working atmosphere and

the relationship prevalent among the workers. The narrator's working

world is filled with Lily, Marjorie, Gladys (gutters), Irene, Henry

(pluckers), Herb Abbott (foreman), Morgan Elliott, (owner), and his son.

The adolescent narrator for the first time is exposed to womenly talk.

Her talk with Gladys about appearances makes her realise that "there are

different ways women have of talking about their looks. Some women

make it clear that what they do to keep themselves up is for the sake of

sex, for men'. Others like Gladys think of it as a difficult job that they

are proud of (MOJ: 63). Marjorie's and Lily's discussion about Gladys

and Herb Abbott, "sprang from their belief that single people ought to

be teased and embarrassed whenever possible, ..." (MIOJ: 64). Their

curiosity was founded wondering how he lived his life, why he did not

have a wife, children and a home. As the narrator unravels all these inter

personal relationships she recalls that at that time there had been no talk

of homosexuals as it was thought to be "rare and confined to

boundaries". She ironically states that any man doing women's work

was a homosexual: "they really seemed to believe --the women did--that

it was the penchant for baking or music that was the determining factor,

and it was the activity that made the man what he was--not any other

detours he might take, or wish to take" (MOL 65). By the talk o f Lily

and Marjorie she realises that all adults' talk is very illogical and she

wonders at how their hands could be so efficient. She queries, "How

could these women's hands be so gifted, so delicate and clever-...and

their thinking so slapdash, clumsy, infuriating?" (MOJ: 68). Later when

she attempts to recollect the looks of her fellow workers, she finds that

she has many versions of it and once again one realises that the surface

can hide many aspects of truth.

There are different people who make an impact on the protagonist

Rose in the set of sequence stories WDY and one finds that these

characters enrich Rose's feelings in different ways. Rose's first

encounter is with the grotesque figure of Becky Tide, the abnormal and

mutilated girl. She is later in school enamoured by three big girls of the

Entrance Class. Though they are like three queens, she feels as if there

was one queen (Cora) and two princesses. Rose is enchanted by Cora

and to please her, she steals candy fiom Flo's store to give Cora. But she

is unable to offer it to her and tries to place it in her desk. Cora's friend

Doma sights her and she drops the bag. Cora takes the bag to Flo and

she does this not to make trouble for her but to enjoy herself: "She

enjoyed her importance and respectability and the pleasure of grown-up

exchange" (WDY: 37). Flo is shocked by Rose's action and asks her if

she was in love with Cora. Rose does not think of it in that way as she

feels that love is associated with "movie endings, kissing and getting

married. Her feelings were at the moment shocked and exposed, and

already, though she didn't know it, starting to wither and curl up at the

edges" (WDY: 38). In later years, she finds that Cora changes fiom a

queen into an ordinary personality: "Rose was not much bothered by

this loss, this transformation. Life was altogether a series of surprising

developments, as far as she could learn" (WDY: 38). Flo, however, keeps

reminding Rose about Cora and tries to change her not realising that

Rose had already become aware of feelings towards Cora.

"Who Do You Think You Are" (WDY) reflects a deviant figure,

Milton Homer who is taken care of, by his aunts, Hattie and

Mattie Milton. In school Rose meets Ralph Gillespie who does

imitations of Milton Homer. They share a number of traits and thus

become friends. Both Rose and Ralph lose their things--pencils, erasers,

rulers, compass, etc. Because of these regular features they help each

other out and share and learn to beg f?om others. "They developed the

comradeship of captives, of soldiers who have no heart for the

campaign, wishing only to survive and avoid action" (WDY: 203).

Ralph, later drops out of school and Rose meets him years later and has

a talk with him. She recollects her conversation with him in later days

and realises that it was bordered by sympathy, kindness and

understanding though they had not personally discussed any such

subjects. She realises that the shame she felt in herself had decreased,

and that she may have paid attention to the wrong things in her acting.

Her final reaction to his death is that she feels deep within her heart

there had been things that they both had shared very closely (VDE 209-

2 10).

Though a number of Deshpande's stories deal with family ties and

relationships, only three stories distinctly discuss relationships other

than the marital conflicts or mother and daughter conflicts discussed in

the earlier sections. "A Liberated Woman" (Leg) attempts to express the

notion of liberation and the depths such a term can hide. It is an ironical

statement on the question of liberation. A man meets years later a

woman whose family were friends of his. As the narrator points out he

had not only been a friend of her family, but had also been a colleague

of his (i. e. the man she gets married to). She is encouraged to marry him

by the family friend as he thought that , "It had seemed to me an

absurdity that two people so much in love should be kept apart because

of something so trivial as caste" (Leg: 23). Now twelve years later when

she meets this friend, she discusses with him her marriage and how it

has fallen apart. The friend is astonished to hear that her husband is

sadistic and abuses her. He wonders why she is still married to him, in

spite of the fact that she is a doctor. After she leaves him, he thinks of

her and is astonished:

Cc But what really astonishes me is her feebleness, her attitude of

despairing indifference. Surely she, an educated, earning, cornpe-tent

woman, has no right to behave this way ... to plug all her escape routes

herself and act like a rat in a trapl((leg: 29).

He is surprised because she refuses to divorce him as she thinks

that the children would know about the father. Thus, when he sees in an

article and her interview with her which has a very ironical heading:

I was idly turning over the pages, and suddenly, there she was,

her cool, poised face staring back at me almost arrogantly. It

gave me a little shock. I got a bigger one, though, when I saw

the title of the piece. It was, "A LIBERATED WOMAN".

Well! (Leg:29).

The stories discussed in this chapter reveal as to how stories can

become discoveries of underlying selves. The reader is made aware of

the existing conditions of women and is made to ponder on the

relationships that help women in understanding themselves.

CHAPTER V

SUMMIMG UP :

THE PHOTOG

Her [Munro's] art is stereotypic and also a complex counterpointing of opposed truths in a memorable model of life and reality. One form of this doubleness, or reciprocation, might be put like this: in vivid images and dramatic success she presents, and makes real and convincing, concepts that we usually couch in abstract terrns, cliches, and wordy description. Conversely, she changes common and familiar incidents with surprising meanings and dimensions

--Martin (1 987: 1)

Munro and Deshpande in their fiction are similar to photographers

for they capture the life of women. The question is how can they be

'photographers'. What do they capture in terms of women's lives?

Photography according to Webster's dictionary is the art or process of

producing pictorial images on a surface sensitive to light or other radiant

energy. Both these writers produce images on a surface, that is, in this

case, the women's minds and bodies. The emotions that they experience

being women is, what is captured by these two writers. The writers

present to the readers a picture of normal, everyday incidents at a point

of time. In a vein similar to photography, only the presence is captured

but one finds' that behind the presence there is a larger reality that is

hidden and can be unravelled only when one attempts to draw out the

reality that is lurking beneath the surface.

The photographer as an artist needs to record and reproduce reality

as closely as possible. This aspect is witnessed in the writing of Munro

and Deshpande. Stories that illustrate these are the town and people

descriptions in Munro's LGW and WDY. Deshpande, too, in stories such

as "The Valley in Shadow" (Dark), "The IntrusionV(Leg) and "A Wall is

Safer" (Dark) attempts to capture the reality of truth. But unlike Munro

she does not draw out the details of the settings and the colourings that

seep into the setting. This is not, however, a fault for a black and white

photograph depicts to us only the shades and does not tell us anything

more of the surroundings. Discussing this aspect of photography one is

reminded of John Berger and Jean Bohr's statement:

A photograph arrests the flow of time in which the event

existed. All photographs are of the past, yet in them an instant

of the past is arrested so that, a lived past, it can never lead to

the present. Every photograph presents us with two messages:

a message concerning the event photographed and another

concerning a shock of discontinuity (1 982:86).

Del in LGW too makes this point when she writes about the

photographer in her story:

People saw that in his pictures they had aged twenty or thirty

years. Middle aged people saw in their own features the

terrible, growing, inescapable likeness of their dead parents;

young fresh girls and men showed what gaunt or dulled or

stupid faces they would have when they were

fifty (205).

Thus what one does notice in the work of these two short story

writers is the depiction of being able to look at the oddity of life and

their ability to comment on the life of the people. This is also the power

of the camera. Susan Sontag remarks that the camera has the power to

catch so-called normal people in such a way as to make them look

abnormal. "The photographer chooses oddity, chases it, frames it,

develops it, titles it ..." (1977: 13 1). The photographer is able to reveal

the emotions and the feelings of the personality by a carehl and artisic

use of the camera. Munro and Deshpande, too, in their works display

such artistic abilities.

Munro also shares similar concerns about photography. In an

interview she comments: "I like looking at people's lives over a number

of years, without continuity. Like catching them in snapshots ...." She

further emphasises "I don't see that people develop and arrive

somewhere. I just see people living in flashes. From time to time. And

this is something you do become aware of as you go into middle

age .... Mostly in my stories I like to look at what people don't

understand" (Interview, Hancock, 89-90).

It is to be understood that women have hidden lives and stories that

are never highlighted. Borenschen in an article, "Is there a Feminine

Aesthetic" (ed. Gisela Ecker) affirms that women's stories have been

thrust away. Women's activities, their pasts, their lives are not to be

forgotten. Women's sufferings, their subjugations, their oppressions, are

part of a darkened cultural history. In this cultural lineage women artists

and their works just become shadows that are thrustaway ultimately

(1985: 3 1).

Munro commenting on the gendered roles perceived in some of her

stories states that until a girl is twelve or thirteen a girl feels fiee and

uninhibited. She is able to visualise life in terms of action, adventure,

heroism, power but this changes when she becomes aware of her sexual

nature. This transformation can be witnessed by a reader in the lives of

the characters such as Violet ("Queer Streak"), Del (LGW), Rose (FDT)

and the narrator in "Boys and Girls" (DHS). Munro further adds the girl

"understands that for her, participation in the world of action is not

impossible, but does hold great dangers, the greatest danger being that it

will make her not splendid, but grotesque" (186). Thus, the girl realises

that she has to wait and instead of being courageous, learn to be

beautiful. The full human powers are illusory and not as she expects it to

be. She is forced to accept this definition or will have to compromise

and Munro feels that this is where women have an advantage:

But this very denial of action, of full responsibility to the girl,

gives her a kind of freedom the young male in most societies

must give up. To be accepted, to be fully male, he cannot

criticise, he must sometimes participate in, whatever

bloodstained practices his society believes necessary to itself;

that, or become a revolutionary (Munro, 1 972: 1 86).

Feminine Identity:

Questioning women's subjectivity and the idea of identity one

finds that there are a number of factors that make their impact on this

subject. The woman heroine in these stories does not undergo struggle

but realises that there are factors that she has to consider in order to

develop herself. She does finally regain her self by accepting the

connections of life and accepting life in many of the stories instead of

trying to be a mythical, heroic character.

It is generally true that women are exploited, oppressed and

degraded in many societies but Munro and Deshpande instead of just

pointing and reaffirming these characteristics present women characters

with a future. One notices such characters in stories such as Jayu in "It

Was The Nightingale", Lalita in "A Man and A Woman" (Gale) and Del

in "Baptising7' (LGW) and Rose in "The Beggar's Maid" (WDY). These

characters understand that it is up to them to make their lives and they

make use of the openings whenever they can.

In the West the relationship of marriage and family is voluntary

and is in principle a contract that can be terminated when individuals

agree upon it. On the other hand, Indians regard the family as a strong

bond and as an upholder of cultural values and tradition. This makes it

difficult for any dissolution of marriage, once it is solemnized according

to traditional rites and rituals. Therefore, many women also reject

feminisim which they feel promotes individualistic attitude, egoism,

selfishness, sexual liberty and above all a destroyer of the family.

The number of women writing in India not only in English but also

in regional languages is a revelation of the changing phase of Indian

womanhood. Most of the writing is fundamentally a quest, within the

Indian context to know the true identity of women. The subjection and

oppression that women face is the major theme of women's writing and

yet these works differ as the perception of women's problems is based

on a complex social structure which does not enable an easy

understanding of the women's dilemma. The social structure in India

consists of various hierarchical levels and it is very difficult for a

woman to find her space and articulate as she is thrust into various roles

from her birth. It is relevant to know that most Indian women from the

middle classes have become aware of their problems due to an increase

in education. What Parikh and Garg thus state is true of Indian women:

Contemporary Indian women experience their life space a

battle ground between the prescriptive roles based on

idealised models of a bygone era and the emerging cognitive

map of modern society which pulls them towards wider

horizons. Caught between the traditional past and a future

inspired by their own dreams and aspirations, Indian women

walk a tight rope. They cany the burden of both traditional

and modem role expectations, yet are denied the privileges of

both (1989: 109).

One notices in such a discussion of identity that Munro's fiction is

more autobiographical and she uses events such as marriage, children,

lovers that have occurred in her life as the base for the stories. Catherine

Sheldrick Ross feels that she leads a double life, only pretending to be

like everyone else. "The idea of a hidden identity appears in many early

stories in the form of a watchful child observer, where watching is

associated with shame, betrayal, and exposure". Ross also points out

that in her later books, "the idea of a hidden identity appears as a

fascination with the theme of adultery" and the "double life it creates,

especially for a married wife and mother who is expected to live her life

for other people. Instead she can be living this secret, exploratory life"

(1990: 24). One notices such stories in her later collections, namely,

MQJ and FOX

Feminine identity one notices has created the myth of the 'super

woman'. Women are faced with the uphill tasks of standing upto men's

standards. They "face the nearly impossible task of breaking through the

glass ceiling of invisible barriers to achieve like men, while

simultaneously curbing the self to fit into the traditional glass slipper

that promises blissful relationship". It is such a crisis that has led to the

fact that women forget their own inner selves. Therefore it is difficult

for them to draw on any resources. Moreover even, "cultural myths or

images offer little guidance on how to be strong, or on how to be

authentic in relationships, or on how to combine self-development with

intimacy" (Jack, 1991 : 26-27). This is very true in Indian society where

one finds that stories from the epics are used to inspire women. A girl

child is always told to emulate characters such as Sita and Savitri, even

though many stories in the epics feature strong, rebellious women such

as Draupadi. Thus, instead of being a supporting structure, culture has

prepared and taught women to immerse themselves in self sacrifice. To

create a strong self one needs to explore differences and stick firmly to

one's own point of view. They must understand that it is not necessary

to abdicate their own perspectives and values. Women have through the

process of accommodating to cultural standards and practices, absorbed

the "male practice of discounting femininity itself--its knowledge, its

perspectives, its values" (Jack, 199 1 : 33).

The conventional, traditional route is a myth and an illusion that

creates not emanicipated but women who lose their identities. It has

been drilled into women's minds that the traditional route offers a safe

and secure future. But as a girl matures and adopts such a life-stye, she

notices that there is a "reduction of confidence, of possibilities" and of

her own true self (Jack, 199 1 : 44). When women try to fit themselves

into the ideas and notions of others, they realise that they deny their own

needs which causes dis-satisfaction and dis-iilusionment. No wonder

many women undergo traumatic, agonised lives not knowing how to get

out of it. Such instances are noticed in stories such as "My Beloved

Charioteer" (Dark), "Intrusion" (Leg) Bardon Bus (MQJ) and "A Man

and A Woman" (Gale).

Relationships, the locus of women's vulnerability to depression,

also take place within a historical and cultural context. Depression is

both individual and social; it combines the personal and the political.

The relational perspective asserts that the self is social. Mind and self

come into being through communication with others. One cannot heal

the self in isolation. Since "the individual is in the deepest sense

relational, and because women's vulnerability to depression lies in the

quality of their relationships, it is the self-in-relation that begs for

healing" (Jack, 1 99 1 : 20 5).

The roles of wife and mother bring together society's expectations

about the roles and importance of women with a woman's own personal

history, self-perception, and hopes. One also finds that such notions act

upon women's physical bodies: "women's bodies and nature have been

simultaneously defined, exalted, and devalued by a male-dominated

culture. This legacy of thought, and the long history of gendered

patterns of interaction, profoundly shapes women's self-perceptions".

Women have seen themselves as men perceived them and have

developed negative images of themselves: "a fear of the rounded female

form, evidenced by the rise in eating disorders; a devaluation of

feminine biological events such as menstruation, childbirth, and

menopause; a dismissal of feminine modes of knowing as intuitive,

irrational, or scattered" (Jack, 1991: 85). Such factors are illustrated by

the feelings of the women characters in stories such as "The Valley In

Shadow" (Dark), "Chaddeleys and Flemings" (MOJ), and

"Connections" (MUJ).

Women's orientation to relationships holds potential as well as

danger. Besides imposing a threat to identity, relationships often help in

restoring one's lost self. Some women who are damaged by

subordinating themselves to the images and needs of more powerful

others later recover their lost selves through relationships with others--

people who help them to express themselves as full and equal partners.

By exposing both the vicissitudes and the developmental potential of

relationships, women are able to know and value their identities and

they are thus, able to re-shape themselves.

The questions that arise at this point are: How can woman realise

herself? Where can she locate her self? What is one to do with the roles

that she carries. Woman thinks of freeing herself but it is difficult,

because even when holding a career, she still dons the role of nurturer,

provider. Even when she is employed at the so-called professional level,

if she belongs to one of the occupations traditionally held by women

such as teaching or nursing she "replicates the selflessness of

motherhood by focusing on the needs of pupils, patients, or clients

rather than by making her own mark" (1989: 21). Munro's story

"Eskimo" (POL) is an illustration of such an aspect.

Each woman's identity--the identity that each feels is authentic,

real, and true to who and what she is becomes obscure as she leads a life

based on the expectation that the female should focus on relationships

and tend to the needs of others. In many of Munro's and Deshpande's

stories one finds that the women have problem in sustaining the sense of

self and thinking of themselves as subject. Often we notice that their

"subordination to impossible feminine ideals imposed by a patriarchal

culture" interferes with the "development of the natural self' (Parikh,

1989: 234).

Short Story Genre:

Reviewing the short story form one notices that both the writers,

Munro and Deshpande have successfblly used the form in an innovative

manner to highlight the predicament and dilemma of women.

Commenting on the sequence stories, it is relevent to know what Tim

Struthers states:

Lives of Girls and Women has been called another collection

of short stories, a story-sequence, or a story-cycle; however, it

may be best be described as one of a fairly wide-ranging

variety of "open-forms", organised books of prose fiction

made up of autonomous units which take on extra resonance

and significance when combined with other related units.

Such "open forms" are ones to which short story writers are

especially attracted and which are usually created by the

revising and the structuring of separately composed, and

sometime previously published, short stories. Each organic

whole which results has a greater effect than one might expect

a simple combination of its parts to have, since an "open

form" is more unified than any miscellaneous collection of

short stories by a single author, and as unified as, though

formally different fiom, anything clearly describable as a

novel (1978: 123).

Catherine Sheldrick Ross talking about SIB says that the stories

deal with urban life, "adult experience, the complications of marriage,

and the barriers to communication between men and women, old and

young". This statement is true of Munro's other collections, too. She

adds that Munro's narrative technique convey what the characters

themselves despair of communicating, namely "the layers of meaning;

the implications in the lies, deceptions, and silences; the gap between

what the characters mean and what they are able to tell" (1992: 73).

LGW has been seen as a complex enactment of storytelling

processes by Prentice. He mentions that throughout the novel characters

not only share stories, but characters also become stories. The stories

received from literary, scientific, religious and many other traditions

influence and shape characters' lives. Through Del Jordan's narrative,

one notices that these story making processes help to build the world in

which she lives. At the same time, the narrative is also able to construct

her as part of that world. Within this set of sequence stories, the plot and

the subplot lose contexts as the narrative is arranged in such a way that

the traditional hierarchy of value is displaced. Del, does form the centre

of conflict in all the stories and yet the presentation of the stories occurs

in such a way that it is difficult to trace a linear traditional consecutive

narrative sequence:

The text becomes fabric which exists only in the inter-relation

of warp and weft. It can continue to be woven in any

direction, as the stories can continue to be told. There are

stories present in the text only as beginnings, and there are

statements of conclusion, alluding back to untold stories. All

can be likened to loose ends of story that have the potential to

be woven into the fabric but always resisting final closure

(1992: 30).

Postcolonialism and Feminism:

The appropriation of women is a theme persistent in the stories of

both Munro and Deshpande. One does find that the stories take a lot

from the colonial outlook, namely the appropriation of space and the

allusion to the imperial powers. It is to be pointed out that Munro's

stories do not tell us that "womanhood is a colonized tenito~y whose

inhabitants are enslaved7'. As Helaine Ventura points out "she does not

level her accusation at the male species in particular since she does not

portray the father as a bullying oppressor out to dispossess his wife and

daughter". She further emphasises that the father too is harassed and

oppressed: "Like her, he is enslaved by his f a , harassed by his work

and undoubtedly underpaid for his foxes ... The narrator's mother and

father are equally exploited without sex discrimination and they,

nevertheless, conform to gender roles as a further proof of their

subservience to a more powerful law" (1 992: 85). Such instances are also

seen in Deshpande's stories. Two good examples are that of the fathers

in "The Awakening" (Mir) and "The Intrusion" (Leg).

Postcolonial writing and reading thus display the strategies

necessary to survey the colonising processess. Therefore one notices in

the present context of writings that these two writers persistently search

for a 'voice'. One also notices that the writers modify the social

conditions to portray pictures of empowerment and of adoption of

subversive values to reveal the reality existent in women's life. They are

"subject to the historicising imperative, such that their strategies address

the impact of colonising processes on the present and the future"

(Prentice, 1992: 28 1).

Moreover, in Indian colonial period, it is perceived that the nation

had been linked to the mother image. As Sen comments the country had

become "the arena in which agreements and conflicts between the

colonial bureaucracy and the colonised middle class were played out".

She further adds that the country was not only the captive to be freed by

her morally inspired children but the central figure who created and

protected the sanctuary of the home, where the colonised intelligentsia,

besieged by the colonial ruler, could take refuge. In this process the

home was demarcated as a rehge and the separation of the 'home' and

the 'world' hardened in the dominant ideology. (1993: 233)

In this context the home becomes a private space where the

colonised could take refuge from their masters. This demarcation of the

'domestic' as a private space gave rise to the development of a separate

private space which was safe and secure from colonial intervention. In

such a situation women became bound to the home. It was inculcated in

them that while men were the fighters of the outer realm, it was the duty

of the women to provide the fighters. Thus, one notices that the

women's reproductive power was given more importance and

"housework and childrearing" became their only "legitimate concerns".

The assumption that men's and women's roles were complimentary

justified the designation of the home as the proper context for women's

activities. The moral health of the 'nation' was felt to depend on

conformity to these different but 'equal' roles" (1 993 : 233). Within such

an environment the ideology of motherhood became stronger. Women

were told that as they were the carriers of the future generation, they had

to revere their roles as mothers and give birth to children who were

strong and healthy in order to fight for the country. Also, the women to

build up the nation had to provide their children with a good educational

background. Women were, therefore, educated and taught to be good,

strong mothers. The whole theme of motherhood, thus, existed within

this framework.

Susie Tharu in an article in Recasting Women (ed. Kumkum

Sangari) tracing women's literature feels that:

This nationalist colour to what is really a common trend--

glorifying women who fulfil their wife and mother roles with

exceptional ardour--placed an enormous burden on the women

who came within its defining scope. It was the women, their

commitment, their purity, their sacrifice, who were to ensure

the moral, even spiritual power of the nation and hold it

together. But even as we point this, we must not forget that

this phase also made for a positive evaluation of femininity

that did not allow for a limited growth. And no parallel

phenomenon exists in the West (1980: 26).

Mother-Daughter Relationships:

This consciousness of motherhood and colonialism is replaced by

another ideology in the post-colonial context, namely, the mother-child

relationship. Women experience pregnancy as a splitting of their selves.

In other words, it is a "separation and coexistence of the self and of an

other, of nature and consciousness, of physiology and speech". This

identity crisis is boosted in an institutional, socialised manner indicating

to women that motherhood is the essence of womenhood. The fantasy

developes to indicate that the mother and child are one and there is no

existence of the self. The mother is asked to forget herself by being

responsible towards the child. There is an unconscious association of

women to the birth of children. A woman, unable to bear children is

viewed with sympathy and pity, especially so in Indian society. Such a

situation is witnessed in Deshpande's story "And, What's A Son"

(Gale).

This patterned, negative behaviour is taught by mothers to

daughters as the mothers are the exemplaries for the daughters. It is also

perceived that the mothers fear their daughters will meet with rejection,

isolation, and danger if they stray too far outside social norms that

govern gender interactions. In their attempt to save their daughters from

pain and loss, mothers unconsciously teach them methods of relating to

the male world. This leads to the development of women who are self-

effacing, self-sacrificing and highly accommodative.

Social and cultural values create a paradox in which the mother-

child relationship is intensified at the same time it is rendered impotent.

A mother exerts a powerful influence on the development of her child as

an individual while she is relegated to a powerless position in society.

She passes along the culture's devaluation of the feminine to her

daughter. Thus, weakness, submissiveness, power-lessness, not only

become associated with females, it also passes as essential trades fkom

mothers to daughters. Daughters thus, cannot overcome this inheritance

which disables and curbs them.

Mothers do not attempt to victimise their daughters. Daughters

themselves, inherit the quality of powerlessness that their mothers had

themselves acquired. Thus the daughters in these stories of MUKO and

Deshpande respond not only to the biological relationship between them

and their mother's, but also to the cultural/social context that

perpetuates this relationship. This cultural/social perspective of women

devalues their personalities. A daughter only sees a reflection of

dependence and weakness regardless of her mother's individual

strengths. Tne daughters as one notices in these stories in order to

negate the image of the mothers attempt to break away from them. But

this action is not easy. Thus women not only promote the dilemma but

also get entrapped. One way out of such a predicament is for women to

sustain relationships and to draw from it, thereby empowering

themselves.

A more sophisticated and complex response would take into

account women's wish to sustain relationships as well as to empower

themselves. By acknowledging the patriarchal traditions that frame and

give form to female powerlessness, daughters and mothers can give the

lie to the weakens and dependence the culture attributes to women. By

sympathising with the desperate position of a woman of whom both

husband and culture demand perfection, a daughter whose mother

demands perfection of her can temper her anger toward her mother. By

recognising the cultural pressures that set the borders of her own life, a

mother can temper her demands on her daughter. Mothers and daughters

together can resolve the common predicament of mother blame by

building on womanly strengths--a sense of connection with others, an

investment in sustaining relationships, mutual empathy, a commitment

to co-operation and mutual care--important qualities, often trivialised

and demeaned by the culture (Parikh, 1 989: 1 89- 1 90).

To conclude, one has to understand and evaluate women's lives

within the social and cultural perspectives. The future of such a study

lies in developing and enriching cross-cultural understanding which can

be understood in the words of Catherine Stimpson :

Such processes enhance, no matter how internally, a person's

sense of power and freedom. Reinforcing this is the

probability that reading is an indeterminate act. Because of its

very nature, a text can invite us to help create its meaning. As

we decide what it is all about, we are cognitively alert,

responsible, fecund, capable. We gain a sense of strength.

Simultaneously, we enter into what we have left of the world

of the text. We vicariously experience events and personalities

we might not meet in ordinary life--including dramas of

insubordination. We gain, then, a sense of possibility. If we

empathise with a character, we may also mitigate some

crippling illness, a self-perception of weird singularity. We

gain, finally, a sense of community (1988: 159).

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