daniel phd synopsis

8/11/2019 Daniel Phd Synopsis

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Empowering women in select novels of Jaishree Misra: A Study

R DANIEL RUBARAJ

The concept of womens rights came into being when some individuals began to experience a

chronic imbalance in gender relations and to realize that the unequal power-sharing between menand women is not actually an innate fact of life or an incontrovertible given but rather a viciouslycreated situation, an evil construct. This dawning of awareness gradually led to an active

opposition to the perceived injustice. At timesespecially in the early stagesthe resistance

was spontaneous and radical. But in due course of time, the victims of discrimination were ableto carefully formulate a definite methodology for the restoration of equal rights.

Such an intellectual handling of the issue led to great benefits. It helped women shed their

narrow focus and take on a more broad-based, pro-life vision of things. There also came arealization that the concept of womens rights cannot be a water-tight compartment because it is

organically linked to childrens rights. The two are inextricably interlinked. So women have

seen greater wisdom in evolving strategies that will work on a long-term basisstrategies thatwill not only help them lead more meaningful lives but assist the newer generations enjoy what

is rightfully their heritagea safe planet where there is no threat of nuclear holocaust and where

natural resources are seen as a common legacy, not the property of a few private individuals orMNCs.

When we think and talk about womens rights or any other rights, we cannot exclude certainterms and concepts that are specifically associated with them. In the field of literature we cannot

but take into consideration the dichotomous archetypal stereotypes that have worked against

womenthe angel or Madonna versus the virago or monsteror the dichotomous stereotypes

that have categorized men as constituting the centre and women merely forming the margins ofan essentially patriarchal social structure. We cannot ignore the clichd binaries that have

characterized the depiction of the male and the female as the Self and the Other; as the active and

the passive entities, as the reasonable and the passionate beings and so on. These perspectivesand terminologies also constitute a convenient theoretical framework for critics when they set

out to evaluate the worth of a writer or to examine the intensity of feminist commitment in that

writers canon.

Jaishree Misra, one of the prominent contemporary Indian novelist handles the issue of

empowering the marginalizedin her Novels. Misras literary career took off with the hugelypopular novel Ancient Promisesthat was published in 2000. Since then, she has written sixmore novelsAccidents like Love and Marr iage(2001), Afterwards(2004) and Rani(2007)

Secrets and li es(2009) Secrets and sins(2010) A Scandalous Secret(2011) and The li ttle book

of Romance,a collection of Romantic poems.

The reason for choosing Misra is simplefirstly, her works are woman-centric; yet her

characters do not conform to the staid stereotypes, probably used to expect from women-writers.Secondly and more importantly, Misraproblematizes the concept of womens empowerment.

Where does a womans power lie? Is it only in defying oppressive, male chauvinistic mores of

the society and deciding the course of her life? Or does it mean something more? Does


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empowerment provide a panacea for all her troubles? These are the questions which Jaishree

Misra fields, wittingly or otherwise, in her works and in doing so she seems to have cut her own

furrow. The novels selected for the study are,Ancient Promises,(2000)Afterwards(2004) and

Rani (2007) Secrets and sins(2010) A Scandalous Secret(2011)

A careful study of these novels reveal that Misra does not present the typical plot of a weak,

silent, suffering, voiceless woman who is trapped in an oppressive, male dominated atmosphere,gathers courage one fine day, breaks free of all restraints and walks bravely into a life of

intellectual, emotional and financial independence. Actually, her heroinesJanaki in Ancient

Promises, Maya in Afterwards and Manikarnika in Rani (who becomes Queen Lakshmibai ofJhansi)enjoy a lot of privileges. They are not weak, silent, suffering, voiceless women. All of

them are born into families that value and love the girl child, believe in educating her and accept

her right to articulate her thoughts and feelings. There is not even a hint of patriarchal

oppression as the father figures play a significant role in grooming the girl. The crisis comesonly when the family succumbs to the time-honoured Indian practice of marrying her off at a

relatively young age. But here again, the intentions are unquestionably noble; the family take all

precautions to ensure that the match works out well for hereither in terms of providing

companionship or greater prospects. It is in the depiction of marriage-related crises and theheroines overcoming of them that Jaishree Misra shows her uniqueness.

In Ancient Promises Janaki, a Keralite brought up in Delhi, falls in love with a north Indian boy

Arjun Mehta, when she is a wee wisp of a girl, a teenager. The parents are aghast at their

daughters unorthodox behaviour and object to the relationship. The lovers are prized apartArjun goes to England to pursue higher studies and Janaki is brought to Alleppey. Several

marriage proposals are discussed and finally a match with the Maraar family is fixed. Janaki is

terribly upset at the turn of events but she is not bulldozed into a marriage to Suresh. She thinks

over her situation:

The fact of Arjuns departure was just starting to sink in as something real and permanent. Hedgone, not for a month or a year but probably for ever. Ma was right, it was crazy to expect wed

ever share a future together. Wed always occupied different worlds, now it could have been

separate universes. (62)

And when she writes a letter to Arjun to inform him of her impending wedding, her justificationsdisplay a combination of rational thinking and filial loyalty:

Besides, she is given all assurances that she can pursue her studies. There is no compulsion

either from her husband or her rather strong-willed mother-in-law to start a family. But for allthese advantages, life does not move smoothly for her. Janaki is not whole-heartedly accepted

into the Maraar family. The reasons are difficult to pinpoint, the harassment is hardly overt or

brutal. And it is in a bid to gain acceptance that Janaki herself decides to put her studies in the

back burner and start a family:Perhaps, just perhaps, having a child would solve my problems more easily than a BA and a job.

Thats what Id do. Id have a child! She, as their grandchild, would be loved. Especially if she

turned out to be the much-longed-for first grandson. And, as his mother, Id receive a sort ofinstant double-promotion, so to speak. Be elevated to the position of Good Mother and Good

Daughter-in-Law. And spin out the rest of my days basking in a kind of reflected glory and

blissful motherhood. (113)


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But things do not go according to plan. Her child, a daughter Riya is detected with learning

disability and this defective baby gives the Maraar family a strong reason to be dismissive of the

mother-daughter duo. Interestingly, it is at this point that Janaki casts off her deferential attitude

and becomes openly rebellious.She [Riya] was not going to provide me with a passport to their love and affection, she did not in

fact have one herself. My struggle was over. I grabbed at the realization with a weary but dizzy,

almost overwhelming sense of liberation. I was free. I neither had to struggle for their approvalany more, nor put Riya through the same hopeless loop. I wasnt sure why I had so easily given

up my own right to be loved, allowing it to fade into oblivion somewhere long ago. But a child

like Riya, left unloved, would simply wither and perish. Couldnt they see that her kind ofinnocence could only understand love, not the lack of it? My own rights had not seemed worth

fighting for, but Riya needed me to be her voice and a battle on her behalf would be far more

satisfying. I was soon going to become the thorn in the Maraar side. (132-133)

So here we have a woman character who is bothered not about her own survival per se but in

garnering for her intellectually challenged daughter her due rights. Janakis empowerment lies

not in getting herself heard and respected but rather in rescuing her child from a debilitating

atmosphere.The emergence of Janaki the responsible and protective mother may appear stereotypical but

Jaishree Misra brings in a twist in the plot. Janakis escape route lies in getting herself educated,

securing a BA and an MA degree before she can go abroad on scholarship/sponsorship whereshe herself can take a course in Special Education and enroll her daughter in a Special School.

Education holds the key to true empowerment and it has to be admitted that Janaki manages to

complete her under-graduate and post-graduate studies while living in the Maraar household.Besides, Sureshs family does not stand in her way of going West (America or England) with her

daughter. Subversion comes with Janaki accidentally meeting her old lover Arjun and accepting

his suggestion that she join him in England to pursue her goals. Her decision to seek divorce

from Suresh and fight for the custodianship of Riya predictably create a huge scandal and

through this twist in the tale, Jaishree Misra saves the novel from becoming a stereotypical anti-male narrative.

Ancient Promises ends in hope for both Janaki and Riya but when we come to the next novel, the

colour and the mood get dark. Afterwards is in many ways at once a weaker version of Ancient

Promises and an extension of it because it captures the story of a wife and mother Maya Warrierafter she leaves her husband and starts a new life with her daughter Anjali in London with her

neighbour-turned-friend-turned-rescuer-turned lover Rahul Tiwari. On the surface, the story of

Mayas courage, iconoclasm and heterodoxy reads like a narrative of empowerment. Mayasucceeds in putting her unhappy past behind her, secures an emotionally fulfilling life for herself

and finds a satisfying engagement as a volunteer with a Social Services agency:

She was so good at what she did, as though she had found her calling in life, helping vulnerablewomen and children. Even though it was only voluntary work. She didnt have permission towork here because we had not been able to get married without her producing a divorce

certificate. (82)

But the cheer that this freedom brings is deceptive because the novel shows how Mayas single

act of walking out on her husband has a domino effect. Misfortunes pile up on her one after

another relentless until that freedom turns ashes in the mouth. The only silver lining in the cloud


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is that Maya is not alive to see and suffer most of the tragedies. But the narrative leaves no

doubt that all the unfortunate events that followed her elopement are triggered by her crucial

deed. Her parents are quite predictably distraught, her paternal grandmother, too old and frail to

tolerate the onslaught of wagging tongues in her native village, dies of sorrow, her father toosuccumbs to a sense of shame and heart-burn, her mother has to seek refuge in a temple. What is

even more tragic is that Rahul (Mayas lover) is not permitted by British laws (the country has a

stringent Childrens Act) to remain Anjalis custodian. Without a legally sanctioned divorce,Maya could not marry Rahul and as they had never anticipated this eventuality of Mayas death,

they had never approached the British courts for officially securing parental responsibility for

Rahul. Now Anjali has the status only of an illegal immigrant and has to be returned to herbiological father, Govind Warrier in India. Thus in one stroke, the emotionally secure and

intellectually satisfying empire Maya had sought to establish collapses like the proverbial pack

of cards.

Here again, Misra is very careful in designing her plot. For one man (Govind Warrier) who

represents the hateful patriarchal values of the society and who stands in the way of Mayas self-

fulfilment, there is another (Rahul Tiwari) whose liberal mind defies that stereotype. Thus like

Ancient Promises, the womans movement towards a better plane of existence or empowermentis not a lonely affair. She has to face strong opposition no doubt but she is assisted by a man

who pitches in, not out of any sense of sympathy or chivalry, but out of his own goodness of

heart and an appreciation of her worth. The tragedy is that despite these compensations, lifedenies her complete happiness.

Rani is by far the most complex and the bleakest of Jaishree Misras novels. In this novel, Misra

tries to rescue her protagonist Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi from two stereotypical moulds she has

been cast intoone, the popular, Indian image of a fearless warrior who defied all patriarchal

norms for a noble causethe freedom of her country; and the other, the lesser known Britishhistorical profile of her as a heartless mutineer who engineered a brutal massacre of British

women and children in Jhansi fort. Both images are diametrically opposed to each other. Yetthey have one thing in common. They focus on the martial aspect of her personality. Misratakes a different approach. She states in her Authors Note that her aim is to find the woman

behind the warrior (vii).

So the novel traces the growth of a six year old, intelligent girl Manikarnika into a responsible

Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi till her death when she is in her late 20s.

The most interesting thing about this imaginative recreation of Lakshmibais portraiture is theunignorable presence of male mentors, guides, assistants and well wishers all through her life

and her ability to be her own person. While a child she is greatly influenced by the old Peshwa

of Varanasi, her own father Moropant, who is the Peshwas minister. The two men play a very

active role in grooming this motherless girl and give her the earliest and most crucial training inadministration and make her aware of the dangerous maze of power politics. When she is barely

fourteen, she is married off to a 40-year-old king of Jhansi, Gangadhar Rao. The purpose of the

marriage is openly to beget a male heir to the throne. So for all intents and purposes, the youngrani is recognized only for her biological usefulness. But enjoying a warm friendly relationship

with her husband, the trust of the minister of Jhansi and the respect of the British representative

Major Robert Ellis, her personality gets fully rounded. She is valued as a sovereign who willwork for the welfare and safety of her subjects.


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This does not mean that she does all that is expected of her without raising a note of dissent.

Even while loving and respecting her husband, she is clear-sighted enough to suspect that his

numerous physical illnesses may in fact be a manifestation of his lack of interest in

administrative matters and the result of his greater interest in arts. Again, it is she who seeingher husbands lack of interest in conjugal responsibilities takes the initiative, draws him into an

intimate relationship and finally has a child. When the baby dies, she is distraught but after some

time has enough sense to think of adopting a child and thus safeguarding the future of thekingdom. She does not agree with Gangadhar Raos soft attitude towards the aggressive and

cruelly exploitative British. But even when she hold the reins of the government later on, she

does not go against her husbands wishes not out of wifely devotion alone, but also out of acommonsensical and rational realization that Jhansi is not rich enough to trigger a rebellion

against the British, defeat them in a war, oust them out of Jhansi and declare complete

independencewithout compromising the safety of her subjects. Thus throughout the novel, the

focus is on Jhansi rani who is extremely solicitous about the welfare of the people under hercare. Even when Jhansi is annexed by the British, even when all the neighbouring princely states

begin to husband their resources to fight the British, she remains unmoved. Her justification:

Whatever was happening in other parts of the country, she was determined to see that none of itwould touch the peace of Jhansi. The safety of her family and her people mattered more than

anything else and she would let nothing jeopardize it. Not even the possibility being gradually

unveiled that in distant mutinies may lie the chance of Jhansis rule to be returned to her, theachingly tempting prospect that its crown may yet grace her sons head. (299)

Her decision to give refuge to a group of British women and children in the Jhansi fort also

comes out of this selfsame humanitarian softness in her. These British citizens are killed brutally

by a group of freedom fighters but Lakshmibai is blamed for engineering the massacre. She tries

to clear her image with the British. But once it dawns on her that her words fall on deaf ears, shedecides to take up arms. The rest is history. She dies a martyrs death. She dies a free woman

but she loses everything she holds preciousthe sovereignty of Jhansi, the lives of her father andher young son and the peaceful lives of her loving subjects.

Jaishree Misras efforts at portraying the woman in Lakshmibai are indeed successful and

through the figure of this redoubtable queen, Misra presents her image of the empoweredwoman. Lakshmibai is almost like Janaki of Ancient Promises and Maya of Afterwards in that

she has a will of her own and craves for a space of her own. She is influenced by powerful men

in her life but that does not cloud her thinking. Power to her, as to Janaki and Maya, is a toolthat helps improve life for others than for herself and gives her freedom to live life on her own

terms. Misras concept of the empowered woman is that of a being who does not see man as her

enemy even while being trapped in a patriarchal set-up. She finds a way to overcome her

problems and arrive at a solution. In the process, she is not averse to seeking and using theassistance of trusted men within her inner circle.

."Secrets and Sins" is one of the most satisfying books that I have ever read, as it probed deepinto the psyche of a woman, who is entangled in the web of adultery. The strength of a woman

too came through, who is capable of sifting through the stone and the diamond and recognize it

for it is. Riva is the quintessential evolved woman, who sees beyond physical attraction and


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bonds with her heart, with the person she is deeply in love with; Ben. It is a love story that

transcends cultures and constricted traditions

She projects the manifold dimensions of adoption in her recent rendition, A Scandalous Secret.

Swiftly moving through the West and the East the novelist presents the arduous quest for roots,

an emotionally entangled programme as it is the quest of an adopted daughter for her biological

mother. The manipulation of the emotional realm of the three women of British, Indian andmixed heritage renders the novel a psycho-cultural implication. Alternating between the locales

of London and Delhi, between Sonya and Neha, the novelist deftly unveils the ramifications of

one single stupid act in the life of Neha Chaturvedi that turned her Oxford dream to a nightmare

Misras women work hard for their freedom and earn it. This shows their strength of character,their courage and integrity. But fate it appears is not favourably disposed to them. The freedom

they win is never absolute because it does not have the power to guarantee them choicest wish

which is the safety of the lives they wish to protect. Hence the impotence of their freedom.

The doctoral dissertation, Empowering the Marginalized: A Study of woman in select novels of

Jaishree Misra attempts to study how women are empowered mainly through education.

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