2009-10 AM Fictions of India - Expert Group on Gender
Expert Group on Gender
Group: Representations of Gender
Kim
- Keep in mind: Double iconography of the Hindu female
- Alternative female figures:
- Kim‘s caretaker (takes opium)
- The Kulu woman (“She was already ordering, haranguing, rebuking, and it must be said, cursing her servants for delays” (p. 74)
• Dominant BUT benevolent character (nurses Kim back to health, cf. “Mother, I [Kim] owe my life to thee.” (p. 277)
- Huneefa ( portrayed witch-like, cf. p. 179)
- The Woman of Shamlegh (dominating personality in her village, cf. p. 256 and pp. 263-264)
Untouchable
- Keep in mind: Double iconography of the Hindu female
- Female characters that meet the traditional ideal of a devote woman:
- Bakha‘s mother
“He [Bakha] often thought of his mother [...], crouching as she went about cooking and cleaning the home, a bit too old-fashioned for his then already growing modern tastes, [...] it seemed that she was not of his world, had no connection with it.“ (p. 14)
- Sohini tries to replace her mother, inferior role
“[...] he saw that his [Bakha’s] sister was trying to light a fire between two bricks. She was blowing hard at it [...] as she crouched on the mud floor. [...]. She sat back helpless [...]. (p. 21)
“Her father was abusing her, as he now sat on his bed, puff-puffing away at the cane tube [...]” (p. 31)
- Other minor female characters are also bound to the household
Midnight's Children
- Focus on representation of Indian Muslim women
- Dominant characters who possess power to a varying degree and within a certain sector
- Naseem: conservative, religious, dominant partner within the relationship to Aadam; avoids contact to Western culture
- Jamila: comes into contact with Christianity, becomes role model of “pure” Pakistan
- Padma: […], active audience of Saleem
-> The meaning of “Padma” is “dung”: Why might the author have chosen this name for one of his major female characters?
Mulk Raj Anand "Untouchable" (Group: Impersonal narration and the ideology of the text: The representation of India and of Bakha's consciousness)
Gender: The question of femininity & masculinity in the novel.
-Britain is portrayed as a partriarchy patronizing India (?) -Bakha as brother is patronizing Sohini -Bakha is turning away from his own father -Bakha lovingly misses his mother -strict and obvious division in gender-related charateristics and behaviour among the characters -Women looking out for their families (Sohini & B.'s mother for Bakha, Gulabo for her son, the Babu's son's mother for her sons) -Sohini as a “passive sufferer” who is representing the female role of an outcast
→ at the beginning of the novel, Sohini is part of the plot to sustain Indian women's fate → why does she stop being part of the story?