Literary Narratives in The Socio-Economic Empowerment of Women in South Asia

A Thesis Titled
LITERARY NARRATIVES IN THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF SOUTH ASIAN WOMEN
Submitted to Beaconhouse National University Lahore In partial fulfilment of the requirements For the degree of
Master of Arts In Literature
By
FAKHRA HASSAN SESSION: 2005-2007 REGISTRATION NO: 2005099 SUPERVISOR: Ms ASMA ZIA
Department of Literature & Languages School of Liberal Arts Beaconhouse National University Lahore
Political Underpinnings
Acknowledgements
It would be unfair to begin my acknowledgement with the Amazing Grace because God has given intelligence to everyone even amoebas. It would also be silly to acknowledge the role of my family. I mean, how do you achieve big goals in life without family support? I thank God and my parents for bringing me into this world and for inculcating in me the value for education. Education is the most valuable asset a woman could own, my father said once. I thank my younger sisters Sarwat, Saima, Aisha and my brother Imran for enabling me to understand and cherish the value of distance and independence. I want to extend my deepest thanks to Ira Hasan a teacher every student in love with language would feel blessed to have for her loving support and intervention in technical corrections and suggestions for my thesis. She not only kept me on track in the journey to document feminist literary movements but also facilitated my growth as a woman with an individual identity. Without her help, I couldnt have completed this journey. Thanks to the support and love of SLA faculty Nida Maqsud, Saeed ur Rehman and Rafiya Hasan with whom Ive had the privilege of their classes for more than one semester. I thank them for teaching me the linguistics and cultures of different parts of the world, especially South Asia. By sharing narratives of their own experiences, they made learning rich and real. I owe a huge bundle of thanks to my friends Foaad Nizam, Miranda Husain, Feriha Peracha, Jawad Haroon, Chandni Malik, Hina Khan, Maleeha Habib, Saira Bokhari, Zahra Bokhari, Ayesha Anwar, Sonya Rehman and Habiba Nosheen for their guidance and belief in me. Those I have missed, believe me, these are the only names I remember right now. In essence, everyone has been a friend in some regard because everyone taught me. This thesis is partly dedicated to them. Finally, I am grateful to my supervisor Asma Zia for valuable input in the thesis. She is funny. I thank her for showing me her love for literature and language, and her light-hearted way of handling them. I couldnt have enjoyed the work without her support and belief in me. Thanks to Navid Shahzad for the privilege to see the wonderful world of Arts. Her passion, care and love kept cool in the summer and warm in the winter. I am especially grateful to her for helping me get my first job in Lahore. I have used the word
love several times. I didnt know it before. I still dont know it. May be love means literature. I am one of the luckiest to have experienced it.
Synopsis
Where women stand today is owed to the powerful narratives in the literary movements of 20th century Europe and America. American feminist writers and playwrights from the North and South, such as Susanne Glaspell, Margaret Deland, and Tennessee Williams provide relevant basis for analysis of womens narratives and their political underpinnings. They provide an interesting comparison to the changing legal and social systems in America a crucial period for women in terms of their socio-economic and political empowerment.
In South Asia, writers such as Bapsi Sidhwa and Qurratulain Haider have been examined to understand the role of feminist literature in political empowerment of women. Ultimately, it is learnt European & American movements are parallel to current trends in South Asian literature. The research aims to offer viable solutions for genuine emancipation of women which is still partial in the current era.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements Synopsis Thesis Contents
page 2 page 3 page 4
Chapter One: A Gender Overview Section I: Understanding Narratives Section II: History of Feminist Politics in Europe, Americas and the East Section III: Politics & Economics of Feminist Literary Narratives page 12 page 30 page 5
Chapter Two: Dynamism of Feminist Political Movements America & Asia Section I: Literature Breaking Barriers in the Social Sphere Section II: Female Leadership and Problems with Hierarchies page 40 page 57
Chapter Three: Conclusion
page 65
Chapter 1 - A Gender Overview
1.1) Understanding Narratives Narration has been a popular educated means of telling a story or a set of events that influence ones life and shapes experiences in society and the world at large since the 6th century in Europe and 18th century onwards in America.
The tale or the set of events recorded or reported either orally, in written form or through visual expression can be safely termed as narrative. Bertrand Russell re-enforces the history of writing stories as follows:
The art of writing was invented in Egypt about the year 4000 B.C., and in Mesopotamia not much later. In each country writing began with pictures of the objects intended. These pictures quickly became conventionalised, so that words were represented by ideograms, as they are still in China. In the course of thousands of years, this cumbrous system developed into alphabetic writing.1
The interesting point to note about narrative in terms of shaping experiences is that witnesses to a similar set of events and characters/persons in a similar situation may have different aspects of the same story to tell as is obvious from Russells
1
Russell, Bertrand, History of Western Philosophy, 2000, Routledge, Chapter 1; The Rise of Greek Civilization, page 25
definition. The variation stems from the upbringing, level of education attained, theological and political beliefs, and sexual identities, differences based on gender, culture, geography and socio-economic setup, and types of people he or she interacts with. According to Marc Howard Ross from the Department of Political Science at Bryn
Mawr College, narratives matter for at least three different reasons:
1) A narratives metaphors and images can tell us a great deal about how individuals and groups understand the social and political worlds in which they live. 2) They can reveal deep fears, perceived threats, and past grievances that drive a conflict. 3) Narratives are important because they sanction certain kinds of action and not others.
Therefore, strictly speaking, narratives are explanations for events large and small in the form of short, common sense accounts stories that often seem simple. However, the powerful images they contain and the judgements they make about the motivations and actions of their own group, and others, are emotionally significant for both groups and individuals. Narratives are not always internally consistent. For example, they often alternate between portraying ones own group, as well as an opponents as strong and portraying them as vulnerable. Narratives fulfil needs of people. Ross asserts:
They are especially relevant in times of high uncertainty and stress. Just at the moments when people are most disoriented, such as the periods leading to world wars, civil wars and the great depression, communism, black nationalism and radical feminism in America in the early and late 20th centuries. Another example would be the period following September 11 th where we struggled to make sense of events, and shared narratives which are re-enforced within groups that help people find reassurance and to cope with high anxiety. It is crucial to understand that narratives are not made from the whole cloth but are grounded in selectively remembered and interpreted experiences and projections. Finally, it is important to understand that all cultural traditions have access to multiple pre-existing narratives that provide support for diverse actions in times of stress in social crises.2
Pre-existing narratives such as those of prophets such as Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus and the prophet Mohammad (peace be upon all of them) for example form three different types of cultural traditions or religions. After the Greeks, these narratives became a reliable source of support in hard times for people from all walks of life. They have existed in all the eras that followed the prophets which includes the present. In this context, how these narratives are used is an interesting area to explore. Feminists have
Ross, Marc Howard - The Political Psychology of Competing Narratives: September 11 and Beyond, page 1
used the stories to challenge the orders of patriarchy set by society that oppresses men and women. Blacks have used them against racial discrimination by highlighting the principles of equality and justice that eventually gave birth to Black Nationalism. Scholars have used them to interpret the evolving social systems and their economics to formulate legal systems such as of 20th century South Asia.
In the event of crises involving current times, powerful narratives an offshoot of cultural narratives are crucial for the re-invention of identities and development of roles. The powerful influences could be leaders such as Razia Sultana of South Asia or Martin Luther of America or literati such as poet and traveller Walt Whitman of America or writers such as Virginia Woolf of the UK, Anton Chekov of Russia or Ismat Chughtai of South Asia. They could be philosophers, historians, dictators, scientists, inventors or innovators. These influences are encompassed in long-term memories of the influenced. That in turn enables the influenced to adapt, evolve and excel in the surrounding systems ever-sensitive to different types of changes.
However, the narrative approach we adopt in reporting the influences is a crucial matter of debate. As common saying goes, stories are multi-faceted or there are many angles to a story. Which one would we adopt? While adopting it, are we taking into consideration all the elements of the story? Can our narrative be similar to that of the original source of it? The only reliable answer to these questions would be
knowledge of the story in terms of language, structure, plot, historical settings, and events surrounding that time period, scholarly advice and the persons own experiences.
Narratives are always at risk of losing their essence due to disparities caused by contemporary narration if great care is not taken. In times of conflict, for example, in the absence of a legislation that would help in resolving it, it is paramount to resort to civil, religious or literary means to resolve the conflict. However, given the fact prophets and the women such as Mary have been in direct contact with God human followers have tried to arrive at several interpretations of that communication. Even though, in essence, the interpretation may be similar to what occurred between God and the prophet (s), the narrative would have a limited scope in terms of our limited knowledge of God the supreme force that controls the orders of the universe.
According to William Barclays translation of The New Testament, there are four different versions of the Story of the Good News Prophet Jesuss Second Coming. We know them as the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, four individuals known to be in direct contact with Jesus. Barclay demonstrates the four different versions of the Gospel as follows:
The man represents Mark, because Mark has the simplest and the most human picture of Jesus. The lion represents Matthew, because Matthew is concerned to show us Jesus as the Lion of
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Judah, the promised Messiah. The ox represents Luke, because the ox is animal of sacrifice, and Luke shows us Jesus in his allembracing love as the sacrifice, not for any chosen nation, but for all mankind. The eagle represents John, because of all birds the eagle flies highest, and it is said that of all living creatures the eagle alone can look straight in to the blaze of the sun, and not be dazzled. So Johns thought climbs highest of all, and John sees furthest of all into the eternities. So, we may think of Mark as the simplest Gospel; of Matthew as the Messianic Gospel; of Luke as the universal Gospel; and of John as the profoundest Gospel.3
Here, we see the attempt to understand the character of one prophet from four different versions of story through assigning symbols of nature. That could possibly lead to disparity owing to reasons such as the sources from where we heard or read and judgements based on the individual sense of authenticity. Due to lack of proper knowledge and language skills, the disparity could be great and if care is not taken, the original narrative could eventually lose its essential meaning.
This thesis is focussed on dynamics of this multi-faceted tool the narrative which has been significantly influential in bringing about progressive and steady psychological, socio-political and socio-economic emancipation particularly for women in 21st century South Asia. Based on research, an explanation of the impact
3
Barclay, William, The New Testament, Arthur James John Hunt Publishing, 1999, page i
11
and significance of evolving concept of political narrative within literary movements as trendsetters of pro-active feminism will be established as challenge to crises of oppression which in feminist terms is the curse of elite-driven patriarchy. This will be observed from emerging literary narratives in America, Europe and the Sub-Continent from writers such as Susan Glaspell, Tennessee Williams, Henrik Ibsen, and Bapsi Sidhwa.
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1.2) History of Feminist Politics in Europe, Americas and the East
I have begun to tell the students my politics: always dangerous in box-shouldered academe, walls where whispers strike thin cracks, widen, echo, suck. i speak of womens bodies, choice, language that keeps men men but makes of women girls, chicks, cunts, slits, pieces of a twisted dream of domination. The eighteen year olds in their warm socks stare all pink and green, small alligators dancing on their shirts. one mutters womens lib, daring just that much against the red ink my pen wields. They will write home to mothers and fathers or, most likely, call collect and tell of the teacher who wears her hair long, who says strange things that have nothing to do with them, their needs, their nights, their money, the jobs they will hold in four years.
-Teaching4
Alexandro Senos points of view on women of power representing the State re-enforce views of Kathryn Machan and
4
Aal Machan, Kathryn, If I Had a Hammer, Edited by Sandra Martz, Papier Mache Press, 1990, page 44
13
state of those young women who havent fully understood the value of their sexuality and potential. Machan hints at the problems of societal norms that would cause hindrances in the growth of these youngsters. Seno speculates that at present, Americans are contemplating a female president for the first time. However, in Asia, 11 women have ruled in office since the 1960s such as Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Chandrika
Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka, Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia of Bangladesh, Park Chung-hee of South Korea and Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, Indira Gandhi of India and Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan with relatively few examples of female leadership in Europe such as Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Thatcher of England.5
In this research, Asia and the Middle East have been identified as East in view of the regions vast literary contribution in the intellectual as well as spiritual growth of women in their societies.
This generalisation, therefore, brings us to the question of female authority at societal levels in the East. Were the literary women in society as powerful and influential as the leading female elite? Were these women more qualified to lead the state than the elected ones? What was the state of female leadership before the 60s? Leadership provides us with a holistic view of society that has accepted the woman.
5
Seno A, Alexandra, Handing Down the Reins, Newsweek, October 22, 2007, page 56
14
However, reality at the grassroots level in terms of their rights, privileges and status in society is always questionable.
In the early 8th to 12th centuries in the East, we see the emergence of literary activities amongst women. However, accounts of narratives surrounding that era are very hard to find. Research reveals these activities helped women formulate a movement against oppression created by men who were dictators.
To state an example, consider the story of Sitt-ul-Mulk and her younger brother Al-Hakim. The dynamics of their relationship and their opposing views on the systems of rule provide an analysis of how they affect the public. Both became leaders of their time. However, the young Al-Hakim transformed into a conservative terrorising dictator in Egypt who could not live up to the progressive ideals of his family or in feminist terms, Sitt-ul-Mulks mastery over the art of progressive leadership.
In 970, Sitt-ul-Mulk was born to the fifth Fatimid Caliph of Cairo Al-Aziz, and a Christian woman of Byzantine origin who retained her religion. Proud of her dual ancestry, Sitt-ul-Mulk was influenced by her fathers peaceful rule and his policies of religious tolerance and inclusion from a young age. One example of inclusiveness was his appointing a Christian and Jew respectively as his vizier and as ambassador to Syria, to the furore of religious conservatives. On Al-Azizs premature death
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at 42 years in 996, Sitt-ul-Mulks eleven-year-old brother, AlHakim, became the sixth Caliph. In practice, for the first few years the task of ruling fell to a 27-year-old Sitt-ul-Mulk, their mother, and a team of political advisors.6
Al-Hakim upon maturity which in Arab terms was fifteen years of age since Hakim was the only male descendant of Al-Aziz at the time was awarded the reigns of power. He ultimately ordered all the dogs of Cairo to be slaughtered, banned singing in public and walking along the banks of the river Nile.
He targeted Jews and Christians by ordering them to wear special clothes followed by dismissals, persecution and mass conversions. Al-Hakim appointed the army and spies to enforce his terror on the public.7
Similar decrees for women were also issued declared as the cause of chaos by Al Hakim. Decrees included forbidding women to leave their homes at night, laughing in public, participating in amusing past-times. Conversely, they were also forbidden to weep at funerals, attend burials and banned from visiting cemeteries. They were forbidden to roam the streets with
6 7
Mernissi, Fatima, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, 2003, University of Minnesota Press, page 160-2 Mernissi, Fatima, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, 2003, University of Minnesota Press, page 172
16
their faces uncovered. For seven years and seven months, women disappeared from the streets of Cairo.8
After Al-Hakims assassination this according to some sources was orchestrated by Sitt-ul-Mulk order was restored in the country. Mulk governed as regent for her nephew, al-Dhadir who was also a teenager. Though in power, Mulk remained invisible by extension and brought back the essence of secularism in the 11th century Egypt. She restored the shattered economy and re-instated non-Muslims to their earlier status like her father.
After long centuries of enslavement by men, our minds rusted and our bodies weakened. We cannot assume that all men who write about women are wise reformers. Their words must be carefully scrutinised, and we must be wary of man being as despotic about liberating us as he has been about our enslavement, narrates Malak Hifni Nasif, founder of the feminist movement from Egypt in 1909.9
Nasif also sets an incentive for womens scholarly aptitude in the 19th century. She calls for such women to be guides in their own communities as narrators of history that has been lost. Her views reflect the changing nature of feminist movement from
8 9
Mernissi, 172 Shaheed, Farida, Great Ancestors: Women Asserting Rights in Muslim Context, 2004, Shirkat Gah Publications, page 72
17
fighting oppression and asserting rights to driving the process of socio-economic change. It is a unique kind of leadership in the socio-economic sphere. Here, women learn to assert their rights and capitalise on their human potential and be familiar with tricks of business at the communal and social level in order to succeed. Nasif adds
Political economy calls for a division of labour but if women enter learned professions it does not upset the system. The division of labour is merely a human creation.10
In the English and American bourgeois circles of the 18th and 19th centuries, women in the literary sphere had also begun to question and re-interpret womens roles as a result of the common and dull notion of submissiveness to the orders of patriarchy.
Mary Astell, for example, was one of the earliest feminists in the 18 th century and perhaps the first writer to explore and assert ideas about women which we can still recognise and respond to. Throughout her life, she identified with and spoke directly to other women, acknowledging their shared problems. Though she was deeply religious, she had little in common with her outspoken predecessors in the 17th century sects. She was profoundly conservative; a life-long Royalist and a High Church Anglican, radical only in her perception of the way womens lives were
10
Shaheed, Farida, Great Ancestors: Women Asserting Rights in Muslim Context, 2004, Shirkat Gah Publications, page 72
18
restricted by convention, and their minds left undeveloped and untrained.11
The conventions included strict adherence to principles of chastity, modesty, veiling, submission to masculine dominance pre-defined roles of being good wives, mothers, daughters or as Margaret Walters, author of Feminism, A Very Short Introduction puts it, upper servants. For centuries, and all over Europe, there were families who disposed of unnecessary or unmarriagable daughters by shutting them away in convents. In implicit terms, the conventions also applied to women of the East. However, in the context of Muslim women particularly from the educated classes, issues of marriage, polygamy and divorce have been key areas of debate amongst feminists in the late 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Like their women counterparts in Europe, these feminists also sought to challenge and re-interpret texts and pre-existing narratives of religion by exploring the lives of other women and their problems. For instance, according to Islam, a man is allowed to marry four times in his life. Raden Adjeng Kartini, founder of womens movement at the turn of the 20th century in Indonesia challenged the law and highlighted its shortcomings by the following rhetoric:
The Moslem law allows a man to have four wives at the same time. And though it be a thousand times over no sin according to the Moslem law and doctrine,
11
Walters, Margaret, Feminism: A Very Short Introduction, 2005, Oxford University Press, page 26
19
I shall forever call it a sin.and if he does not choose to give her back her freedom, then she can whistle to the moon for her rights. Everything for the man, and nothing for the woman, is our law and custom. Do you understand the deep aversion I have for marriage? I would do the humblest work, thankfully and joyfully if, by it I could be independent.12
In this respect, we see Mary Astells struggle with attaining a livelihood in 1668. Upon failure to do so, she wrote to William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury for help:
For since God has given Women as well as Men intelligent souls, how should they be forbidden to improve them? Since he has not denied us the faculty of Thinking, why should we not (at least in gratitude to him) employ our Thoughts on himself their noblest Object, and not unworthily bestow them on Trifles and Gaities and secular Affairs?13
With financial aid and contacts with a circle of like-minded intelligent women from the Archbishops guidance, Astell published her first book in 1694, entitled A
12
Shaheed, Farida, Great Ancestors: Women Asserting Rights in Muslim Context, 2004, Shirkat Gah Publications, page 112 13 Walters, page 27
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Serious Proposal to the Ladies, urging other women to take themselves seriously learn to think for themselves, work on developing their own minds and skills, and challenge masculine judgements. In her other book entitled, Thoughts on Education, she laid stress on the urgent necessity for women to be properly educated. These narratives not only played a pivotal role for these women but also provided incentive for a fair and challenging re-interpretation of cultural traditions that were maledominated.
From South Asia, we see another interesting angle, that womens intellectual status, capability and access to educational resources were more or less dependant on their religion. South Asian writer Qurratulain Hyders 1979 novel Aakhri Shab Ke Hamsafar (Fellow Traveller at the End of the Night), critiqued by M. Asaduddin who teaches English literature in Jamia Milli at New Dehli, India would be useful to explain the state of girls and young women in the region. He summarises:
In describing the lives of [characters] Deepali, Raihan, Jahan Ara, Rosy and others, Hyder makes implicit comments on social mores and educational attainments of different communities at that point of time. While the girls in Hindu and Christian families have been shown as actively participating in different spheres of life, Muslim girls have been depicted as yet struggling
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between restrictive social norms and their half-articulated desire to achieve self-hood.14
It is important in connection with the above passage to understand that for both Muslim and Hindu, and Christian women, the practice of hijab or purdah or veil restricted them to their homes and forced them to cover their bodies in order to protect them from possible disgrace at the hands of strange men. As time went on, these practices also became matters of intense debate.
The All-India Womens Conference in March 1918 in Bhopal conducted a series of debates on purdah. A resolution at the conference concluded that for the emancipation of women, purdah should be relaxed and that Muslim women should only have to observe it to the extent required by their religion.15
South Asian writer Dushka Saiyid asserts, by the second and third decade of this century the observance of purdah was relaxed in its severity, at least in the cities of Punjab16.
In Bapsi Sidhwas novel Cracking India, Ayah Lennys nanny is a character developed to portray the sexual tension among
14 15
Asaduddin, M, The Exiles Return, Qurratulain Hyders Art of Fiction, page 31 Pennebaker, Mattie Katherine, The Will of Men: Victimization of Women During Indias Partition, Texas A & M University paper. 16 Saiyid, Dushka. Muslim Women of the British Punjab. 1998, New York, NY: St.Martins Press, page 81
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Hindu women, and outsiders or men. Ayahs sexuality attracts men of varying occupations and religions including the Fallatihs, Hotel cook, the Government House gardener, the butcher, Masseur, the Chinaman, the Pathan and the Ice-Candy man (81). Ayah is a lower-caste servant for a Zoroastrian family. She is therefore exempted from the strict laws of Purdah required of the upper-caste Brahmins.17
Radical feminists18 argue that the primary element of patriarchy is a relationship of dominance, where one party is dominant and exploits the other party for the benefit of the former. Therefore, men use social systems and other methods of control to keep non-dominant men and women suppressed.
Sidhwa, in Cracking India, provides us with an interesting view of power-play of such politics. In highlighting the confusion faced by South Asians, she succeeds in giving an individualistic, free perspective on the idea of following leaders devoid of thought or concern for self-growth.
[On Ice-Candy mans political commentary], Lenny says, Sometimes he quotes Gandhi, or Nehru, or Jinnah, but Im fed up with hearing about them. Mother, Father and their friends are
17 18
Sidhwa, Bapsi, Cracking India, 1991, Minneapolis: Milwaukee Edition. Page 81 Radical Feminism a current within feminism that focuses on patriarchy as a system of power that organises society into a complex of relationships producing a male supremacy that oppresses women. Source: Wikipedia
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always saying: Gandhi said this, Nehru said that. Gandhi did this, Jinnah did that. Whats the point of talking so much about people we dont know?19
It is important to note here that Lenny represents the Zoroastrian family minorities in South Asia. According to reliable resources, Zoroastrians were least affected by the Indo-Pak-Bengal partition. Therefore, Lennys naivete in a way reflects that fact. But Lenny is not alone in her views. Qurratulain Hyder has been criticised for not being able to draw characters from the lower strata of society. However, it is interesting to note that like Sidhwas character Lenny, Hyder too has her reservations on political leaders and their politics since they are set in the same time-period.
Hyders interest in politics is minimal though she observes with comic delight how people delude themselves by embracing some particular political ideology and take it to be the panacea for all social ills. In Fellow Traveller at the End of the Night, which has in its background the Bengali extremist movement of the 30s for the liberation of the country is, inter alia, an oblique satire on the progressives of the forties and the fifties. In their enthusiasm for social reform the progressive writers made a mockery of what Sartre calls committed literature and missed no chance to attack Hyder for refusing to toe their line. 20
19 20
Sidhwa, 38 Asaduddin, M, The Exiles Return, Qurratulain Hyders Art of Fiction paper, page 31
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The narrative covers the events up to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. The main character, Deepali Sircars initiation into the movement begins with a sacrifice of her expensive Baluchari sarees. The revolutionaries badly needed money and she could think of nothing else in the house but the sarees that were saved up for her own marriage. Raihan, the radical leader impressed by her show of commitment entrusts her with serious responsibilities. Several years later, he calls her to his hideout in the Sunderbans and they fall in love, though it is not expressed in so many words. From this point, the fate of the extremist movement, the larger movement for a separate homeland for Muslims all are mixed up with the fate of the characters in the novel. Deepali, along with her family, migrates to India and later to Trinidad. She sees the world of her ideology crumbling to pieces, and watches Raihans metamorphosis from a radical left-winger to a rabid right-winger, and lastly as an industrial tycoon who thrives by exploiting workers in his mills.
Meanwhile, back in Europe and the Americas, the relatively well-educated deeply religious Christian women in the early 18th century a privilege shared by very few such as Mary Astell, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (author of Aurora Leigh) and Barbra Leigh Smith and Bessie Rayner Parkes (authors of Women and Work) set the tradition of going out and talking to women, to educate and create awareness amongst them about the diverse opportunities they could avail besides submitting to societal conventions and to document their experiences combined with their own either in
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writing or orally. In addition to this, they confronted men of high learning with the new set of arguments demanding equality and the right to earn for themselves that paved the way for discourse on gender. These experiences became narratives that led to the formulation of the popular art of fiction and prose amongst women, which would ultimately become a strong agent in changing the perceptions and roles of women as well as the attitudes of those leading the social systems. However, the question whether these groups of literary women of the 18th century formed a movement for emancipation at large for the next generation comes to mind. One feels a sense of alienation and tends to wonder how much of the writings of these women have survived. How much of it was public? What benefits did the writers gain after compiling norm-challenging prose? Were they under constant threats or restrictions from the orders of patriarchy at the time?
The survival rate of previous works of feminists does not seem enough and yet it is. Things would begin to change for women in Europe significantly leading to the suffrage movement a period marked by strong prose compilations such as G.B Shaws You Can Never Tell, E Brontes Jane Eyre, M Angelous I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings and others. According to philosopher and historian William Durant, suffrage21 is to be credited to the rapid industrialisation that inevitably needed women to fill the gaps in the workforce due to lack of sufficient manpower. On the other hand, their votes would enable them to choose the leaders of their choice and be chosen to
21
A feminist movement beginning in late 19th century primarily concerned with womens representation in the public and political sphere
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represent the ruling parties drivers of the government and the legal systems. These were privileges not available to women in Europe before. However, how they would be deemed significant in terms of their influence in the political hierarchies as voters, workers, lawmakers, writers and journalists, business and property owners in the newly found status in the public workforce remains to be seen and would be pursued in later chapters.
The account of the history of womens legal status in Europe in the late 19th century is of core importance. In the UK Reform Act of 1832, women were specifically excluded by substituting male person for the more inclusive and general word man which accounts for mankind - that implicitly means human being. It is also interesting to note, in the same time-period, only about one-third of adult men could vote. Despite the Reform Act of 1884 which allowed a larger number of men to vote, only 63 to 68 per cent used the privilege and made conditions worse for women.
Mary Smith, a wealthy woman from Yorkshire hired Orator Hunt a radical spinster of the time to present parliament with a petition for allowing unmarried women to vote. The petitioner pointed out, a woman pays taxes like any man; moreover, since woman could be punished at law, she should be given a voice in the making of laws, as well as the right to serve on juries.
22
However, it was not till 1918
that women over the age of 30 were given the vote; and in March 1928, under a
22
Walters, Margaret, Feminism, A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press 2007, pg 69
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Conservative government, they finally won it on equal terms with men after countless sacrifices and punishments for generations to remember.
In the above context 20th century American writer Margaret Delands novel, The Rising Tide we encounter another interesting light-hearted aspect of womans self-hood and its perceptions from the male gender.
Mr. Weston, looking idly at the swans curving their necks and thrusting their bills down into the black water, felt though Fredericas taste was vile, her judgement was sound it was silly for Aunt Adelaide to sacrifice herself on the altar of being absolutely useless to society. Then he thought, uneasily, of the possible value to Aunt Adelaides character of self-sacrifice. No, he decided, self-sacrifice which denies common sense isnt virtue; its spiritual dissipation!23
The lines reflect Mr Westons comparison of the radical young woman Frederica to a conservative Aunt Adelaide and his own ambiguity in coming to terms with their characters. Here, Aunt Adelaides character is typical of the ideals of patriarchy which demands women to stick to assigned roles such as marriage and bearing children in order to maintain the order regardless of their will to be the other. Therefore, Fredericas radicalism is outside the norms of Aunt Adelaides rationality
23
Deland, Margaret, The Rising Tide, 1916, Harper & Brothers New York, pg 16
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which views marriage with a noble man the most important destiny of life which Frederica boldly opposes. Loosely speaking, the notion of self-sacrifice from Mr. Westons perspective highlights a form of oppression where a woman with outdated beliefs tends to oppress the other woman no matter how common-sensical she may be. The irony here is that there is evidence of such dichotomy amongst women of all classes which could be termed as matriarchy the devoted sister of patriarchy. However, good education and exposure to literary thought has been one of the key reasons for success stories of radicals such as Frederica. Following is another example of her unconventionally intelligent and funny character that is a wonder for young men and problematic for her elders.
But I think! What I object to in Mother is that she wants me to think her thoughts. Apart from the question of hypocrisy, I prefer my own. As she spoke, the light of a street lamp fell full on her facea wolfish, unhumorous young face, pathetic with its hunger for life; he saw that her chin was twitching, and there was a wet gleam on one flushed cheek. Besides, she said, I simply wont go on spending my days as well as my nights in that house. You dont know what it means to live in the same house withwith--
I wish you were married, he said, helplessly; thats the best way to get out of that house.
29
She laughed, and squeezed his arm. You want to get off your job? she said, maliciously; well, you cant. Im the Old Man of the Sea, and youll have to carry me on your back for the rest of your life. No marriage in mine, thank you! They were sauntering along now in the darkness, her arm still in his, and her cheek, in her eagerness, almost touching his shoulder; her voice was flippantly bitter:
I dont want a man; I want an occupation!24
24
Deland, Margaret, The Rising Tide, 1916, Harper & Brothers New York, pg 12
30
1.3) Politics and Economics of Feminist Literary Traditions It is interesting to draw a comparison of individualistic narratives with group narratives in the late 18th century onwards. From this comparison, we see the emergence of women as individuals as asserted by Indonesian and Egyptian feminists. In Elaine Showalters essay A Literature of Their Own, one sees the process of prose development in this century and the centuries to come. Showalter provides a useful narration of her views and opinions the next step on women as an influential intellectual force; specifically writers and gives an explanation for why womens literary works in earlier times (as well as current times) are individualistic in nature. It also in some ways explains why they waver to form a single political movement encompassing the intricate patterns of their relationship with society which is largely centred on financial empowerment and stability be they single, wives, mothers, mistresses, widows or divorcees:
The theory of a female sensibility revealing itself in an imagery and form specific to women also runs dangerously close to reiterating the familiar stereotypes. It also suggests permanence, a deep, basic, and inevitable difference between male and female ways of perceiving the world. I think that, instead, the female literary tradition comes from the still evolving relationships between women writers and their society. Moreover, the female imagination cannot be treated by literary historians as a
31
romantic or Freudian abstraction. It is the product of delicate network of influences operating in time, and it must be analysed as it expresses itself, in language and in a fixed arrangement of words on a page, a form that itself is subject to a network of influences and conventions, including the operations of the marketplace. In this investigation of the English novel, I am intentionally looking, not at an innate sexual attitude, but at the ways in which self-awareness of the woman writer has translated itself into literary form in a specific place and time-span, how this self-awareness has changed and developed, and where it might lead.25
Showalter goes on to say,
I am therefore concerned with the professional writer who wants pay and publication, not with the diarist or letter-writer. This emphasis has required careful consideration of novelists, as well as the novels, chosen for discussion. When we turn from the overview of the literary tradition to look at the individuals who composed it, a different but interrelated set of motives, drives, and sources become prominent. I have needed to ask why women began to write for money and how they negotiated the activity of writing within their families. What was their professional self25
Showalter, Elaine, Feminist Literary Theory, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing, Basil Blackwell, 1986, pg 12
32
image? How was their work received, and what effects did criticism have upon them? What were their experiences as women, and how were these reflected in books? What was their understanding of womanhood? What was their relationship to other women, to men, and their readers? How did changes in womens status affect their lives and careers? And how did the vocation of writing itself change the women who committed themselves to it? In looking at literary sub-cultures, such as Black, Jewish, Canadian, Anglo-Indian, or even American, we can see that they all go through three major phases:26
There is a prolonged phase of imitation of the prevailing
modes of the dominant tradition, and internalization of its standards of art and its views on social roles.
There is a phase of protest against these standards and
values, and advocacy of minority rights and values, including a demand for autonomy.
Finally, the phase of self-discovery, a turning inward
freed from some of the dependency of the opposition, a search for identity.27
26
Showalter, Elaine, Feminist Literary Theory, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing, pg 13 27 Robert, A Bone, The Negro Novel in America, New York, 1958; Northop Frye, Conclusion to A Literary History of Canada, in The Stubborn Structure: Essays on Criticism and Society, Ithaca, 1970, pp.278-312
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However, Showalters view of ignoring diarists would be unfair to renowned feminist American poets such as Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath who were mostly or partly discovered from their diaries and letters. Her view would also be unfair to writers of the Progressive Movements of the 30s in South Asia such as Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Rashid Jahan and Ismat Chughtai whose works were banned by authorities due to their explicit criticism of political dictatorships, and content such as domestic abuse, marital rape and lesbian love. These writers did not gain any significant financial success and became available to the reading public years after their death. However, the writings are shocking as well as very moving. They paint pictures of gruesome realities surrounding women, and thus can not be ignored. The writings have been adapted by serious film-makers of 21st century South Asia such as Pakistan-based Mehreen Jabbars Kat Putli and India-based Mira Nairs Fire. These writers and diarists were prevented from earlier discovery within the sphere of readers to avoid turbulence. Emily Dickinson managed to shake the audiences with her eccentric style of writing on simple themes such as love, death, nature, immortality and beauty.
Sylvia Plath challenged patriarchy and dictatorship to its core. For example, in the verses from her poem entitled Daddy, she says, you do not do anymore black shoe in which I have lived like a foot for thirty years, barely able to breathe or Achoo. This echoes with the success of the Suffrage movement.
34
Showalter has been quoted here to establish a crucial transition phase for women in literature emergence from the private home-based space to being in the marketplace as merchants of social, political and economic affairs. The incentive to do so comes from the need, knowledge, reputation, and strong socio-political links combined with the writers financial stability and the ability to touch peoples lives in the modern era.
On writings of women educators at the turn of the 19th century in the United Kingdom (UK), Maria Tamboukou, Senior Lecturer in Psychological Studies and Codirector of the Centre of Narrative Research, University of East London, in her paper Womens political narratives in the interstices of constructed dichotomies, says:
What I want to argue is that their (women) narratives of becoming political seem to be discursively constrained first within the dichotomy, between the private and the public and second within the separation of the political and the social. Womens narratives emerging in the intersection of these historically constructed dichotomies create non-canonical
conditions for the political subject to emerge as both relational and narratable.28
28
Maria Tamboukou, International Conference of Political Psychology, 2003, Source: www.uel.ac.uk/cnr/symposium.doc
35
By exploring the dichotomy of narratives between the private and the public, and political and the social, an intersection through the identified prose would be sought. Then, a view of their psychological impact in creating non-canonical subject matter for the political feminist to emerge from historically constructed dichotomies would be formulated.
The following lines are taken again from Margaret Delands novel, The Rising Tide. The characters are set in Payton Street. They are walking and engaged in a discussion. It is a situation where Frederica is providing us with a view of herself from her grandmother and mothers perspectives and her own ways of reconciling with them. While using Frederica as a subject according to Tamboukou emerging as an individual in the given social setting, an interesting break from family conventions is observed.
Unwomanly?
Thats
Mothers
word.
Grandmothers
is
unladylike. No sir! Ive done all the nice, womanly things that girls who live at home have to do to kill time. Ive painted cant paint any more than Zip! And Ive slummed. I hate poor people, they smell so. And Ive taken singing lessons; I have about as much voice as a crow. My Suffrage League isnt work, its fun. I might have tried nursing, but Grandmother had a fit; that warm heart shes always handing out couldnt stand the idea of relieving male suffering. What! she said, see, a gentleman
36
entirely undressed, in his bed! I said, it wouldnt be much more alarming to see him entirely dressed in his bed! She paused, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully; its queer about Grandmother I dont really dislike her. She makes me mad, because shes such an awful old liar, but shes no fool.29
Theorists of identity politics30 have argued passionately and persuasively that oppression shapes the consciousness of the oppressed such that oppressed people usually internalise their oppression. They further contend that only in an environment when members of the oppressor group are not present to enforce outdated or unjust definitions of equality, justice, and right, and the norms that derive from such definitions, can the oppressed begin the difficult work of consciousness-raising, the first step towards organisation of the oppressed to struggle for a liberation defined in their own terms. In the above lines, within the sphere of the private we see a womans character (Frederica) set between two different forms of definitions from two characters of the previous generation (women) Mother and Grandmother for her identity and place in the world. However, it is also interesting to note that the terms Unwomanly and unladylike are coming from Fredericas frame of mind and in the lines that follow she struggles to set herself above not only the women whove influenced her since
29 30
Deland, Margaret (b. 1845), The Rising Tide, 1916, Harper & Brothers, New York, pg 13 Politics, Identity; L.A. Kauffman in his article traced its origins to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the most militant organisation of the civil rights movement in the early and mid-1960s its agenda has known to be used by black nationalists. It is defined as political action to advance the interests of members of a group supposed to be oppressed by virtue of a shared and marginalised identity (such as race or gender). The term has been used in the US politics since the 1970s. Source: Wikipedia
37
childhood but also above the stereotypical notion of struggle usually interpreted as a tedious task of going uphill to achieve a difficult goal that could be achieved by simply going straight associated with liberation and emancipation. The lines also challenge the stereotypes of chastity and modesty by associating gentlemen with nudity which could also be seen as a hit on elite mannerism of the time in a nursing room, and renaissance activities such as painting which has brought to light the visual interpretation/narration of history and also establishes the idea that men are also suffering from orders set by the patriarchy. The concept of relieving male suffering gentlemen in particular, in their nudity in nursing rooms though strongly hinting vulgarity, is an ingenuous expression of a strong-minded modern woman with a rebellious heart in the early 20th century that Deland has woven .
In the transition from the private to the public for women there have been two fundamental ethics of human nature shaping human consciousness namely; duty and responsibility. These have strong influences and while breaking from the shackles of private domain, these two tend to take us back to our ancestral and other obligations where religious narratives become relevant. How much discipline and with what amount of ease we manage to fulfil those duties, comes under responsibility. However, there is a question which is also fundamental in nature that stems from the conscience; how and where do you set the boundaries for duty and responsibility? Where does the courage come from? Human nature is driven by capacity, meaning, it is specialist in nature able to perform certain tasks and unable to perform a lot others.
38
Within the social system which is always a discovery for the newly admitted member an adult experimentation on the system becomes a means for learning because the only duty and responsibility she knows are lessons that were learnt from those who were decision-makers within the private domain family, schools of thought and social circles. Therefore, the need to experiment is a smart tool in the package for anyone entering the new social system the public sphere. How the tool is used and utilised to re-interpret the ethics of duties and responsibilities comes from and depends on the training acquired, nature of interaction, knowledge and compassion towards the others, legal and social rights, and financial benefits. That can lead to several progressive consequences or reforms.
One of the consequences could be that the need to experiment combined with new experiences, shapes our duty towards a movement such as nationalism or feminism or an ideology such as globalisation, universal religion or peace with the centre either in Jerusalem or Mecca or both, social identity and hence, diasporas where literary movements are ever evolving even as words emerge here.
The system of policies and regulations in the social sphere, however, poses several questions: do they affect men and women differently? If so, are they fair enough? Do they fulfil the socio-economic requirements of both sexes? Do they provide any form of security to members of society? What could one do if they dont
39
meet the demands of equality? It sets an incentive and good reason for us to emerge as a significant influence in the public sphere with questions that require the reinterpretation of socio-political narratives and re-enforcement of ideas that have been emancipators for gender that were probably hushed by historians and literati of the past or like political psychologists argue, filtered from the system of selective memory or wiped out by tyrants and misogynist dictators.
Therefore for women in particular the new political struggle as observed in this chapter always begins from old existing ones and the writers have a major role to play as their prose and plays explain to us the complex workings of society. Their characters, therefore, are important trendsetters for a workable vision of utopia.
40
Chapter Two: Dynamism of Feminist Political Movements in America & South Asia
2.1) Women Breaking Barriers in the Social Sphere If we look at the gap between the discovery of America which was mistaken for India and the period when the newly discovered land was rapidly becoming home to immigrants from Europe till the beginning of the 20th century, we witness a number of legal, social and economic developments. It is a country evolving rapidly with committees on public affairs, numerous constitutional amendments, legislation, taxes, and treaties that were shaping and re-shaping the society. On February 25th, 1913, it is important to note the 16th amendment in the constitution that imposed tax on income. The federal income tax levied a tax of 1 per cent for income above $3000 for single individuals and above $4000 for married couples. The American Constitution has been secular in nature since independence meaning the society would be governed by laws that cater to public needs from all walks of life regardless of class, religion, gender and race. However, there were discriminatory practices since the beginning of the colonisation of America such as the marginalisation of native communities who were original inhabitants of this area or in other words minorities. Black women, white women; many of whom were exported as slaves to America and Jewish women were always at a higher risk of becoming victims of discriminatory atrocities.
41
The idea of birth control, a term coined by Margaret Sanger in 1915 which was in essence meant to facilitate single women to maintain sexual relationships and their individuality without the risk of getting pregnant, was met with strong opposition from the majority of conservative circles in American society. Sander was arrested in New York for distribution of contraceptive information. It is important to note here that birth control is forbidden according to traditional Catholic beliefs as it is considered an unnatural means to stop pregnancies from occurring and abortion of the child whether legitimate or illegitimate or due to unwanted conception of the baby. However, since there was no legislation on this issue, Sanger was released. She eventually opened the nations first birth-control clinic in Brooklyn. Thus, a large majority group of women was denied legal support. It is interesting to see that literary contribution in these times have been significant in motivating and unifying public concern on some areas that eventually led to legislation on the issues of concern, sometimes, beyond the expectations of the writer. For example, in 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, an expos of working conditions in Chicagos meatpacking houses. Sinclair wanted to generate sympathy for the working classes. Instead, The Jungle provoked public concern over adulterated food which eventually led to the formulation and implementation of The Pure Food and Drug Act in the same year. According to the Act, sale of adulterated food and drugs was banned, and sanitary regulations in the meat-packing industry were also enforced. Sinclair says,
42
I aimed at the publics heart but by accident hit it in the stomach. Externally, the story had to do with a family of stockyard workers, but internally, it was the story of my own family. Did I wish to know how the poor suffered in winter time in Chicago?31
In the same time-period of the 1900s, we are introduced to Susan Glaspell (1876 1948), journalist, feminist, realist playwright and writer from Davenport, Iowa. She set out to challenge social norms through her literary contributions. She promoted American dramatists for a period of seven years those who explicitly expressed the progressive narratives of Glaspell and other writers to American audiences, setting a tradition of highlighting issues that were not common knowledge and promoting radical liberalism. Margaret Deland also wrote during this time a period that was crucial to the development of the woman and her transition from woman to person. According to Barbara Ozieblo:
Susan Glaspell had never liked to feel controlled or delimited; she rebelled against societys expectations rather than passively wait for a husband to appear. She married a twice-divorced father of two George Cram Cook whom she had met in her hometown after earning the status and respect of a published author who had opened the doors of Davenports social and intellectual life. They were the founders of the Provincetown
31
Sinclair, Upton on his writing of The Jungle in American Outpost: A Book of Reminiscences, 1932; Source: Wikipedia
43
Players that would eventually showcase plays from playwrights such as Eugene O Niel and Tennessee Williams.32
Glaspell went to Drake University in Des Moines, graduating in June of 1899, and then worked as a reporter for the Des Moines Daily News. She gave up her newspaper job in 1901 and returned to Davenport in order to write; she had already published a number of short stories in Youths Companion, and was to see her stories accepted by more sophisticated magazines, such as Harpers, Leslies, The American and others. Her story For Love of the Hills received the Black Cat prize in 1904; her first novel, The Glory of the Conquered, would come out in 1909, followed by The Visioning in 1911. Glaspell utilises the art of dialogue to provide us with an insight of her passion in literary activities and the strength she draws from them to develop her own individual identity, of being her own woman.
Wella woman that reads Latin neednt worry a husband much, Harry says to Dick after Claire [Harrys wife] departs after a heated debate, You know, I doubt if youre a good influence for Claire. I suppose an intellectual woman and for all Claires hate of her ancestors, shes got the bug herself. In
32
Ozieblo, Barbara, Susan Glaspell: A Critical Biography. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
44
this play, Claire seems to show plenty of agitation for outsiders who want to be guests in her house. 33
This provides us with another aspect of Glaspells personality and her romance with nativity and the resentment of the non-American settlers who marginalised, maligned or destroyed the natives in America an echo for women and minorities in general. We shall see, with more examples that political activism in Glaspells women is rampant. It encompasses logical takes and strong references to nature and history. Men in her plays accompany women in either humours delight or through the material settings of their surroundings focussed on the present.
Claire: But our own spirit is not something on the loose. Mine isnt. It has something to do with what I do. To fly. To be free in air. To look from above on the world of all my days. Be where man has never been! Yes wouldnt you think the spirit could get the idea? The earth grows smaller. I am leaving. What are they running around down there? Why do they run around there? Houses? Houses are funny lines and down-going slants houses are vanishing slants. I am alone. Can I breathe this rarer air? Shall I go higher? Shall I go too high? I am loose. I am out. But no; man flew, and returned to earth the man who left it.
33
Glaspell, Susan, The Verge, performed on November 14, 1921 at the Provincetown Playhouse, pg 10. Characters quoted: Harry and Claire (Husband and Wife). Dick is Harrys friend. Source: www.gutenberg.org
45
Harry: And jolly well likely not to have returned at all if hed had those flighty notions while operating a machine.34
In Claire, we see Glaspells conceptual take on the idea of flight for which she picks spirit as her simile. Technically, a spirit needs no wings to fly. The first witness to these lines, the reader or the viewer is set in the aftermath conditions of World War I. Man flew and returned to earth the man who left it, raises mixed feelings about the male gender pilot of the aircraft that took the lives of many, men who lost control of their aircrafts and lost their lives in the war. It is a sheer mockery of the Wright Brothers invention of the aircraft that besides facilitating the joys of sharing the heights of eagles, it provoked war and bloodshed of a new kind. Claire who seems to be an agitated person appears as the peacemaker, as a character who is giving us a realistic sense of the events of history, and means to reconcile with it. It is interesting to note Harrys take specifically in not to have returned at all if hed had those flighty notions while operating a machine. Here, Glaspell brings out the humorous way of reconciling the non-industrial past with the industrial present which is highly dependant on machines. It also represents those machine operating men and women who have not witnessed career highs in their lives but dream of them. Therefore, we see Harrys attempt to bring Claire back to the present settings of the social sphere. In Claire, Glaspell is also attempting to explain the dichotomy between spirit and flight. Spirit refers to
34
Glaspell, Susan, The Verge, performed on November 14, 1921 at the Provincetown Playhouse, pg18. Source: www.gutenberg.org
46
courage and will and flight refers to flying which could have several directions leading to a specific destination or purpose. Ozieblo contends Glaspells oeuvre is unparalleled in American letters in its major achievements in two genres, drama and fiction. She goes on to state that writing for the theatre made Glaspell more aware of innovations in structure and style, and her later novels benefited from her intense involvement in the development of the American drama. She chose simple settings for her plays to allow maximum communication of characters with the audience. Taken together, her plays, stories, and novels, all explore themes that continue to be vital and challenging to readers and scholars today themes of American identity, individuality vs. social conformity, the idealism of youth, the compromises of marriage, and the disillusionments and hopes of aging.
Both her plays and novels speak deeply of feminist issues such as womens struggle for expression in a patriarchal culture that binds them in oppressive gender binarisms, the loving yet fraught relationships between daughters and mothers, and women's need for female friendship as a defining part of their growth toward autonomy and selfhood.35
In order to filter Glaspells idea of spirit from the essence of history, consider the impact of the narrative of a 12-year old boy Walt on his native American foster aunt
3536
Ozieblo, Barbra, author of Susan Glaspell: A Critical Biography. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. http://academic.shu.edu/glaspell/aboutglaspell.html
47
Mother Siouxs struggle with neo-American settlers, and eventually, her escape in the late 19th century from Mr Vertigo; New York-based post-modernist writer Paul Austers fiction novel:
It started when she was sixteen years old, she said, at the height of the Ghost Dance craze that swept through the Indian lands in the late 1880s. Those were the bad times, the years of the end of the world, and the red people believed that magic was the only thing that could save them from extinction. The cavalry was closing in from all sides, crowding them off the prairies onto small reservations, and the Blue-Coats had too many men to make a counteract feasible. Dancing the Ghost Dance was the last line of resistance: to jiggle and shake yourself into a frenzy, to bounce and bob like the Holy Rollers and screwballs who babble in tongues. You could fly out of your body then, and the white mans bullets would no longer touch you, no longer kill you, no longer empty your veins of blood. The Dance caught on everywhere, and eventually Sitting Bull himself threw in his lot with the shakers. The US army got scared, fearing rebellion was in the works, and ordered Mother Siouxs great-uncle to stop. But the old boy told them to shove it, he could jitterbug in his own tepee if he wanted to, and who were they to meddle in his private business?
Walt goes on to say,
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for Mother Sioux, it probably meant the difference between life and death. A few days after her departure into the world of show business, Sitting Bull was murdered in a scuffle with some of the soldiers who were holding him prisoner, and not long after that, three hundred women, children, and old men were mowed down by a cavalry regiment at the so-called Battle of Wounded Knee, which wasnt a battle so much as a turkey shoot, a wholesale slaughter of the innocent.36
The 20th century was an interesting period for the growth of South Asian writers as well people of the continent who inherited the English culture of writing that eventually became Literature, in the formal sense. America and Europe was bustling with arts, literature, and journalism, legal, social and economic activities and rapid industrial development. At the same time, the colonisers were taking newly developed systems and gadgets in their respective countries to South Asia in languages that were alien to its inhabitants modernity and English. Therefore, the communities were faced with challenges, the most difficult one being to learn and adapt to new ideas of thought, language and expression. Partha Chattarjee explains this while taking Bengal as her case study:
In Bengal, it is at the initiative of the East India Company and the European missionaries that the first printed books are produced in Bengali at the end of the eighteenth century and the
36
Auster, Paul; Mr Vertigo, Faber & Faber Ltd., 1994, pg 74
49
first narrative prose compositions commissioned at the beginning of the nineteenth. At the same time, the first half of the nineteenth century is when English completely displaces Persian as the language of bureaucracy and emerges as the most powerful vehicle of intellectual influence on a new Bengali elite. The crucial moment in the development of the modern Bengali language comes, however, in mid-century, when this bilingual elite makes it a cultural project to provide its mother tongue with the necessary linguistic equipment to enable it to become an adequate language for modern culture.37
However, Chattarjee asserts that while European influences were crucial in shaping explicit critical discourse, it was widely believed that European conventions were non-appropriate and mis-leading in judging literary productions in Modern Bengali, particularly in Drama.
Drama is the one modern literary genre that is the least commended on aesthetic grounds by critics of Bengali literature. Yet, it is the form in which the bilingual elite has found its largest audience. When it appeared in its modern form in the middle of the nineteenth century, the new Bengali drama had two models. One, the modern European drama as it had developed since Shakespeare and Moliere, and two, the virtually forgotten corpus of Sanskrit drama, now restored to a reputation
37
Chattarjee, Partha, The Nation and Its Fragments. Whose Imagined Community?, pg 7
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of classical excellence because of the praises showered on it by Orientalist scholars from Europe.38
The conventions that would enable a play to succeed on the Calcutta stage was very different from the conventions approved by critics schooled in the traditions of European drama. The tensions have not been resolved to this day. What thrives as mainstream public theatre in West Bengal or Bangladesh today is modern urban theatre, national and clearly distinguishable from folk theatre. It is produced and largely patronised by the literate urban middle classes. With drama, the Bengali novel also had the essence of live characters speaking directly to the readers. On popular forms of aesthetic expression, she goes on to say:
It was remarkable how frequently in the course of their narrative Bengali novelists shifted from the disciplined forms of authorial prose to the direct recording of living speech. Looking at the pages of some of the most popular novels in Bengali, it is often difficult to tell whether one is reading a novel or a play. The literati, in its search for artistic truthfulness, apparently found it necessary to escape as often as possible the rigidities of that prose.39
Where there is change, there is nostalgia of the past, where there is nostalgia, there is Tennessee Williams, American playwright from the South a once neglected
38 39
Chatterjee, 7 Chatterjee, 8
51
part of the country like the present South in Pakistan. While we struggle to inhibit horrific experiences in the emergence of a modern era by killing our social identity or erase them from memory, Williams struggles to express them with humour and with melancholic intensity. He is one of those few playwrights, who show how its done with class and taste. One could also credit Williams for the commonly used phrase, we learn from our mistakes. Williams brings out the psychological conscience of his characters with great dexterity. Transformation and inner thoughts of his characters are expressed through music, visuals and witty dialogue. Dubbed as one of Americas greatest playwrights, and certainly the greatest ever from the South, Tennessee Williams wrote fiction and motion picture screenplays, but he is acclaimed primarily for his playsnearly all of them set in the South which at their best rise above regionalism to approach universal themes. Eric W. Cash, in his essay on Tennessee Williams highlights the crucial elements of his contribution to literature:
There is little doubt that as a playwright, fiction writer, poet, and essayist, Williams helped transform the contemporary idea of Southern literature. However, as a Southerner he not only helped to pave the way for other writers, but also helped the South find a strong voice in those auspices where before it had only been heard as a whisper.40
40
W. Cash, Eric, Essay on Tennessee Williams, University of Mississipi. http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/contributors.html
52
From A Street Car Named Desire to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof plays for which he won the Pulitzer Prize Williams characters satirise social mores in a gentle tongue-and-cheek way. Critics say many of his characters are caricatures of people in his life which has largely been influenced by ancestral domination and the economic plight of the South. From the opening lines of Williamss play, The Glass Menagerie, that appeared in 1944, just before the Second World War, we see the approach to narrating nostalgia:
Tom: To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy. In Spain there was revolution. Here there was only shouting and confusion.41
Williams tackles issues such as the plight of women in the South, their conflicts within the domestic sphere. Doubts over marriage, hesitancy towards independent livelihood, shyness, development of self all encompassing some form of nostalgia or oppression are some of the key themes surrounding his female characters. Amanda, one of the plays main characters mother of a son and daughter confronts her daughter Laura upon learning that she had been skipping business school in the following extract:
41
Williams, Tennessee, The Glass Menagerie, from Six Great American Plays, A Random House Publication, page 273
53
Amanda [Hopelessly fingering the huge pocketbook]: So what are we going to do the rest of our lives? Stay home and watch the parades go by? Amuse ourselves with the glass menagerie, darling? Eternally play those worn-out phonograph records your father left as a painful reminder of him? We wont have a business career weve given that up because it gives us nervous indigestion! [Laughs wearily.] What is there left but dependency all our lives? I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who arent prepared to occupy a position. Ive seen such pitiful cases in the South barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sisters husband or brothers wife! stuck away in some little mouse-trap of a room encouraged by one in-law to visit another little birdlike women without any nest eating the crust of humility all their life! Is that the future that weve mapped out for ourselves?42
In the following dialogue between Laura and Amanda on being crippled Lauras secret admiration for an Irish boy at school, and secret loathing of going to business school is revealed as well as Amandas dependence on illusion that she finds comforting, that in denial, everything will be fine:
Laura: Im crippled!
42
Williams, Tennessee, The Glass Menagerie, from Six Great American Plays, A Random House Publication, page 285
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Amanda: Nonsense! Laura, Ive told you never to use that word. Why, youre not crippled, you just have a little defect hardly noticeable, even! When people have some slight disadvantage like that, they cultivate other things to make up for it develop charm and vivacity and charm! Thats all you have to do!43
Women whove made it to the public workforce as artists, writers, community developers, doctors, engineers and scientists, and leaders have gone through many difficult phases. Women all across the globe share the same history. If not, the bold examples from literary history depicting womens struggles continue to inspire us and our fight for equality in this imperfect world regardless of geography. The price has always been sacrifices for women in every step of the way on the road to equality. In the similar timeline, while Williams was steady on his campaign to emancipate the South, India was being divided. The greatest victims of partition, women, have been left without a voice largely ignored in light of political events leading to partition. According to Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin:
The story of 1947, while being one of the successful attainment of independence, is also a gendered narrative of displacement and dispossession, of large-scale and widespread communal violence, and of the re-alignment of family, community and
43
Williams, 290
55
national identities as a people were forced to accommodate the dramatically altered reality that now prevailed.44
According to the Bhasin and Menon, this was the largest peace-time mass migration in history about 500,000 1,000,000 had perished45. Bapsi Sidhwa in her novel Cracking India documents this mass exodus really well.
The countless rapes and kidnappings of women and young girls are perhaps among the most sordid tales of partition. These females, some with children in their arms, were reportedly abducted, raped and molested, passed from one man to another, bartered and sold like cheap chattel.46
A young woman of twenty-two narrates her flight from Pakistan with a foot convoy from Lyallpur:
When the foot convoy left Lyallpur we all joined it. The military had robbed us of everything before we left our house. First they took away our arms, then our valuables. On the way, I was separated from my people. I saw men being murdered and women being raped on the wayside. If someone protested he was killed. One woman was raped by many men. I was also raped by three men in succession. A man, at last, took me to his house and
44
Menon, Ritu and Kamla Bahsin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in Indias Partition. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998, page 9 45 Ibid., page 35 46 Khosla, G.D. Stern Reckoning: A Survey of the Events Leading Up To and Following the Partition of India. Dehli: Oxford University Press, 1989, page 230
56
kept me there for eight daysHe subjected me to physical torture, forced cow bones into my mouth so that I should be converted to IslamHe put my hands under the charpoy legs and sat down on it to say prayers while I suffered agonies of pain.47
There are similar stories of women from Muslim and Christian backgrounds in that period who either dont exist to narrate them or have been silenced for good. Womens bodies had historically become territory in which men acted out their aggression by stripping them of their culture, language, religious identity and gender. Where American women were demanding the rights to work and struggling for their socio-economic independence, South Asian women were demanding the right to be free.
47
Quoted in Ibid., page 332
57
2.2) Female Leadership and Problems with Hierarchies During migration and colonisation to America or in South Asia women and children suffered the most. However, it is apparent, women in South Asia had bigger challenges to meet and needed to catch up on their education, skills development and to begin campaigning for their rights from scratch. The new countries didnt have a powerful legislation that could help these women to think beyond areas of their new identities. However, affluent women such as Begum Liaquat Ali Khan wife of Pakistans first prime-minister came to the aid of women who survived the atrocities of partition. Through her organisation, All Pakistan Womens Association, women were rehabilitated, given shelter and health facilities, educated and eventually made aware of their potential as contributors to the new economy. In the absence of legislation in favour of women then, these initiatives became a ray of hope for their human development in mid 20th century. At the social level, however, marriages of convenience based on lies, limitations set by the traditional society and man-made principles of morality were some of the problems that obstructed women from setting foot in the public sphere as entrepreneurs, as independent beings in control of their lives, preferences and decisions. It is interesting to know back in Europe in the late 19 th century; women were struggling with similar issues. Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen on the plight of middle class women says:
58
There are two kinds of moral law, two kinds of conscience, one for men and one quite different for women. They dont understand each other but in practical life, woman is judged by masculine law as though she was not a woman but a man. A woman cannot be herself in modern society. It is an exclusively male society with laws made by men. Prosecution and judges assess women conduct from a masculine standpoint.
Ibsens A Doll House is one such play that addresses the issue of such women who get trapped in the mans world. A Dolls House is the tragedy of a Norwegian housewife Nora who is forced to challenge law and society, and her husbands value system. She gives up her roles as wife and mother and reclaims herself, but in the process she is isolated after years of social conditioning. She has to confront suffering as she gains insight into herself.
The inspiration for A Dolls House came from the tragic events that happened to Laura Kieler, a young woman Ibsen met in 1870. She asked Ibsen to comment on a play she was writing and they became close friends. Some time later her husband contracted tuberculosis and was advised to visit a warm climate. Unfortunately, they lacked the financial means, so she acquired a loan. Repayment was demanded and Laura had to forge a cheque. This was soon discovered and her husband treated her like a common criminal, despite the fact that she had taken these
59
actions for his sake. She suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to a public asylum. Eventually, she begged him to take her back for the sake of the children. Unfortunately, A Dolls House was resented by the woman who had inspired it.48
Ibsens settings like Glaspells were simple. He wanted his audience to see the dynamics of his characters dialogues. The following lines from A Dolls House show how Nora gets entangled in the web of blackmail. What she thought of as a favour for Helmer [her husband], Krogstad Helmers junior colleague who had been fired uses as an illegal deed to threaten her to convince Helmer to re-instate him:
Krogstad: Mrs Helmer. Pay attention. Either youve a very bad memory, or you know nothing of business. Id better remind you. Nora: What? Krogstad: Your husband was ill. You came to me for a loan. Four thousand. Four thousand, eight hundred kroner. Nora: Where else was I to turn? Krogstad: I said Id find the money Nora: You did find it.
48
Ibsen, Henrik, A Dolls House Kenneth McLeish Translation, Cambridge University Press, 1995, page 106
60
Krogstad on certain conditions. You were so upset about your husband, so eager for the money to cure him, I dont think you noticed the conditions. So Id better remind you. I said Id find the money; I wrote a contract. Nora: And I signed it. Krogstad: Thats right. But underneath your signature was a clause saying that your father would guarantee the repayments. Your father should have signed that clause. Nora: He did. Krogstad: Lets keep to the point, Mrs. Helmer. That mustve been a very difficult time for you. Nora: Yes Krogstad: Your father was desperately ill. Nora: Yes Krogstad: Mrs. Helmer, can you remember the exact date? The date he died? Nora: 29th September Krogstad: Yes indeed. I checked. Thats what makes it so extraordinary..So hard to explain.
61
Nora: Whats hard to explain? Krogstad: The fact that your father signed this document three days after he died. Nora: What dyou mean? Krogstad: Your father died on the 29th September. But he dated his signature here, look on the 2nd October. As I say, Mrs. Helmer: extraordinary. Can you explain it? Nora: I signed my fathers name. Krogstad: Mrs. Helmer, you shouldnt have admitted that. Nora: Youll get your money. Krogstad: Mrs. Helmer, youve obviously no idea just what youve done. But Ill tell you, it was nothing more or less than my own..mistake. All those years ago. Nora: You took a risk, that kind of risk, to save your wife? Krogstad: The law is not interested in reasons. Nora: Then its a fool.
62
Krogstad: Fool or not, its what youll be judged by, if I take this document to court.49
Here, it is paramount to question if Nora had a powerful influence at the communal level and if she had friendly ties with higher-ups of society, would she have escaped the situation smoothly? Or more importantly, if she had more knowledge and exposure to the world of market and economy, would she have made the mistake even in extreme emotional circumstances? In the context of middle class women of South Asia, these are important questions facing current times. In Europe and particularly in America, women entrepreneurship is speedily gaining popularity and importance. Gaps in the development of women between the East and the West are due to variables such as the man-controlled legal systems, outdated traditions, lack of knowledge in the sciences, and lack of awareness of rights that entitles them to equal opportunities. However, despite Western women having some advantages, discrimination still exists. Women are still contesting to demand equal pay and equal status for the same job as males within and outside the sphere of family and public sphere. If the idea of equality didnt exist, there wouldnt be struggles. As seen in the previous arguments, women from all parts of the world share more or less the same history of struggles and evolution although they are set in different timelines. Some are ahead and some are catching up and some are leading. According to a contemporary South Asian writer:
49
Ibsen, 32-35
63
Feminism is a tool, not an ideology. Feminism is an intervention. It teaches you how to read everyday and find its sexist biases, its racist bias, its class bias, its heterosexist bias, its nationalistic bias, its religious bias, its secular bias. It teaches you to read between the lines, find what's missing, find the gaps. It's a tool to voice silence and uncover hidden things.50
It is also interesting to note that female leaders of the late 20th century and early 21st century mentioned in the previous arguments from different parts of Asia shared one common characteristic: politically powerful parents and husbands.
There is no doubt that the rise of female leaders is linked to their being members of prominent families: they are all daughters, wives or widows of former government heads or leading oppositionists. These women share dynastic origins and inherited political leadership.51
However, even for women with famous last names, being female can be a disadvantage. They have a tough challenge to be better than their ancestors as leaders. But, these women have got it much better than women without family connections, who still have trouble breaking into politics. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union:
50
Pasha, Kyla, from Urmila Goels Interview, November 2006. http://www.suidasien.info

51
Derichs, Claudia and Thompson, Mark, authors of Dynasties and Female Leadership in Asia, a German government funded research project.
64
Women compose only 16.6 per cent of Asias legislatures. Thats an improvement over 13.1 per cent a decade ago, but a long way from Scandinavias 41.6 per cent and still below the global average of 17.4 per cent. 52
52
Seno A., Alexandra, Handing Down the Reins, Newsweek, 22 October 2007, page 57.
65
Chapter Three: Conclusion It occurs to me why I want to make a quilt. Of course, because Grandma did them, womanbeautiful
but also because my life seems so in pieces not broken or scattered, but Im always working at putting together
fitting schedules and needs piecing time to personalities different sizes of energy scraps various shapes of commitment
Making a cohesive unit something functional and lovely Its all done with hidden stitches sturdy and minute.
53
Quilting53
Baker, Meleta Murdock, If I Had a Hammer, Papier Mache Press, 1990
66
Women with shared experiences have according to research by leading critics in literature tried to construct and develop a collective identity that emerged from collective oppression. For many women, commitment to womens movement must have also seemed like the birth of an individual identity. What comes after that? When we claim, I am a feminist, how do we develop a collective subjectivity that has rooms for difference and diversity? If we have constructed it, are we maintaining it? Is there any coherence in our shared experiences? Are we quilting alright?
I did not enter the womens movement in search of an identity. Political activity simply presented itself to me as an imperative and as an escape, a liberation from the privatised obsessions of the search for identity. The radical movements of the late sixties and of the seventies did, though, raise the question of personal identity in a way no political movement had raised it before. Earlier socialists may have tried to raise questions of the personal life, but only now was a culture already saturated with individualism popularised by psychotherapies awaiting the revolution of everyday life. Changed consciousness had become a necessary part of revolutionary change.54
54
Wilson, Elizabeth, Mirror Writing: An Autobiography. Source: Mary Eagletons Feminist Literary Tradition, Basil Blackwell, 1986, page 181-182
67
Wilson goes on to say that due to non-availability or a very limited opportunity to rely on the powerful appeal of solidarity with a class or group, we have failed to develop a collective subjectivity. Annette Kolodny elaborates Wilsons point of view. She states, What distinguishes our work from those similarly oriented social consciousness critiques, it is said, is its lack of systematic coherence. 55 She exemplifies her point of view by pitting our work against psychoanalytic or Marxist readings, which owe a decisive share of their persuasiveness to their apparent internal consistency as a system. She says, in contrast, the aggregate of feminist literary criticism appears woefully deficient in system, and painfully lacking in program. This rings true for the feminist movements as well proved by various examples worldwide that the movements emergence is strongly linked with the growth of feminist literature. It would be difficult to assess the reasons for the missing powerful strands of the quilt that have not been knotted yet. Women of great talent and calibre have been ignored or did not live to grab the opportunity of entrepreneurship a modern term for developing self-hood. The middle class woman who is caught between two extremes modernity and oppressions of the past is still partially aware of things she is capable of doing. These middle class women could be the missing strands the quilt needs.
55
Kolodny, Annette, Dancing Through the Minefield: Some observations on the Theory, Practice and Politics of Feminist Literary Criticism. Source: Mary Eagletons Feminist Literary Tradition, Basil Blackwell, 1986, page 184
68
However, their inclusion as explained earlier would require them to attain the skills, knowledge and have the compassion to co-exist with their fellows in the quilt. Susan Glaspell, in her play The Trifles shows us:
Sheriff: Well, Henry, at least we found out that she was not going to quilt it. She was going to what is it you call it, ladies? Mrs Hale [Her hand against her pocket]: We call it knot it, Mr Henderson.
Its the knots in the quilt that matter. When those knots become as prominently visible as the quilt itself, there is a gleam hope for a genuine emancipation of womankind that also presents us with the opportunity of leading progress and development from all areas and professions as a collective force worldwide.
69
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aal Machan, Kathryn, If I Had a Hammer, Edited by Sandra Martz, Papier Mache Press., 1990 Auster, Paul; Mr Vertigo, Faber & Faber Ltd., 1994 Chattarjee, Partha, The Nation and Its Fragments. Whose Imagined Community? Deland, Margaret, The Rising Tide Harper & Brothers New York., 1916 Eagleton, Mary, Feminist Literary Theory, A Reader, Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1986 Ibsen, Henrik, A Dolls House; A Kenneth McLeish Translation, Cambridge University Press., 1995 Khosla, G.D. Stern Reckoning: A Survey of the Events Leading Up To and Following the Partition of India. Dehli: Oxford University Press, 1989 Menon, Ritu and Kamla Bahsin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in Indias Partition. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998 Mernissi, Fatima, The Forgotten Queens of Islam, University of Minnesota Press., 2003 Newsweek Magazine, Times Printers New York, 22 October 2007 Robert, A Bone, The Negro Novel in America, New York., 1958 Russell, Bertrand, History of Western Philosophy, Routledge., 2000 Saiyid, Dushka, Muslim Women of the British Punjab. New York, NY: St. Martins Press., 1998 Shaheed, Farida, Great Ancestors: Women Asserting Rights in Muslim Context, Shirkat Gah Publications., 2004 Sidhwa, Bapsi, Cracking India, Minneapolis: Milwaukee Edition., 1991 Showalter, Elaine, Feminist Literary Theory, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing Walters, Margaret, Feminism, A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press 2007 Williams, Tennessee, The Glass Menagerie, Random House, 1951 Books and Plays Downloaded from the Web: Glaspell, Susan, The Project Gutenberg EBook of Plays: Trifles, The Outside, The Verge, The Inheritors. From www.gutenberg.org
70
Sidhwa, Bapsi, Cracking India, Minneapolis: Milwaukee Edition., 1991
71
WEBLIOGRAPHY Asaduddin, M, The Exiles Return, Qurratulain Hyders Art of Fiction Defining Narrative Therapy, http://en.wikipedia.org Derichs, Claudia and Thompson, Mark, Dynasties and Female Leadership in Asia, a German government funded research project. Fitzgerald F. Scott. The Great Gatsby, www.gutenberg.org Glaspell, Susan, The Verge, performed on November 14, 1921 at the Provincetown Playhouse Source: www.gutenberg.org Glaspell, Susan, Trifles, www.gutenberg.org Goel, Urmila, An Interview with Pakistani Poet Kyla Pasha, http://www.suidasien.info Kauffman, L.A, Identity Politics http://en.wikipedia.org Ozieblo, Barbara, Susan Glaspell: A Critical Biography. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. http://academic.shu.edu/glaspell/aboutglaspell.html Pennebaker, Mattie Katherine, The Will of Men: Victimization of Women During Indias Partition, Texas A & M University paper Radical Feminism, http://en.wikipedia.org Ross, Marc Howard - The Political Psychology of Competing Narratives: September 11 and Beyond, http://en.wikipedia.org Sinclair, Upton, On His Writing of The Jungle, American Outpost: A Book of Reminiscences (1932) http://en.wikipedia.org Suffrage, http://en.wikipedia.org Tamboukou, Maria, On Womens Political Narratives, International Conference of Political Psychology, www.ael.ac.uk/cnr/symposium.doc W. Cash, Eric, On Tennessee Williams, University of Mississipi. http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/contributors.html Williams, Tennessee, The Glass Menagerie, www.gutenberg.org

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A Thesis Titled

LITERARY NARRATIVES IN THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF SOUTH ASIAN WOMEN

Master of Arts In Literature

Acknowledgements Synopsis Thesis Contents

page 2 page 3 page 4

Chapter Three: Conclusion

Chapter 1 - A Gender Overview

1.2) History of Feminist Politics in Europe, Americas and the East

restricted by convention, and their minds left undeveloped and untrained.11

However, it was not till 1918

I dont want a man; I want an occupation!24

Showalter goes on to say,

There is a prolonged phase of imitation of the prevailing

There is a phase of protest against these standards and

Finally, the phase of self-discovery, a turning inward

Maria Tamboukou, International Conference of Political Psychology, 2003, Source: www.uel.ac.uk/cnr/symposium.doc

Walt goes on to say,

Auster, Paul; Mr Vertigo, Faber & Faber Ltd., 1994, pg 74

W. Cash, Eric, Essay on Tennessee Williams, University of Mississipi. http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/contributors.html

Quoted in Ibid., page 332

Pasha, Kyla, from Urmila Goels Interview, November 2006. http://www.suidasien.info

Baker, Meleta Murdock, If I Had a Hammer, Papier Mache Press, 1990

Sidhwa, Bapsi, Cracking India, Minneapolis: Milwaukee Edition., 1991

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