CHAPTER-I

INTRODUCTION

Literature is incredibly a versatile instrument and at the

appropriate use of it one can fight against evil and indemnify

ignorance and prejudice and promote national health and harmony

and universal communication. It carries the past, presents the

present and embellishes the future. It is a mark of the lived, living

and yet to live experiences. It enables men to develop a humane and

liberal outlook on life, to realize and make a betterment of the life they

have lived, the world in which they live, to understand themselves and

plan ahead sensibly for a better future.

Indian writing in English is given a distinct place in the literary

landscape of India. It has evolved to have a vibrant, marking presence

of its own, having thrummed from the imitative, realistic and

psychological stages to the experimental one. The writers use English

as the medium, though it is a foreign language. They face a difficulty

in communicating their feelings and concepts in a foreign language.

They are under a pressure to pacify and serve to the needs of the

readers both in India and abroad. Indian writing in English came into

vogue during the period of colonization. It is a literature that is

attempted to write originally in English by authors, Indian by birth,

ancestry and nationality.

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India was under the British rule, but still, English was adopted

by the Indians as a language of understanding and awareness,

education and literary expression with an important means of

communication, devoid of different religions and communities. Indian

English literature, quite understandably, invites attention and

attraction from every part of the country, making the genre admired in

its own right. Creative writing in English is looked at as an integrate

part of the literary traditions in the Indian perspective of fine arts.

The history of Indian writing in English has not been very old.

In about four hundred years Indians have evolved a recognizable body

of literature that is being studied and taught in several universities

abroad and in most of the universities in India. Indian writers have

tried their hand in all four genres of literature-Poetry, Drama, Fiction

and Criticism. However, the status of Indian literature in English is

judged more so, by its novels than by anything else. The development

of Indian novel in English follows gradual progression from the

imitative stage to the realistic, to the psychological and then to the

experimental stage. The novel in particular reached its height in the

post-independence period. There have been remarkable changes in

theories and style in fiction written after 1960.

Indian English fictional writing has seen a commendable growth

in terms of its multiplicity of themes and plurality of stylistic devices.

The survival and growth of this literature, steadily enriched by shifting

patterns and new traditions, betokens an innate potentiality, which

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makes it capable of its own identity and sustenance. It appears that

there has been a growing realization of this fact among scholars in

recent years. In early times of British rule, the novelistic writing had

tremendously arrested the attention of the native masses. Political

writing in the novel or essay format was dominant then. So the socio–

cultural realities form the major themes in most of the Indian novels.

Though it is called Indian fiction, the situations are not fictional but

are drawn from reality. The characters are imaginary but the feelings

and the emotions they possess are not imaginary. They give

importance to social problems faced by the individuals and the Indian

novels are almost like social documentaries rather than being called

fictional.

Indian English literature is an honest enterprise to demonstrate

the ever rare gems of Indian writing in English. From being a singular

and exceptional, rather gradual native flare-up of geniuses, Indian

English has turned out to be a new form of Indian culture and voice in

which the Indian converses regularly.

Indian English literature writers are sometimes felt as forsaking

their national or regional language and attempting to write in a

western “alien” language. As they do this, their loyalty to the nation is

put in much suspicion, a rather unfortunate sensibility for such

intelligent and cultural wonders. While Indian authors-poets,

novelists, essayists and dramatists have been making momentous and

considerable contributions to world literature since the pre-

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independence era, the past few years have witnessed a gigantic

prosperity and thriving of Indian English writing in the world market.

Indian English fiction made its appearance diffidently in the

nineteen twenties, but gradually mustered up confidence and reached

a higher level in the nineteen fifties. As said by B.R. Agrawal and M.P.

Sinha:

The post-independence Indian English novelist had to

appeal to the heterogeneous community, people of diverse

ethnic-religious and cultural backgrounds. For this

purpose he chose themes and situations that had more or

less the same validity all over the country. These themes

emerged to form recurrent patterns and major trends

which were more easily discernible in Post-Independence

Indian society than in that of Pre-independence India.

That is why the range of the novel widened and the

various features of Indian society, economic, political,

religious and cultural were exhaustively covered by it.

Hence the Indian English fiction-already well established

and growing both in variety and stature not only retained

the momentum of the Gandhian Age, abut also flourished

to its fullness with wider ramifications . . . (6).

Indian writing in English today has come to occupy a

respectable position and the credit for it goes to a good number of

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women writers, whose writings have brought to light the various

aspects left untouched and ignored by their male counterparts.

Widely considered as feministic writers, they describe not only their

family fluids and their inferior status but they also depict the sores in

their souls and their agonies as individuals. They portray their

characters as human beings who also feel a longing for their own

space and their worth as individuals who not only sob when denied

their due, but also shed tears to purge themselves of their deeds and

misdeeds.

In a very limited span of a decade or so, the experience of the

literary writers, all over the world has focused around women,

particularly the issues of identity, alienation, suppression and protest

attached to their loss. It is the simultaneous effect of the overgrowing

facets of democracy with feminist movements that women and the

question of their liberation has got wound in both the literatures of

the international level, have individualized women more than a

suffering, or the identity crisis she has undergone. In fact, woman’s

identity as a mother and the potential creator is the only quality of her

superiority over men.

Adrienne Rich says:

Today’s Women
Born yesterday
Dealing with tomorrow
Not yet where we’re going
But not still where we are (np).
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The appearance of women in the field of literature is a significant fact.

It is of more significance that the women have created a space for

themselves in Indian writing in English, transcending the boundaries

and making their presence felt internationally.

The emergence of women writers in Indian writing in English

was a manifestation of the new creative urge in India. It is often

referred to as the literary renaissance in India. The exhausted and

almost sapless native soil received rich fertilizer from the west, and

out of this fruitful union, a new literature was born. Indian writing in

English that began in the form of prosaic pamphlets was not

recognized because of “the lack of historical sense among Indians”

(Agrawal, 3). By the end of the 19th century, the projection of

philosophical speculation through drama and poetry cast a spell of

India’s hoary past and rich classics and her ancient culture on the

minds of the English men. The credit goes to Sri Aurobindo, Swami

Vivekananda and Rabindranath Tagore as they interpreted Indian

religion and philosophy and its rich spiritual heritage to the west.

Women novelists are blooming in the garden of Indian English

fiction, which indicates that Indian women today have discovered a

new individual regime through education and other modes of

empowerment. Most of the novelists fight vociferously and try to voice

out to seek their identity that had been lost long ago. Liberation of

women had been a question mark with reference to their social and

familial structure. Man -woman equality seemed to be a distant

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reality. This has made the novelists expose the social and familial

conventions. They protest against the subjugation of women through

their writings. They argue out the patriarchal ideology prevailing in

India. They have progressively flourished with the breaking of the wall

of history articulated in the marginalized women.

Women have in such a large number have taken up to write

fiction because, it has given them a liberty to create their own world.

Shantha Kumari observes:

It has allowed them to set the conditions to exist free from

the direct interference of men. Similarly why many

women have taken to read women’s writing is because,

they can explore a wide range to experience the world

from which they can identify themselves with a wide range

of characters and a variety of existences. That is why

women’s writing has occupied a significant and central

place in women’s lives (23).

More than any other form of literary expression, women have

chosen fiction to be the most powerful form of literary expression, as it

has acquired a prestigious portion in the Indo-English literature. As a

distant literary form, the novel is undoubtedly of recent birth. It is in

fact, the latest of literary forms to be evolved and the most dominant

in the twentieth century. Indian women writers in English have

adopted this form generously and skilfully.

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Anita Nair is one of the most confident woman novelists in

exploring the torturous sensibilities, the troubled spirits and trapped

situations of women in strict societal patterns. She dives a greater

depth into the inner psyche of women and unveils their quest for self.

Anita Nair was born at Mundakottakurissi, near Shornur in Kerala

state. As a best-selling author of fiction and poetry, her novels The

Better Man and Ladies Coupe have been translated into 21 languages.

She was educated in Chennai, before returning to Kerala, where she

gained a B.A. in English language and literature. She was working as

the creative director of an advertising agency in Bangalore, when she

wrote her first book, a collection of short stories called Satyr of the

Subway, which she sold to Har-Anand Press. The book won her a

fellowship from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her second book

was published by Penguin India (1990), and was the first book by an

Indian author to be published by Picador USA. Her books have been

published in several languages around the world. She lives in

Bangalore. Among Nair’s early commercial works were pieces she

penned in the late 90’s for The Bangalore Monthly Magazine (now

called (“080”Magazine), published by Explocity in a column titled “The

Economical Epicurean.’

There after followed her novel The Better Man (2000) which also

has been published in Europe and the United States. In 2002

appeared the collection of poems Malabar Mind, and in 2003 Where

the Rain is Born - writings about Kerala which she has edited. Anita
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Nair’s second novel Ladies Coupe (2001), has turned out to be an even

greater success than the first, both among critics and readers in so far

15 countries outside India: from USA to Turkey, from Poland to

Portugal. In 2002 it was elected as one of the five best books in India.

Ladies Coupe (2001) was rated as one of the top five books of the year

2002 and was translated into more than twenty-five languages around

the world.

Anita Nair has written The Puffin Book of Myths and Legends

(2004), a children’s book on myths and legends. She has also edited

Where the Rain is Born (2003). Anita Nair’s writings about Kerala and

her poetry have been included in “The Poetry India Collection and a

British Council Poetry Workshop Anthology”. She has also written a

few other books, such as Mistress (2003), Adventure of Nonu, the

Skating Squirrel (2003), Living Next Door to Alise (2007) and Magical

Indian Myth (2008). Her works also include many travelogues. With

the play, Nine Faces of Being, the best-selling author Anita Nair has

become a playwright. The story is adapted from her third novel,

Mistress.

Anita Nair’s maiden novel The Better Man (2000) is a warm and

imaginative novel. Abraham Verghese , the author of My Own Country

remarks:

The Better Man is an astonishing book; it is tender, lyrical,

humorous and insightful. In Anita Nair’s capable hands

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the exotic setting comes alive and becomes familiar and

we see our struggles and triumphs reflected in these

marvelous characters (np).

The Better Man is a fascinating exploration of the undercurrents that

run beneath a seemingly idyllic rural existence. It is set in the sleepy

village of Kaikurussi in northern Kerala. Here is an excerpt from a

conversation with Anita Nair a day after the release of her book in

Bangalore:

“When you set this novel in Kerala, did you escape to a

world that was partly real, partly imaginary?

I love to be in Kerala, I’ll never be able to live there. So, I

created an imaginary village that I would escape to

everyday. Even now, I go to Kerala often. My husband’s a

Malayalee, so he’s got a family there. I’m not writing

about an alien place. For me, right now if I were to write

about Bangalore, I wouldn’t be able to. For some strange

reason, my family’s heavily into folklore. They all have

very visual imaginations. (np)

In Anita Nair’s warm and imaginative first novel The Better Man, the

middle-aged bachelor Mukundan returns to his native Indian village

and is haunted by the past. A practitioner of a unique style of

healing, Bhasi sets about mending his troubled friend, but the

durability of Mukundan’s transformation into a better man is soon

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called into question. The novel shows her as a fine writer with a great

sense of character, vivid knowledge of south Indian culture and an eye

for telling detail.

The next novel Ladies Coupe (2001), is a story of a woman’s

search for strength and independence. The protagonist

Akhilandeswari is forty five and is a single woman, who escapes family

shackles by boarding a train to Kanyakumari, where she listens to the

story of five other women, that gives her a strong message of hope in

her journey towards her self. The Daily Telegraph reviews it thus,

“Nair has created what must be one of the most important feminist

novels to come out of South Asia” (np).

Anita Nair’s third novel, Mistress (2005) shows the writer’s

talent for probing insular worlds. The story contains a triangle of

Koman, a renowned Kathakali artist, his niece Radha and her

husband Shyam, where soon the triangle excludes Shyam and takes

Chris a travel writer in his place as Radha is drawn passionately

towards him. As the characters oscillate between the past and

present, Anita Nair paints a poignant picture of the segregated,

cloistered Muslim village, as Koman tells of his parentage to Chris.

The Guardian reviews it as, “It describes the closed world of an Islamic

village” (np).

The fourth novel Lessons in Forgetting (2010), was published in

the United States as The Lilac House, 2012, adapted into an English
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film, Lessons in Forgetting (2012) by Unni Vijayan. It is a story of

redemption forgiveness and second chances.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines psychoanalysis as

a form of therapy which aims at curing mental disorders “by

investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements

in the mind.” Psychoanalytic criticism uses some of the concepts and

techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature. It

analyses the writer’s interaction of conscious and unconscious

elements that is reflected in her writings. It also analyses how the

characters in creative writings undergo a war within themselves,

which is said to be the state of neurosis, suppressed by the repression

of traumas and unfulfilled desires and finally undergo a sublimation

to become noble or better persons.

It would be appropriate to quote the words of E.M. Forster: “The

novelist is himself a human being and there is an affinity between him

and his subject-matter, which is absent in many other forms of art”

(qtd, John Varghese, Sunita Mishra, 55). Thus the aim of this thesis

is to find out the affinity between the writer and her writings. The

second chapter analyses how Anita Nair, proves to be a feminist

writer, though she denies it often. It makes a study of the myth of

patriarchy that she has inherited in the ‘collective unconscious’ as per

Jung’s psychoanalytic theory and uses them as dominating elements

in her novels. She is not an exception to the use of this myth, as it is

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by virtue of myths that literature created throughout the world for

centuries has gained its significance and permanent value.

Herman Rapoport says, “Characters in literature have the same

subjecthood as living characters. This assumes that there is basically

no difference between art and life” (55). Every human self is a self-

organizing, interactive system of thoughts, feeling and motives that

characterize an individual. The third chapter makes a study of the

ultimate pattern of psychological life of the characters in the four

novels. It includes the process of becoming the whole personality,

being successful in seeking their self. It could be described as the

goal of one’s psychological life. It analyses how Anita Nair dives a

greater depth into the psyche of her characters, and successfully

brings out their urges, hopes, dreams, traumas and fears on their

journey of seeking their self.

The fourth chapter analyses the conscious mind of the novelist

to present a cultural milieu, that has been represented with a reason

and logical thought. She connects the individual with the milieu as

self and society interconnected as a web and the self that is partly

activated individual and partly under the guidance from the prevailing

social pattern.

A critical assessment of any work of art requires a study

of its matter and manner, of its ‘what and how’. And it would be

incomplete without exploring the major technical devices used by the

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author in his works. And hence the fifth chapter attempts a study of

the author’s major techniques and stylistic devices employed in the

four select novels.

The sixth chapter brings out the findings of the research. It

highlights the importance of the affinity between the writer and her

writings and establishes her to be a feminist writer. To sum up in six

interconnected chapters the dissertation establishes the fact that the

writer cannot escape from the thoughts of her mind, being reflected in

her writings. It brings out the writer’s affinity with her writings. It

brings into focus that Anita Nair is a feminist writer though she often

denies it. One could find it apt to quote the words of Wellek and

Warren’s that has been quoted by Ester Fialova, “The age affecting the

writer and the writer affecting the age are inevitable and inseparable”

(np).