64
CONTEMPORARY FEMINISTIC ECHOES IN
ANAND’S NOVELS
– Bishun Kumar*
Abstract : Resistance, revolt, education, frankness, economic
independency and exposure of body are the hallmarks of con-
temporary women. This paper aims at searching for the contem-
porary women in Mulk Raj Anand's novels in the light of the
progressive nature of feminism. Women's journey of progress
began with the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's work A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman and has attained shifting
characters in modern time like 'modern woman’, 'new woman'
and finally 'newly born woman'. In Anand's novels, features of
modernity begin with Sohini's 'resistance' against her physical
exploitation in Untouchable and proceeds to Leila's 'revolt'
against her sexual harassment in Two Leaves and a Bud. Maya's
breakthrough of the conventional system of arranged marriages
and coming back to her lover Lal Singh in The Village. Janki's
avoidance of cultural stereotypes and hatred against the pre-
scribed rules for the widows and her frankness, modernity, and
open love for Ananta after the death of her unmatched hus-
band in The Big Heart, Gauri's economic independence and
education in The Old Woman and the Cow and Ganga Dasi's
winning back her body and using it as her unfailing weapon to
crush even the powerful corrupt men in The Private Life of an
Indian Prince.
Keywords :Cultture, Modern Women, Newly Born Woman,
Subjection, Vindication, Feminism, Poetics, Dalit,Subaltern,
Untouchables, Sexual Politics, phallocentric, izzat,
Feminism is one of the hot topics of contemporary literary
studies. After Betty Friedan’s formation of ‘National Organization
of Women (NOW)’ in America in 1966, it evolved as a revolutionary
movement but seeds of feminism were sown centuries ago when
in 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of Rights of
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65
Woman. Rousseau’s cry “Man was born free but he is in chains
everywhere” fed and watered the undernourished feminist
movement. Mary Wollstonecraft was followed by J.S Mill’s On
the Subjection of Women (1869)’ which was followed by Virginia
Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics,
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Elaine Showalter’s
Towards Feminist Poetics and many others.
Mulk Raj Anand is not a feminist rather a ruthless social
critic and humanist as he himself asserts in his article “ In Search of
Faith” ‘I believe in man’ (151-86). But women constitute
complementary part of men in society. Therefore, a social critic
cannot ignore them from social and cultural history. Anand’s novels
are reflections of contemporary Indian culture and culture is always
dynamic and in state of flux. In Michael Foucault’s view that; “all
discourses of an era are both production and propagator, determines
what is ‘true’ and ‘normal’ during the period in relation to these all
other forms of behavior or either seen to have criminal, insane or
sexually deviant.”
Dynamics of Feminism brought women out of the prison
of patriarchy. It brought fourth women from passive tolerance of
their own exploitation to resistance and revolt, from forced marriage
to the marriage of their own choice, from arranged marriage to
runaway marriage, from chastity syndrome to live in relationship,
from Victorian prudery to renaissance humanism, from shyness
to frankness and openness, from suppression of their desire to
embrace physical pleasure, from illiteracy and savagery to education
and talent, from weakness to power, from irrational to rational,
from male dependence to self dependence, from fear to self-reliance,
from familial to individual, from social conventions to the need of
life what G. B. Shaw calls ‘life force’ after all she attains ‘so many
freedoms.’
In Post-World War II period momentum attained by voice
and resistance of the suppressed and marginalized class like Dalit,
subalterns and more especially of women has affected the literature
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of the time. More or less, all writers have realized its inescapable
force. Anand’s inclination towards feministic concerns is evidenced
in his work “The Bride: An Essay on the Status of Women in India”
lines written to an Indian Air, where he criticizes marriage of a girl.
Says, Anand, ‘marriage is the destiny usually offered to women by
society where she is forced to obey all through her life “the whims
of a man chosen for her by others”’(17). In the past two and a half
decades, literature in general and fiction in particular has reflected
the rejection of certain milestones, traditions and stereotypes.
Richardson Diane and Robinson in their revolutionary work
Introducing Women’s Studies summarize the change in woman’s
attitude.
The influence of feminism has meant that women
no longer have to see motherhood,
heterosexuality and marriage as the only
possible life style and myths portraying women’s
happiness as being confirmed within these
parameters now exploded (223).
Anand’s novels keep pace with the dynamics of feminism.
He fuses gradual up-gradation and maturity in his female characters
with the maturity of feminism phase by phase. Echoes of feminism
can be traced from his very first novel Untouchable. Sohini, Bakha’s
vivacious sister resists against her physical exploitation by Pandit
Kalinath. However, she fails to counter strike for having been
conditioned in age long conventional Indian culture. Leila in Two
Leaves and a Bud goes one step ahead by revolting against her
physical exploitation by the tea planter Reggie Hunt. Unfortunately
she loses her father. In The Village, Maya the beloved of Lalu is
married to an unmatched man. She suffers from unhappy loveless
married life and soon becomes widow. Widowhood in India is a
curse on women. A widow is prescribed by very rigid rules and
social ostracism to the punishment meted out to her for
noncompliance. It ceases life to an insensate thing. In third part of
the Trilogy The Sword and the Sickle Maya breaks through
meaningless tradition and reaches to Lalu and demands love.
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67
Maya’s turning into revolutionary ‘in flickering of an eyelid’
is not convincing enough. Yet we see in her character, women’s
change in the role of the modern world. She contracts runaway
marriage with Lal Singh even after being married and widowed.
Maya is under impression that she retains womanly qualities of
virginal purity and vitality even after her previous marriage. Her
widowhood could not diminish her complete enthusiasm in life.
Her love for life makes her powerful. She believes that the diverse
possibilities that life offers need not be ignored by the individual. It
is this theory of active involvement in life in the right spirit that makes
Maya ‘a new woman’. A new woman is not victim of foolish,
foppish, stupid, sexual modesty. She resists and revolts for the
sake of the vitality of her life.
Concept of ‘new woman’ is a Post-modern and Post-
World War II phenomenon in feminism. Contemporary woman is
worried about her individual self. She wishes to live life on her own
accord rather than becoming a puppet in the hands of domineering
man. She demands for her rights and her own status no less than a
man. She does not want to sub-ordinate man but to stand on equal
footings. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and ‘Judith
Shakespeare’ Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics and Elaine Showalter’s
Towards Feminist Poetics all evidence the change in women’s
attitude for their own individuality and identity of independent of
man.
In Maya, Anand has projected ‘a new woman’ whom one
can compare with Renaissance humanism who believes in the
fullness of life. It is her belief in the fullness of life which puts her in
a state of disharmony with society. Maya feels that life should be
lived in a meaningful manner and she knows that it is only the
individual who has to create meaning and live in harmony. The
boldness with which she sets aside her previous marriage and
widowhood is secured from her belief in life.
Gone are the days when woman entered into the
unbreakable bond of marriages availed by parents and bore the
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seven oaths taken during her matrimony. Today, she does not want
to live life bound by terms and conditions. She longs to be centered
on the vitality of life. She wants all her desires to be fulfilled whether
social or unsocial, whether traditional or anti-traditional. She has
librated herself from marital confinement. Now she is in state of
ecstasy.
The need for ‘live in relationship’ has already been realized
and experimented by Anand in his novel The Big Heart which
after 65 years even The Honorable Supreme Court has also needed
to implement. Janki, a leading female character is married to an
elderly man who dies soon after her marriage with him. In the
beginning of the novel she was exposed as a T.B patient rooted to
the Nawari bed, was almost on the verge of death. Her emancipated
body was withering away day by day. But this illness could not
destroy her spirit in her heart any way. Premila Paul points out the
complex conditions in which Janki finds herself:
After the death of her elderly husband the society
expects her to be dead to all impulses and live only
to worship the memory of him, her lord and master.
It is said “ her life would have been remained a
series of insults if she had been condemned to mourn
the death of an elderly husband to whom she had
been married by arrangement” (1945: 115).
Janki disapproves the truth of the traditional axiom of the
Hindu religion that there is no life after the death of the husband.
Anand has seen the danger of widowhood which means denial of
life and denial of life means denial of existence. It is Ananta, the
protagonist who recognizes Janki’s vitality even after her widowhood
and lying as a T.B. patient. He brings her life back by caring during
her illness. Janki after recovering her health lives openly with Ananta
revolting against society and religious norms and emerges as a New
Woman.
Janki’s relationship with Ananta is a slap on the traditional
marriages. Maya in The Village and Janki in The Big Heart both
find themselves entrapped in traditional marriages. The pleasure of
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69
life that they find in listening to their inner self and the craving for
her life force is thousand times better than obedience to conventions.
Janki goes one step ahead Maya. Maya forces Lalu to marry her
to get social and legal recognition while Janki needs no social or
legal recognition. She not only lives happily with Ananta but gains
confidence and empowers herself to fight against the passivity of
her feminity. After Ananta’s death she holds the responsibility to
lead his mission of social reform. Anand has portrayed that a widow
craves for the demand of her body which society wishes her to
crush down.
By making Janki live with Ananta as his mistress, Anand
wants to point out the factor which paved the way for the rise of
new woman. The right of the individual to determine his own destiny
the act of glorifying the freedom of chance, the tendency to keep
aside any norm which diverts one from the stream of life, the value
of appreciating all pleasures of life, the attempt at resisting traditions
which block the growth of human life, the call for strengthening
humanism of things are largely different factors which pave the path
for humanness of things or the rise of a new woman like Janki.
Janki’s desire is to live even after the death of her husband.
She feels that a woman can live only when she breaks away from
the cobwebs of tradition. Without the freedom of living, human life
cannot express itself. The value system created by society is what
posses a threat to life and human dignity. Janki is an ailing woman
suffering from dreadful tuberculosis yet her joy of living is not fully
suppressed. But the problem with Janki is that her life with Ananta
is not recognized by society. Society, rather than helping her, acts
as a greatest monster that determines to crush her life. But she
recognizes the call of her life force and embraces the call, hitting
the society aside. The life of Janki proves that marriage by
arrangement has no relation to human temperament. Its success is
a matter of accident and its failure to be a matter of principle which
shows that the individual’s concerned havenot exercised their
option. Janki’s attempt for the option to find her purpose in life and
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her desire to vitalize her life in living with Ananta makes her an
emancipated woman. Maya’s avoidance of widowhood and Janki’s
acceptance of the unofficial husband Ananta make them new women.
Maya and Janki are the forerunners of widow re-marriage and
emancipate from marital confinement. Widow re-marriage is telling
example of the liberation of women in contemporary world.
French feminists have been deeply influenced by
psychoanalysis especially by Jacques Lacan’s reworking of Freud.
According to Freud women suffer from the ‘penis complex’. She
defines herself negatively and assumes herself a woman, inferior to
man because she lacks the penis. She lives under the pressure of
penis envy and finds the world phallocentric. The woman herself is
responsible for her ‘castration complex’ which results in her
regarding herself as ‘hommes masques’ rather than a positive sex
in their own right.
Anand’s character Ganga Dasi in Private life of an Indian
Prince rejects Freud’s theory of women’s weakness due to penis
complex. Ganga Dasi creates the myth of female-penis complex.
She is a leading female character in the novel. She is daughter of
state priest Pandit Piyare Lal and appears as mistress to Maharaja
Ashok Kumar better known as Prince Victor or called by distorted
name Vicky.
Anand’s novels deal with variety of women in various
moods. He produces his female characters as the counter response
to all traditional concepts that act to weaken women. According to
general conventions, ‘rape’ of a girl weakens her and crushes her
life into pieces. But in Anand’s novel Private Life of an Indian
Prince, rape empowers Ganga Dasi. As Mahashweta Devi’s
Dopadi (Droupadi) could not be brokenentirely even after the gang
rape. Anand’s Ganga is comparatively more powerful and brave
to that of Mahasheweta’s Dopadi Mejhen. She wins back her body.
She attains more and more power in the same female organs for
which she was weak and in miserable condition. According to
conventional theories women are entrapped by men for the
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71
consumption to get physical luxury but Anand’s Ganga Dasi entraps
the powerful men even princes and kings like Maharaja Victor
also. Moreover, Anand hits hard the ‘virginity syndrome’ what is
called chastity or izzat of women. His Ganga Dasi is forerunner of
promiscuity and polyandry. Anand counter attacks polygamy.
Mahashweta Debi has also made an attempt at introducing
polyandry to overcome feminine weakness but her character
Dopadi in true sense is not projection of polyandry but forced
gang rape by police but she refuses to be clothed by men again.
She is an image of resistance and invincible spirit. In Draupadi
what to be represented is an erotic object transformed into an
object of torture and revenge where the line between (hetero)
sexuality and gender violence are to blur.
But Anand’s Ganga Dasi is against men’s perception of
women. According to feminist theories women are silenced by rape.
Ganga like Mahashweta’s Dopadi emboldens her voice after her
rape. Generally women are prisoner of their body but for Ganga
her body (youth) brings her power. When common women feel
weak due to the fluid in their womb, Ganga rates her fluid (sexual
energy). When common women feel themselves unchaste and suffer
from shame if they happen to enter into polyandry. Ganga in other-
hand is proud of taking lover after lover. When common women
are dwarfed by exercise of men’s physical love Ganga dwarfs giant
men by exercise of her physical love with them. Prince Vicky himself
admits, “I am trapped, I tell you, I am like a rat in a hole”
The concepts of monoandry and devotion for her husband
and suppressing of her own desire of physical pleasure for the
sake of family prestige (izzat) have now eroded. Ganga Dasi changes
lovers as a fashionable girl changes her garments. She shows the
valley of her ever changing moods. She is married to Shivram, a
poor drunkard brahmin. Finding her lust unquenched she runs away
with professional wrestler and gambler named Motilal. When Motilal
becomes bankrupt she chases an accountant of the Imperial Bank
named Kishan Chand. The voyage of her sex expedition goes on
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with a lawyer Balmukund, Professor Advani, export import
merchant Mulk Raj, the cloth merchant Munni Lal and confectioner
Homi Mehta who gives his entire property to her, expecting she
would settle with him. Anand’s Ganga Dasi is counter response of
Reggie Hunt in the Novel Two Leaves and a Bud. Reggie Hunt
keeps hunting big game (the women) to satisfy his sexual lust. Ganga
Dasi, a leading female figure in Private Life of an Indian Prince,
in turn, hunts men and makes them prey of her sex. After Homi
Mehta she captures Vicky through her professions of physical love
while communicating with Hari Shankar he himself admits:
But I felt that someone had come into my life,
someone who knew the life of a town like Lahore
amidst all these yokels, someone to cling in the midst
of all the artificiality of the state where I was a kind
of a tin god. To have private life with someone
devoted to you after all Ballyhoo of pomp and
splendor and she was a lovely companion and gave
me such assurance that I could work ten times
harder because I had satisfactory personal life (955).
Ganga Dasi, thus, is an image of Helene Cixous’ ‘newly
born woman’ who introduces power play of her body and
convention of divorce after divorce and re-marriage after re-
marriage, without feeling guilty of loss of chastity. Ganga breaks
the myth of chastity or purity syndrome. Mulk Raj Anand creates
this character ‘tit for tat’ rather than lamenting on the suppression
of women. The Old Woman and the Cow is only novel of Anand
written on gynocentric angle. Gauri, the daughter of Laxmi, is a
major female character in the novel. She is married to an orthodox
uneducated man Panchi who muses over the prospects of a prize
of “a girl whom he could fold in his arms at night, and kick during
the day who would adorn his house and help him with the work on
the land”(1960: 5).
However, in the beginning of her married life, she is forced
to tolerate all the torture. Her husband panchi “fights in the day and
during the night he is full of thick talks” (1960: 93). She is compelled
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73
to go back her (parents’) home. She has no home to take her in.
Ultimately she comes in the contact of colonel Mahindra who
awaken her how to identify her even intrinsic worth. The benign
spell of Mahendra, the modern god for Gauri, teaches her how to
identify herself as an individual and makes her strong to face crises.
He trains her in nursing profession and makes her stand on her
own feet.
Like Sarita (Saru) in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds
No Terror Gauri too appears as the prototype of modern woman.
Her education and self-dependence transforms her from a cow to
an individual personality. She becomes bold and confident. Her
boldness and confidence is obvious when banker Seth Jai Ram
Das tries to seduce Gauri. She warns him, “I am guarded by the
goddess so do not come near me or you will burn.” Further when
she comes back to her (husband’s) home, stands on equal footings
with her husband. When Panchi hits her, she retorts,“if you strike
me again, I will hit you back——” (1960: 283). Her brief
experience as a self reliant nurse gave her the necessary self
confidence and courage.
REFERENCES
Anand, Mulk Raj. 1935. Untouchable. New Delhi: Arnold
Heinemann, 1984.
- - - 1937. Two Leaves and a Bud. New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann,
1983.
- - - 1953. The Private Life of an Indian Prince. New Delhi:
Arnold Heinemann, 1984.
- - - 1939. The Village. New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1984.
- - - 1945. The Big Heart. New Revised. New Delhi: Arnold
Heinemann, 1980.
- - - 1960. The Old Woman and the Cow. Reprinted as Gauri.
New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann, 1984.
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 74
Cixous, Helene. 1985. The Newly Born Woman. London.I B Tauris
Publishers.
Cowasjee, Saros. 1947. So Many Freedoms: A Study of Mulk
Raj Anand. Delhi: OUP.
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1949. The Second Sex. London: Four Squire
Books, 1961.
Debi, Mahashweta. 2002.Dopadi.trans by Gayatri Chakraborti
Spivak. Breast Stories. Kolkata: Seagull.
Deshpande, Shashi. 1980. The Dark Holds No Terror. New Delhi:
Vikas Publishing House.
Narayan, R.K. 2005. The Dark Room. Chennai: Indian Thoughts
Publications.
Showalter, Elane. 1979. Towards Feminist Poetics. M. Jacob’s
Women Writing About Women pp.25-33; 34-6.

*Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, BBDNITM, BBD University,

Lucknow.

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