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India International Centre Quarterly
as her brain began to work." He wet argues that women see men
as horses do, "They see us three times as big as we are or they'd
never obey us."7 In the end, Rachael must die—she represents the
classic situation of constraint imposed upon the individuality of
women—talented but unprofessional, dying in the small cabin
spaces that society provided for them.
A Room of One's Own became a symbol of private space and
autonomy, where women could find their own sense of being,
write a new history of actions and events. I will not go into an
analyses of Woolf's work here, except to mention that in Orlando
(1928) Woolf destroys this conception of women's being as con
ventional, peaceful and consensually embedded in patriarchy.
She substitutes a male-female figure who so light- heartedly, so
brilliantly destroys and ravages all notions of women's being—
transforming roles and rules, work and custom.
Woolf's work explored two central ideas about women and
consciousness. One was the idea of androgyny. In A Room of One's
Own she playfully and poignantly sketched a mythical account
of Shakespeare's sister Judith, as talented as her sibling, but fated
to die and remain anonymous for she was a mere woman.
Originally delivered as a lecture, she spoke here of the only
possible way for women's emancipation—it was a plan for the
soul. "In each of us two powers preside, one male, one female, and
in the man's brain, the man predominates over the woman."
Where there was harmony between the two forces, spiritual co
operation, a fusion, the greatest creativity is possible.
Virginia Woolf herself was housewifized and sanatorium
ised. Mrs Dalloway, her novel, would be a major critique of the
concept of normalcy as defined by Victorian society.8 Through the
character of Septimus Smith in Mrs. Dalloway ,she tries to show
that God and nature speak in many voices; some have the gift to
hear and understand.
the longing for the other, as well as the awe, fear and incom
prehensibility associated with the other.10
Further, Singer writes that
unless we are partners with that contrasexual side of our nature, the
soul that leads us to our own depths, we cannot become full and
independent partners with a beloved person in the world outside.
When human rights are trampled, no one can stay neutral. Neutrality on
such occasion is equal to a crime. From the experience of the struggle we
learn that justice is not given but taken by the concerted effort of the
people concerned. The Church by her neutrality is supporting the exist
ing political and economic system. When we struggled with the people
ever ready to give up our life, the Bishops could see only disobedience,
violence, entering into politics. The boat (trawler) owners go with the
blessing of the Bishop. When poor people fight for their rights, they will
be characterised as communists and naxalites. The Church can only
understand charity and distribution of bread.15
How does one understand the power of this woman, and her
active involvement in the fisherpeople's struggle? The last part of
this essay looks at androgyny, celibacy and dress to understand
how a woman becomes an active leader, a symbol of the fishing
movement which cuts across religious divides and focuses on
human rights issues. It reorients the discussion on women's
nature and labour to provide an insight into alternative spaces
and being.
The androgyny of his being does not question the right to his
manhood; it only states that while being a man he could under
stand and empathise with women—as much as with the
Centurion's daughter, or Lazarus, or the lepers, or the blind, or
Zachariah, who was always so ashamed. For centuries this em
pathy, this understanding of the other in the essence of his being
or her being, has been passed down to us as the concept of love,
or in the Greek term agape. This love was not sexual, (though the
intensity of desire communicates itself in the story of Mary Mag
dalene) but appears in the form of wisdom and peace.
When Philomena-Marie leads the fishers she symbolises the
fact that she is a woman, a follower of Jesus, a Bride of Christ.
However she also leads them in another way: not because she is
a woman or a man but because she understands the rules of
parapolitics, of capitalism and profit, of the servitude of the
declassed. In that sense, she does not stand in for the bride of
Christ; she is an office member of the KSMTF (Kerala
Fishworkers' Trade Union). She understands her job, she is highly
qualified in management theory, her rhetoric does not carry any
of the tones of gender or of religion. She could be either male or
female, nun or priest, Hindu or Christian. It is this "gender
neutrality" that is so coveted and yet so ambiguous to analyze.
One of the greatest problems of understanding work is in the
terms which neutralise gender. In the unbridled years of feminism
when women pitted themselves against male bastions, it was
important to believe that same is equal to equality. Yet, in recent
issues of Feminist Review and Signs 9 some of the most poignant
reviews have been about lost identity—what happened to
motherhood, what happened to being and celebrating womanly
selves? Did being a woman mean hating the 'other'? How would
one then look at complementarity and the division of labour? In
a brilliant indictment of maleness and the right to die in war,
Genevieve Lloyd argues that heroism is a term set apart for men,
and in war they transcend their love of life for the rationalist ideas
of justice and freedom. Women, however, it is believed cannot
overcome nature or transcend death because their role is to
reproduce. Freedom and consciousness then are male preserves;
but when a woman sacrifices her sons, then she overcomes nature
and becomes a citizen—like the Spartan Mother who does not
weep for slain sons, but rejoices in the victory of her country at
Joan dressed as a boy and was burnt at the stake for it,
because this was a role reversal, contrary to Nature and so hereti
cal. Yet dressing as a boy meant that she could ride a horse, and
ride to war. Sr. Philomena-Marie dresses in indistinguishable
fawns and dull browns. Neither does she merge with Nature, nor
does she stand out. This is in contrast to the brilliant hued colours
of the fisherfolk. Her clothes mitigate her gender; they do not
neutralise it or transmute it because these are the colours as
sociated with renunciation, as also with bureaucracy.
In a world of men, Sister Philomena-Marie plays out her
vocation. She is unafraid of prelates, capitalists, governments and
death. She is of course thin (anorexic in the new equations which
social analysts have linked with fasting and visions) and over
worked. She oscillates between many roles. She nurtures a boy
married at 18, his wife and child, because they cannot manage on
their own. She races between one village and another providing
medical help. She keeps the KSMTF office in order. Earlier she
stayed with a woman's husband who had died at sea, and helped
her reorient her life. Sometimes she gets thrown out of a Sunday
school classroom because the visiting prelate sees her trade
unionism as a bad example to young children. She eats her food
with co-workers who are nuns from a nearby convent, or with an
office bearer at the KSMTF. And she has to cope with that abstrac
tion called a reputation, sometimes out there in the blazing
limelight: at other times she is completely forgotten and mar
ginalised as another Joan of Arc emerges in another part of India,
taking the question of water in a different direction. She says, "We
are networking with other movements. We are in touch with
Medha Patkar."
There can be no competition or jealousy in the emulation of
saints; there can only be patience and reservoirs of heroism which
sees martyrdom as the true androgynous term. This paper is not
oriented towards asking for martyrdom, for that would be a
terrible act of lassitude and irresponsibility on our part.
It asks to listen to the voice of the potential martyr and
respond to the commitment to the cause; to be sensitive to the
person who fasts, has visions, rebels, hears voices; and to see in
the androgyny of his or her being, questions which we need to
really ask ourselves about what it means to be human.
Notes
3. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
7. Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, London: Granada 1982. A Room of One's Own,
London: Penguin 1945. Orlando, London: Triad/Panther 1979. Night and Day,
London: Granada 1982. ]acob's_Room, London: Granada 1984, Three Guineas, Lon
don: Hogarth Press 1986. To The Lighthouse London, Granada 1988. Mrs Dalloway,
London: Penguin 1966, Orlando, London: Triad/ Panther 1979.
13. How terrible is the envy that Woolf feels for those male citadels into which
women had no entry. In Jacob's Room, the contempt for women is well recorded. "No
one would think to bring a dog into church, a dog destroys the service completely.
So do these women—though separately vouched for by the Theology, Mathematics,
Latin and Greek of their husbands" (Woolf, 1984:30). Night and Day (1919) chronicles
a greater resolution of the conflict between women's roles and work, between
marriage and occupation. Work cannot yet be a career, but there is a greater
celebration of cerebral endeavour and to some extent masculine adaptation to
femininist strivings. Katharine Hilberry, in this novel, is a secret mathematician. "No
force on earth would have made her confess that. Her actions when thus engaged
were furtive and secretive like those of some engaged were furtive and secretive
like those of some nocturnal animal." It is Jacob, of 'Jacob's Room' who is the inheritor
of history, architecture and learning—also of war and death.
14. Susan Visvanathan, 'The Fishing struggle in Kerala', Seminar, November 1994.
15. Sr. Philomena Marie's speech at Hyderabad 1991, cited in Visvanathan 1994.
17. C.G. Jung, Man and his symbols, London, Picador, 1978.
19. Yet the retention of differences Prue Chamberlayne The Mothers' Manifesto and
Disputes over Mutterlichkeet, Feminist Review, 35, Summer 1990. see also Elshtain
Bethke jean, Against Androgyny in Anne Philips, (ed) Feminism and Equality,
Oxford, Basil Blackwell 1987. Frigga Hang, Feminist Writing working With
women's experience, 1992 pg. 16.
20. Genevieve Lloyd, Selfhood, War and Masculinity in Carol Pateman and Elisabeth
Gross (ed) Feminist Challenges: Social and Political Theory, London, Allen and Unwin,
1986. Type in Virginia Woolf argued, first class jobs..."
21. Thomas Keneally, Blood Red, Sister Rose, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1991.