Submissive and Rebellious Women: A Study of Nayantara Sahgal's Select Novels

International Journal of English Research

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Volume 3; Issue 3; May 2017; Page No. 06-07
Submissive and rebellious women: A study of Nayantara Sahgal’s select novels

1
Sudha P, 2 Dr. S Selvalakshmi
1
Ph.D. Research Scholar, Department of English, Karpagam Academy of Higher Education, Karpagam University, Coimbatore,
Tamil Nadu, India
2
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Karpagam Academy of Higher Education, Karpagam University, Coimbatore,
Tamil Nadu, India
Abstract
Nayantara Sahgal is one of our best Socio-political novelists today. She is authentic and vivid in rendering the contemporary Indian
urban culture with all its inherent contradictions and imposed controversies. Mrs.Sahgal is indeed qualified to write political novels
of high quality. In her novels Mrs.Sahgal has raised some basic problems pertaining to personal relationship and her portrayal of
politics is just a part of her humanistic concern because it reveals her deep insight into human psyche. All her major characters of
the novels are centripetally drawn towards the vertex of politics. Besides politics, her fiction also draws attention on Indian women’s
search for sexual freedom and self-realization. This paper studies both the submissive and rebellious women in Sahgal’s novels. It
also highlights her women characters, with a view to understand and appreciate their trials and tribulations under the impact of the
conflicting influence of tradition and modernity.
Keywords: submissive, rebellious, nayantara sahgal’s
1. Introduction boundary is considered natural or at least not much to be

Nayantara Sahgal’s novels read like commentaries on the concerned about, whereas in a woman, even a minor offence is
political and social turmoil’s that India has been facing since nothing but a serious, heinous crime, Even when a woman is
Independence. Her concern for the women, who are caught in raped, the blame is heaped upon the woman and the sufferer is
the dilemma of liberty and traditionalism, or stability and the woman. Her own parents, instead of showing pity to the
protection of marriage, is exhibited in almost all her novels. poor girl, look at her with contempt, sinful, soiled and immoral.
There is a sea change between the character and attitude of the Madhu, after being raped by a group of university students,
heroines in her earlier novels and the later one. The heroines in finding no sympathy from any quarter, choses to burn herself to
the earlier novels found the age-old oppression of Indian culture death in a Situation in New Delhi. Sahgal finds fault with the
and tradition too formidable to set aside or ignore. They were Indians for their inactivity or apathy to suffering and she blames
to go by the ‘norms’ and lead a submissive life or a seemingly it squarely on the fatalistic, philosophic attitude nurtured by our
happy life lest they be thrown out of the protective familial ancient tradition.
circle. Sahgal portrays women of older generation, their anger or
But in her later novels the heroines such as Simrit, Saroj and protest, but who would not break the traditional codes, or did
Devi grew bold enough, as Sahgal did in her own life, to throw not grew bole enough to break the fetters and come out. The
away the shackles. They began to feel the oppression that the two women Mona and Rose are an interesting contrast. Mona is
duty of the ‘self’ weighs greater than the duty to the family or bound to the shackles of Hindu tradition, docile and
society. We see such a gradual change for the better in the acquiescent. Rose is a liberal, non-conformist Christian,
mental makeup of the heroines of the novel as we take up a believing in her own instincts. But both are equally corrupted
study of her novels chronologically. and exploited by the male dominated society.
Freedom for Sahgal means a mental or emotional attitude We see a gradual progression in the vision of Sahgal regarding
transcending economic or social aspects. She exhorts woman to the role and character of women in society, in the earlier novels
develop a sense of awareness as individuals stubbornly refusing we see the heroines, though impelled by a yearning to set
to tolerate injustice in any form. A woman should not allow themselves free “to break off the orthodox Indian conventions
herself to be considered as an object of sex. There was a and moribund tradition.” (New Dimensions of Indian English
transitional phase when Indian women had to face the conflict Novel 61) do not have the courage to put their ideals into reality.
between tradition and modernity. Promila Kapur observes: But in the later novels we see them grew bolder and are able to
‘Husbands like their wives to take up jobs but dislike them to resist, breaking the shackles in their to retain their self-
change at all as far as their attitude towards their roles and abnegated identity. Sahgal’s world consists of two types of
stances at home is concerned and dislike their traditional women characters-the first group consists of women who are
responsibilities being neglected’ (Love, Marriage, Sex and the happy in the confines Hindu orthodoxy and the other of those
Indian Women, 194) with a strong sense of individuality and an analytical mind but
Sahgal criticizes the double standard of the society that looks at shuttling between tradition and modern values. Rashmi,
the excesses of a man and a woman in a strongly different way, Devika, Mira, Gauri, Mona belong to the first type and Simrit,
mostly unfavorable to woman. In a man any such crossing over Saroj to the second. We find Sahgal’s women do not repudiate
6
marriage. When they find that they are being oppressed, treated 4. Prasad Amarnath. New Lights on Indian Women
as commodities rather than as human beings, they naturally Novelists, Vol.1. New Delhi: Sarup and Sons, 2003.
rebel. They resent compartmentalization as men and women 5. Rao AV Krishna. Nayantara Sahgal: A Study of her Fiction
with some exclusive rights and duties. and Non-Fiction, 1954-1974. Madras: M. Seshachalam
Sahgal strongly pleads for a real change in the condition of Co., 1976.
woman from being a toy in the hands of a man to becoming a 6. Promilla Kapur. Love, Marriage, Sex and the Indian
partner in life with equal rights and dignity. The male Women. New Delhi. Orient. Paper backs, 1976.
chauvinism fortified and nurtured by tradition is portrayed by
Ram, Rose’s husband in Rich like Us. Marrying as many wives
as possible is a legacy-inherited, claims Ram.Polygame is
male’s prerogative. He cites Lord Krishna himself who had two
wives apart from innumerable gopikas. He says:-
I know a man who keeps his first wife and five children
In his village and lives here in town with his second wife
But everyone knows about the arrangement, so what is
The point of hiding it (Rich 60)
Rose, strayed from the country, from her people, betrayed by
her husband, reduced to almost a beggar, suffers another form
of sati. In Saroj in Chandigarh, Sahgal represents the
unsympathetic, cruel treatment meted out in the hands of her
husband Inder, and in Simrit in The Day in Shadow, she
represents the callous attitude of her husband Som who almost
cripples his financially in the name of consent terms after
divorce.
Sahgal in her early novels portrays women who value chastity,
acceptance and compromise though endowed with a spirit of
questioning attitude. Her later novels show a decided
venturesome spirit where her women characters do not hesitate
to break the tradition, cross the age-old formidable boundaries
and set up a life of their own.Rashmi in This Time of Morning
come out of marriage that had become an emotional wasteland.
Saroj in Storm in Chandigarh left her jealous, unreasonable,
unfaithful husband though she had two children and another one
in her womb. Sonali in Rich like Us oppressed by injustice was
bold enough to resign her past rather than submit herself to
humiliating submission. What Sahgal envisages is the
emergence of new Sitas and Savithiris, stripped of false dignity
and crowned with human virtue and courage.
Extra marital relation is not a solution to marital problems. The
fulfillment of husband-wife expectations from each other and
understanding, respect with love is essential for success in
marriage relationship.
Conclusion
Thus Sahgal makes her heroines bold enough to come out of the
traditional rut, at least in her later novels. There are of course,
drastic revolutionary steps taken by the heroines of the Indian
surrounding. But Sahgal seems to assert than an individual has
a greater duty to the self than to the society with its
unreasonable code of conduct.
References
1. Anand TS. The Flight from the Virtuous Stereotype: A
Study of Storm in Chandigarh, Indian Women Novelists:
Set- II Vol. IV. Dhawan RK. (Ed) New Delhi: Prestige
Books, 1993, pp.157-162.
2. Arora Neera. Nayantara Sahgal and Doris Lessing, New
Delhi. Prestige Books, 1991.
3. Jain Jasbir. The Aesthetics of Morality: Sexual Relations
in the novels of Nayantara Sahgal. The Journal of Indian
writing in English, 6 No.1 Jan, 1978.
7

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International Journal of English Research

International Journal of English Research

Submissive and rebellious women: A study of Nayantara Sahgal’s select novels

Keywords: submissive, rebellious, nayantara sahgal’s

1. Introduction boundary is considered natural or at least not much to be

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