To WW
February 5, 2005
Re: Tales 5 & 6: "A New Delhi Romance"; "Husband and Son": A Sharp Critique of the Dreams of Motherhood (Parenting?)
Dear All,
I've been thinking about the comment that Jhabvala presents us with situations which are lose/lose. My response to this (if the comment is a adversarial criticism) is she writes cool satire.
It is simply the business of the satirist to expose the follies and vices of humankind which are legion. The outlook behind satire is a complicated one about which many books have been written, some taking the modern psycholoanalytical approach (which examines the satirist's motives), others the sociological (satire as scapegoating), some the aesthetic (devices), with very few nowadays looking to the moral or ethical undergirding.
Jhabvala is somewhat unusual for modern satirists (but not unusual for women novelists who use satire) in keeping her claws sheathed (this image comes from Tomalin's literary biography of Austen's unsheathed tones in her letters). I like that in her; the concluding paragraph of "Development and Progress" is a rare over-the-top moment.
The defense of satire is ancient too, and comes out of a point of view that says the satirist is right, spot on, and if you feel the idyllic, comforting, benign and beauty in life is omitted, you are invited to go read intelligent pastoral-idyllic which reverses the formula with the bitter marginalized but yet there (as it's a response to the city): I've finally told myself that Patchett writes modern pastoral romances in the tradition of Philip Sidney whose Arcadia is fractured with death, misery and cruelty (Et tu in Arcadia?) but is nonetheless an Arcadia in comparison with the real world of experience.
Anyhow I like pessimism. I often feel it's the cheerful person who needs to defend herself. I don't enjoy humor when it's superficial you see.
***********************
As I began to read this week's stories, I noticed the opening paragraph of "A New Delhi Romance" is over-the-top saturnine. It ends on how Indu's son can easily come home from school "if his classes were canceled due to a strike or the death of some important politician." Both these stories seemed to me to be less cool, more angry: the wretchedness of Vija, her driveling husband reminded me oddly of a play by Chekhov, The Wild Duck (which I saw with my father when I was 12) where we have a sensitive feeble man who lives in the attic of a bunch of philistine types, but in Chekhov we are given insight into the poor man's mind; here he is a disgusting burden. A film I saw this summer (with Isabel), The Mother opens with an aging woman going to see her grown children with her husband whose weak state forces her to wait hand and foot on him all the while ignored and unacknowledged by her children. By the end of the movie, he's dead, she's had an affair, breaks with a cold older daughter, and is last seen packing a bag and going on a trip for herself. Jhabvala's Vija doesn't seem likely to take a pleasant trip she might enjoy any time soon. It's hinted at the end she perhaps succumbs to sexual release with the old man at the end -- as does Indu with Raja; Raja is a Bal (from A Backward Place) grown old. Why shouldn't he enjoy life? What a prig is Indu. And he does laugh and enjoy himself (for these reasons Judy clings to the devouring Bal in A Backward Place). And then Arun and his compliant girlfriend, Dipti (remember the look of joyful compliance on Barbie Doll's face?): true romance. Both Larkin's famous poems came to mind:
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise.
I've read in several essays that in the US the most frequent place and time for a young teenage girl to lose her virginity is in her parents' house or the house of her boyfriend's parents in the afternoon. Here she learns to jerk off (excuse the vulgarity), here she is first shamed -- there was an article about this in the New York Times a while back where we were treated to the foolish girls asserting how wonderful such experiences are (the reporter herself didn't think so, but was showing what goes on among the 13 year old set nowadays).
Larkin's "This be the Verse" is even more appropriate:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Except now it's reversed. You spend your life investing everything in the child; you imagine a child that never existed, and then you are confronted with the real young adult who is more a product of his or her interaction with the society you are engulfed by than anything else.
The kaleioscope has turned. The first two stories were about economics and social upbringing: how feeble is what we call education and inadequate to the case given the way the world works ("Expiation"), and The Way the World Works ("Farid and Farida"), with an accent on the indulged male, enigmatic homosexual introvert, "loving" couple, and desperation in a capitalist order. The second two presented political fables: you think you are independent; here's what you think is power (thus did I see Too's death); and here's your progress and development: cut off noses. I have described too often the picture of the Indian woman whose eyes were gouged out by her husband which appeared in the Washington Post (put there by an anonymous reporter) and was not going to escape that husband that night. It just stays in my mind that she had to stay with him, she was still with him. I am horrified. Not one person rescued her. It's not like there's been no time. The man is probably not omnipotent.
And now we get the men. We see them from the point of view of the women who have to endure them. It's as if we are now turning to that nameless narrator's wife of the first story and hearing what she's got to say about her life. I love it.
There's more to these portraits than sheer male-bashing (so to speak) since Jhabvala has by her previous four stories where she concentrated on amoral strong women (Farida, Sumitra, Pushpa) as seen through a third-person narrator, through the modern journalist granddaughter and rightly angry but no more admirable (as who can be admirable in this world?) daughter. In these previous stories she dramatized and visualized the amoral operations of capitalism as the controlling force over people's economic lives, and also dramatizes what happens to men in this order (the ashamed obtuse nameless narrator of the first tale, the weak Farid of the second and the vicious amoral successful man who gives the couple money and chases them for money and networking).
Jhabvala has pity for men as a well as women: those men who are not macho males, not thugs, not conniving performers end up sad sacks, hiding themselves, dependent on women whose strength is preyed upon, not acknowledged and whose emotional and personal fulfilment is stifled. This lack moral pattern undergirds the depiction of Judy and Bal (A Backward Place); we find it in Indu's relationship with her son and Vija's with her son and husband. You can get the occasional well-meaning but ineffectual Sanjay: he's ineffectual when it comes to changing the social order, but he might be okay to live with, to spend your life around: he's the old hero of romance newly seen.
Oh yes. Sanjay would be played by Jude Law (the man of integrity whom in Closer Julia Roberts choses safety and will know kindness and sanity with).
The satirist is a deeply emotional writer. They really do write out of pity. They are outraged by what fails to outrage everyone else. They are amazed others are not outraged. They can't stand the shrug of "perfect unconcern" (that's Austen's words for Lydia Bennet) or complacency or the determination to give a pleasant turn to what is deeply unpleasant. This in satire a form of cruelty.
The stories in this anthology are beginning to hang together to form a statement about the nature of public life in our time (peculiarly awful partly because of the blaze of media on it and a resultant incessant hypocrisy which goes deep into the souls of those on stage) and how this as well as women's position _vis-a-vis_ that public world (given the stereotypes they must obey, their inescapable biological roles and lack of power in private).
Let me say I have found brilliant emerging patterns to be discerned in Byatt's Sugar and Other Stories and three Matisse tales (the latter is obvious), Mason's Shiloh and Other Stories and an old book of short stories by Willa Cather. While it's convenient to have "the collected short stories" (which I do for Elizabeth Bowen and thus have her rarely reprinted tale of a demon-dracula lover who appears to the heroine during the London blitz) because this way you get them all for less and in one package, something is lost when stories are ripped out of their original context and arrangement. You can rearrange for a new pattern -- which is what Jhabvala attempted in her Out of India.
I know I wrote too much at length for the first four stories. Pray pardon me. The reason I wrote the way I did is I like too :): the greatness of a work of art is in its concrete details and you can only discover what the work means by delving them. Over on 19thCenturyLit I noticed Judy going through Moby Dick as if it were a 5 word poem. (I once did the same for Clarissa). But one can overdo as the critic, and then the context makes one appear aggressive. Still here are some details of the usual sort people put on lists about books about the characters.
I didn't like Vijay but was not sure this was what Jhbvala wanted. I suspect she wanted me to like Vijay. Perhaps I was supposed to feel for her having married beneath her and now ending up with this horror. This did remind me of Mrs Frances Price in Mansfield Park. But I couldn't care less about Mrs Frances Price either. Both women cling to these sons in a way that lets me know they value the stupidities of admiration from others.
I did like Indu very much: I too would explode at the fatuity and self-indulgence of the men she's surrounded by, be irritated by their mindless unexamined lives. I can see how she wants to scream and throw things at them. The exasperated trapped woman. But it's no use. They are what they are and can't understand why she's not enjoying life. There's a dark laugh for you. The closest Austen comes to this is Mary Musgrove (Persuasion), but Mary is shown young and Austen does not sympathize because forsooth Mary makes life worse for others, is herself petty, mean, stupid, with no larger ideals or alternatives within her. For exasperated women we need to go to Ibsen where they turn murderous; Trollope has one in the vituperative Emily Trevelyan (about which a very sentimental film was recently made [He Knew He Was Right], one which missed out Trollope's insight into the woman who despises the weak male and concentrated on the weak male alone). One needs iron to do justice to Indu to really grasp the feel of that final scene of "Husband and Son:: there she is in that filthy room with that beaten old man who sings a song to honey and celebrating life.
For intelligent iron I recommend an older film Laura and I watched together the other night: Leon (I'll try to write separately about this brilliant film).
Back to East into Upper East, Tale 6: How can you celebrate life under the circumstances we are asked to endure it? If of course you as a woman make the mistake of marrying the wrong man. Had Indu married Sanjay ... Or better yet don't marry at all: follow Kitty's choice. The old moral has been changed: it's not just marry wisely; now you may think to yourself maybe don't marry or have kids at all. Back to Larkin's "This Be the Verse:
"But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself"
Bitter yes. The whole truth no. But no work need tell us the whole truth. And if you want an antidote, go to Bel Canto, the beautiful song of the diva :). But know it's a cream puff and know why. For that you must study Jhabvala and writers like her.
How did others see these stories? How are you finding the whole volume now that we're half- way through?
Cheers,
Ellen
Dear All,
Rereading my posting I realize I continually refer to Judy and Bal. These are the lead characters in Jhabvala's novel, A Backward Place. I'm finding more and more (at least in this set of tales) that A Backward Place presents some central paradigms for understanding Jhabvala.
So all references to Judy and Bal are to two characters who are young married people where the man is a weak indulgent type (Raju) preying on his wife's job; he dominates her and she has no way to escape him for her life in England was simply a lonely misery of another kind.
Ellen
[Gentle Reader, if there are any: I put my review of Closer in here as I referred to it above and it's relevant:
To WW
December 29, 2004
Re: Christmas at the movies: Closer et aliae
In reply to my posting about the gift we had great fun as a group with, The Complete Book [and diskette set] of New Yorker Cartoons and a film we went to, Closer, directed by Mike Nichols, screen and original stageplay by Patrick Marber, Fran told us about her Christmas and asked about ours and the film.
We have added another film to our budget of enjoyed shared experiences: Being Julia, directed by Istvan Szabo, screenplay by Ronald Harwood, an adaptation of a short story by Somerset Maughn ("Theatre"). Isabel and I went to see this alone, but today she, I and my husband are to add to this ceaseless round of pleasure with a trip to the National Gallery which has a blockbuster exhibit of American painting from the later 19th through the early 20th century. If there is but one woman painter, I'll hope to write about this one on our list.
In the meantime, Closer. It's a film worth seeing. My husband saw it done as a play in NYC about 5 years ago with Natasha Richardson playing the heroine, Anna, the part that went to Julia Roberts. He thought Richardson presented the character more complexly, but agreed with the critics that Natalie Portman's personation of Alice/Jane and Clive Owens's of Larry stunningly effective (persuasive). There is a fourth central character: Dan was played by Jude Law who seems to me a lookalike for Jeremy Northam, who played Randolph Henry Ashe in the 2001 Possession; if I add that in the NYC production Ciarhan Hinds played Dan I hope I will have suggested that the archetype underlying Dan is that of the sensitive basically well- meaning and even kind (when not pushed too much) male, the semi-brother intelligent suave type Dirk Bogarde and (long ago) Cary Grant and Ronald Colman used to do regularly.
I can perhaps sum the feel and themes of the play up most quickly by saying that throughout the movie (and Jim says the play), the music from Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte may be heard. The most beautiful arias that Mozart ever wrote whose content dramatizes and meditates harassment of women by men, distrust of women by men, betrayal and treachery of men and women to one another, manipulation and semi-mockery, to put it in a word, lies rather than sincerity as the basis of most relationships between men and women continually played in the background of the strongest scenes of vituperative recrimination in the film. What seems to have shocked some people is this vituperative recrimination: repeatedly one pair of the intertwining (musical-bed changing) four either has sex or may have had sex; the woman in question (either Alice/Jane or Anna) is confronted by the male who is now her partner (either Dan or Larry) and Dan or Larry is in a humiliating rage, insults Alice or Anna based on a acute knowledge of her character flaws and deceits, and then proceeds to demand a full description of what the sex was like. This is forthcoming, but not before Dan or Larry imagines aloud what he supposes Alice or Anna did with Dan or Larry. The words are raw, frank, graphically pictorial. All the things people do are recounted.
Myself while I believe from my own experience as well as what others have said about their experience that raw hard fighting can occur between people which brings forth hard unpalatable truths of all sorts, I cannot quite believe and haven't experienced this sort of demand. It does go counter to my sense of people's pride. However, it certainly holds an audience's attention. It's a kind of natural development from the sort of emotional ravaging one found in American theatre at mid- and later 20th century, say The Death of a Salesman and even better as an forerunner, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The characters assault one another verbally in the above plays in order to break down barriers of lies and present naked vulnerable selves to one another in order to get the other person to admit to some truth or demand which is destroying the demander. Willie's delusions have controlled and destroyed Biff's life and Willie will not let go; he will not look at what Biff is and let Biff off the hook. So Biff ends, "pretend I died." Martha and George do come clean and there is a catharsis which leaves us exhausted but with the feeling that something or other has been achieved. Not so in Closer. One reason for this is we never know whether the stories about sex are lies. It may be that Anna has made up what Dan demands to know Anna did with Larry or Alice has made up what Larry demands to know what Alice did with Dan in order to shut the man up. He wants to believe she sucked the man's penis, had anal intercourse with him and liked it. Okay. She did. Satisfied?
The hard startling conversations (they move fast and are smart) are justified by the plot-design, character archetypes and themes of the play. This is a modern redo of Mozart's Thus Do They All, with "all" (now Tutti not Tutte). comprizing an examination of the weaknesses and egoistic appetites, delusions, and vulnerable emotional needs of men as well as women. What I came "away with" (to use the language of my students in their short talks) is the irreducible solitude of selfhood. We are all alone on the island of life no matter how close someone else gets. Frantic coupling just doesn't make the cut. Solitude and dependence on the self is our reality both in the inner worlds of our minds -- which are private and cannot be got at because we can lie.
This is given a metaphor which is ultra-modern. I think the most dislikable character is Larry: to me he's the shit of the film. (My two daughters, Laura and Isabel, concurred.) The ending (I think) validates my idea that Larry is the mischievous creep of the film -- though Dan is no hero of integrity; Dan gets back. Early on in the film we see Larry emailing Dan in a sex.com site. Larry pretends to be a woman and has "sex" with Dan through words. Larry then plays a nasty trick on Dan by telling him his name is Anna and sending Dan to the acquarium where Anna goes regularly in the hope of humiliating Dan and making life difficult for Anna. Motiveless malignity anyone? Larry also wants to spite Anna as Anna rejected Larry's advances in an earlier scene. My husband said that on the stage there were two huge computer screens on which the audience watched the supposedly sexually arousing words appeared. We know that people on the Net are finally not accountable to one another unless some mechanism is set up outside the relationship in cyberspace or some interaction has occurred which provides evidence that the person is at all like what he or she says he or she is. The anonymity and potential for cruel manipulation of cyberspace becomes a metaphor for relationships in this film -- except of course Dan does go and meet Anna, she is a good sport, and before you know it Anna and Dan are going out. Larry has been hoist by his own petard.
The film is comedic and there are amusing upswings now and again. The characters are not bored. They participate in glamorous and respected roles in upper class life. Dan is a doctor. Anna is a photographer who has exhibitions. Larry is a novelist -- failed; he writes obituaries for a living. Lies again :) And Alice/Jane. Well's she's a free spirit who seems the ultimate victim but emerges as the really hard survivor. I was struck by how this film (and several Isabel and I have seen this year, to wit, The Mother, Since Otar Left, Maria Full of Grace, and now Being Julia) ends not on a scene of loving rapture between man and woman or permanent satisfying union, but rather with the young woman walking steadily alone in a crowd, eating alone, hoisting her bag and moving on, off by herself.
The film -- and I suppose play -- does imply or assume the audience knows that the modern world and the way relationships between lovers work is counterproductive to permanence, demands that we not rely on anyone but ourselves to survive because the way social arrangements work today no one has to stick it with anyone. If someone choses to, and we have a pair at the end of this film who do so choose, whatever ecstasy or peace is gotten is intermittent. Basically you are choosing safety and peace -- all the while knowing there are no such things.
I've written on too long and have little room for Being JuliaL. So suffice to say Annette Benning does deliver a stunning good performance (for once); perhaps the role hit a chord in her inner self. It's another film of the type Helen Mirren did in Calendar Girls and Diane Keaten in Something's Gotta Give (the director and writer a woman, Nancy Meyers): we have the older woman given a sympathetic subjective treatment which is meant to flatter and please older women in the audience because she is presented as still sexually desirable to men (beats out younger girls) and seem to end happily enough for her. I preferred Calendar Girls because it lacked the smaltzy (awful) ending of Something's Gotta Give and is wittier and more ironic than Being Julia (there is an absurd worship of Julia going on), and less masculinist than each as in Calendar Girls having sex with a man is not presented as the beall of intense joy and fulfillment of women's existence.
Maybe that's what was really most bleak about Closer. It seems masculinist: the women are presented as jumping at the men like frogs in heat. But in fact when we look at their faces and they are forced to say "what they did," there is no romance and hardly any sense of pleasure or fulfillment. Better to take photos, go for an exhilarating walk.
Cheers to all,
Ellen
NB: Michael Gambon is an important presence in Being Julia and worth seeing once again -- as when is he not? I did like The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover -- though it is only for strong stomachs.
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004
Subject: [Womenwriters] Mozart Updated: _Cosi Fan Tutti_ becomes Closer:
Oops!
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
Alas alas! I reversed the male roles and also got the actors confused.
Larry was the doctor and was played by Clive Owens (who looked to me like Jeremy Northam); Dan was the shit and was played by Jude Law.
But then I could never tell the four lovers in Mozart's opera apart either.
Ellen
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 I can't add much to Ellen Moody's very detailed and incisive comments on the
film "Closer" except to say that it is much "closer" to its audience than
"Cosi," in which the action is staged by a the stage-managing Don and his
maid and the disguises are virtually transparent. These devices of course
provide the "distance" which facilitates comedy. On the other hand, I found
nothing in "Closer" which is closer than the passions of "Come Scoglio" or
"Per Pieta" or the tenor aria (the words elude me) which a friend of mine once
described as a "musical wet dream" (though one scene in the movie comes pretty
"close" to that).
Best Wishes, Jim Gill
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 Good Morning all -- hope this day finds you all in good health & spirits --
As you know by now and as Ellen has correctly observed, I read against the "grain" as it were
-- so as to stay consistent (lol), here are my thoughts on "A New Delhi Romance":
I begin thinking about this short story not with the text itself, but rather, with the conversation
it has with current events. Last night on "Now", Zainab Salbi talked about the state of Iraq with
respect to women and their rights. She argues that women are worse off than they were before
the war (why am I not surprised?) and that Iraq has the potential to become a completely
conservative, religious state, and well, should that happen, egad, then women will be more
oppressed than they were under Saddam -- (she notes that women of power i.e. professors,
scientists, etc, etc have been assassinated one by one by the insurgents since US occupation.)
She continued her argument by noting that if women don't have a hand in formulating Iraq's
new Constitution -- Iraq will cease to be "Iraq" -- I'm assuming she meant the traditions, values,
and institutions that even under Saddam's regime still defined this culture. It's a profound
statement.
When Salbi began her interview with the following quote "A strong indication of the health of
the country is the status of its women (this is according not just to philosophers but the UN and
World Bank)" -- parentheticals mine, I began to think about Jhabvala's project, or what appears
to be her project within the collection we are reading. In some ways, this statement resonated
strongly within the first six stories that we have read to date. In some ways, does Jhabvala's
stories invite readers to consider the state of India around the retreat of England as dependent
on the status of its females?
The stories, when read together, not only say that romance is dangerous, that change is
dangerous, but they do seem to invite the reader to consider the struggles of women to hold onto
their place, to change their place, to maintain hearth/home as it were when a country undergoes
drastic change; and while, India's change from England's rule is a positive one versus the
changes going on in Iraq (although we hope they will be positive -- Salbi painted a really grim
picture last night), India's health, at least as presented in these short stories, seems quite
dependent on the status of the female characters -- or at least we're invited to consider this
argument, albeit as a subtext and between the lines.
"A New Delhi Romance" is not like the previous stories -- we are in a different social class,
the main characters are two women, Indu and Dipti (again the old India up against the "new"
India female) -- and what makes this story so different is the emotional incest, if you will, or
maybe blackmail, Indu puts on her son, Arun. Indu has no power (she's fuming mad that she
married beneath her -- and as we learn because of her sexual discretion -- ah, that same
thematic issue -- from Karenina to Bovary to Chopin -- when girls f around -- they pay). And
because she has no power her lack of power, or at least we're invited to consider this, allows her
to behave in abusive ways. (It has been argued that sexism/racism is a form of "child abuse" --
that when children grow up hearing negative things or experiencing negative things about their
race/gender -- they believe it -- and we all are aware that victims become victimizers -- not a
justification, just a psychological observation.)
But it's not just Indu who has no power -- Dipti doesn't either -- we know she loves (or is in
lust -- or loves to the best of your young ability) Arun (and Arun loves her to the best of his young
ability). Dipti makes the choice not to marry Arun for her family's sake. "It's like selling yourself.
It is selling yourself" (113).
And with that line we are invited to consider the health of India and the status of its women.
What are we being invited to consider here? Quite a bit no doubt -- a no good husband/father
who returns when he needs money and sex and Indu who obliges him perhaps out of a sense of
duty, perhaps because she's human and horny; Dipti's mother, of a higher class, that is until her
husband's business affairs cause corruption, must also suffer in the same way -- do things for the
sake of the "marriage" that are derogatory to her ("At the same time, she blamed her mother for
the way she submitted to this treatment, crouching under his furry like an animal unable to
defend itself" (98); a son who wants to make the world better -- who wants to marry the girl he
loves (against arranged marriages) but who is up against a society that is changing. The last line
resonates loudly: "Giving himself over completely to make it up to all women for the
shortcomings of all men" (114).
While melodramatic and probably semi-insincere, no doubt the line is the moment where
Arun notes the fate and choices of the women in this culture. Further, with this statement, we
are invited to consider that the "new" men represented by Arun will bring change -- again a male
defining female roles. No doubt in "A New Delhi Romance" we see women from both ends of
the social spectrum struggle to maintain their status -- and their status is not so great, so hence,
if we accept Salbi's quote, then the state of India, at this moment, is not going so smoothly; the
women are caught -- at least in this story -- and there is no "new" romance -- there is no romance
at all - literally and figuratively.
This story is the saddest in the collection to date -- although, like the stories before it, the
narrator's distance - - third person omniscient for the most part, only acts like a reporter -- the
narrator is not involved within the emotional landscape of the story -- the facts, if you will, are
what they are, and we, the reader, are left to do with them what we will. My thoughts, Valerie
Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 In response to Valerie,
Yes this is a third-person narrator and we find Jhabvala
using free indirect speech to enter into the mindset and
values of a particular character while remaining partly
apart; she can move into and out of which character
she pleases. We do see Dipti's parents from her point
of view -- though it is apparently not one she has thought
through: "Even in her own mind Dipti had veiled the scenes
she had witnessed since her childhood ..."
I liked that the conclusion juxtaposed the final conversation
and clash between Arun and Dipti and the yielding of
Indu to Raju. Dipti does walk away from her abusive
relationship and Indu doesn't. I was somewhat uncomfortable
by the way Jhabvala had presented Dipti. It reminded me
of the way Austen presents one of the Bennet sisters in
Pride and Prejudice: Mary Bennet is savaged for her
continual reading, her bookishness (of course I would
notice this); she is mocked mercilessly for her stupidity
over her books: she doesn't take anything from them;'
she repeats cant; she is as narrow and bigoted as
Mr Collins. Austen does show us and say that Mary is
this way because she's what the world calls ugly, but
nowhere except at the very end of the book (recalling
Jhabvala's turn-round here) does she register sympathy
and understanding for why Mary behaves the way she
does. In a famous scene in P&P Mary is humiliating
the whole family by playing the piano in front of a large
group very badly and by keeping at it; Mr Bennet finally
stops her by saying aloud in front of every: "That will
do, child, you have pleased us long enough" (that's
not his exact words, but it's close and I added the
italics so the original intonation is in there). It's an
excruciating moment and is seen from Mary's
horrified scapegoating, but I've never been able to
make up my mind whether Austen wants us to laugh
with Mr Bennet mostly and enjoy his triumph.
Satire is a careless mode and things are pointed out
swiftly for laughter, out of aggression on the part of
the satirist, to release her antagonisms. Thus until
the end of the story we get hardly any understanding
-- and even then precious little -- why Dipti services
this fatuous horror of a young man. She's a Barbie
doll, deluded: we are to see Arun as such another
as Raju. The story continually parallels them. Arun
is growing up to be another self-indulgent appetitive
person; whoever marries him will be his slave as
Raju tried to make Indu. And still succeeds as
what pleasure can she have (so he feels) except
through his great penis and jokes. I brought up the
New York Times article for there the reporter
did bring in why young women submit themselves
to this sort of pleasuring of men: mostly if you
study the girls who do this they are craven for
affection, acceptance, have been themselves
undervalued and mocked. She is re-enacting her
mother's subservience. What if she gets pregnant,
Indu asks. He shrugs. What does he care?
And the father: "Ah, don't spoil it for him?"
Right. This small young man possesses this
young woman and Indu knows -- Jhabvala expects
us to know -- how much humiliation jerking
someone off, and all the rest of it really contains.
The smallness of pride is seen in Arun's triumphs
as they once must've been seen in Raju's had
Indu only been able to see it.
Dipti's selling herself at the end is just the same
pattern endlessly repeating itself. What did
Indu sell herself for? A silly idea of not valuing
materialism and status which Raju's character
has now taught her was stupid. Dipti sells
herself for "love" every afternoon. Love?
And now she will useleslly sell herself again.
Really it's in character. If we had been told
she dreamed of university, we would know she'd
give it up. Her mother wouldn't defend her,
and to her father she's another vagina to
be sold. She has sold herself all along -- for what? She
gives in; she doesn't get what she wants. We are
given something to feel for her in that final line ("That's
not what I want"), but not enough. What is emphasized
in the scene as a whole is Arun's disdain
for her as weak. No one knows this better than
him. I go further and wonder what kind of intercourse
they had. Why didn't she get pregnant?
I've been filling in far more than Jhabvala provides.
We see Dipti mostly from Indu's exasperated
point of view, but Indu is not strong. The narrator's
point of view here is Jhabvala: and as Austen registers
her scorn for people who read but cannot understand
what they read and remain unenlightened and vain
(Mary is given a pointed speech about vanity which
boomerangs on her if she only knew it), so Jhabvala
registers her scorn for weak young women. I imagine
Jhabvala had plenty of self-esteem and wasn't susceptible
to the kind of male bullying that succeeds when the
girl is desperate for affection and status and some
friend somewhere who just might be loyal to reciprocate.
It's at such points in the text that I can understand
why people who write about Jhabvala say she is
not deeply sympathetic to women as a group, not
feminist. I'd put it she is like so many women who
come from the elite classes and herself was protected
and thought well of and was in character strong
incapable of really entering into such a character
as the washrag young girl who is not valued by
anyone. Why does Dipti give in to her parents?
For the same reason she gave into Arun: she wants
them to value her. What a fool; they will just use
her as Arun knows he has. The insight into Dipti's
delusions are seen, but not really pointed out
sympathetically. Many a reader might walk away
with the scorn for her people do for Mary Bennet.
Indu herself does see that Dipti is parallel to
her; that's why she is given the remark Dipti could
get pregnant. But Indu is not allowed to see
yet more deeply into why girls behave as Barbie
Dolls serving men and turn around to serve the
next powerful person in line.
Actually as I write this I see we are given more to
feel for Dipti than I had thought. So thank you
to Valerie for leading me to write this. That's what good
about writing about what we read and going back to
the text. Still I feel more might have been said on
Dipti's behalf and had this been said Indu's misery
been more clearly understand and exposed.
There are not the nuances for sympathy for Dipti
that there are for the women who yields in A
Backward Glance. I found myself wondering if
this was due to Dipti's giving in so solitarily and
getting nothing from the world in status, losing
status. Judy (in A Backward Glance) is married;
Etta is a kept mistress and kept richly. Again
I'm puzzled as to why Jhabvala seems to sympathize
with wandering prostituted despised women as in
this story we do see a valuing of status even including
those the society admires no matter if they are
not worth much for real.
I do agree that these stories are part of a conversation
exposing what's happening to women in the non-western
world in the past three decades. This is gone over quite
thoroughly in the non-fiction and documentary mode in
Nafisi's _Reading Lolita in Teheran_. Nafisi shows how
women in the non-western world had been given the
same status and rights in public as women in the west
were and were increasingly getting rights and status
in private; that's all gone in Iran: back to Sharia, back
to being men's Lolitas.
I don't agree with the argument that people who don't
"belong" to a group somehow oppress or have no
right to write about that group. To me this is nationalism
in its more dense and obtuse ways. When Styron
wrote his masterpiece, Nat Turner, he was excoriated
for showing the realities of the people who rebelled as
well as their rebellion. What was wanted was more
unreal sentiment in the manner of Stowe's Uncle Tom's
Cabin, more flattery. So they attacked him as not
having the genes to look African. How dare he? Instead
of seeing how he was endowing their cause with adult
reality. There's a great essay by Baldwin talking about
how the flattering representations of "the protest novel"
do no good, just reinforce hatred and resentment: none
of us have clean hands. There is a problem in the
literary marketplace today, and many a non-western
person sells his or her books pretending to be far more
non-western than they are in origin in order to sell
to reverse nationalisms. And then some of them
write books which reinforce their's societies cruelties,
justify them. At GMU they are hiring someone
to be their new "Modern British" person: none of the
three candidates have a name which is at all pronounceable.
What matters is the name of the person, tokenism
anyone? Actually deeper it's nationalism all over again,
just another variety.
I've had this sort of thing -- we all do - happen to me.
How dare you go into a church and admire the architecture
(my sister-in-law who is a Vicar said to me sneeringly),
after all aren't you an atheist? How dare you take
my power from me? is what these complaints boil
down to? How dare that guy write a book it was
my "right" to write. How dare that black guy marry a white
women, says some black women authors, and
then the hatred is aimed at the white women.
No one owns anyone much less based on a minority
of our genes; cultural patterns only go so deep though
we often experience them as the only reality in
people's minds and hearts. Then every once
in a while a "non-group" person writes a moving
great book about the problems of a group, uses
a pseudonym, and the book sells widely; the
pseudonym doesn't hold and then everyone
who hawked the book is mortified. It was a fake!
No it wasn't.
Jhabvala is working to expose truth
insofar as she sees it. Like her characters
and like all of us, she can't get beyond herself all the
time, but she does see that problem in herself and
tries -- which I fear Nafisi for example didn't quite.
I've tried this morning to show one area of
Jhabvala's blindness and it's not there because
of her genes, nor necessarily where she had
her elite education. It's that elite status and
her own strength that blinds her to Dipti --
though as Valerie pointed out we do have
that last scene and occasional glimpses
of Dipti's horror at the way her mother is
treated -- though she's repeating it herself.
I hope others will join in. Valerie and I have jumped
in each week one day ahead of time.
Cheers to all, Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 I'll add again:
I should have made it clearer that Indu has herself her
narrowness and blindnesses. Had someone else
much better and decenter married her, would she have
stayed with the idea that status doesn't count and it's
wonderful to rebel against it? Nowhere
in the story does Indu register an awareness beyond the
situation she's in. She buys into the values of materialism
and status in reaction to the exploitation of her and the
smallness of the character of the man she married: his
son is such another as he. Again like Dipti she doesn't
look beyond; she can't.
In "Independence" and here again we have a third-person
narrator because the central figure can't carry the pattern
apparently disinterestedly and coolly enough -- in the
way the unreliable narrator of "Expiation" seems to at
first.
Ellen
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 Good Morning and hope that this morning finds all in good health & spirits:
Thank you Ellen for your enlightening readings -- and they are, as always, useful. To
continue the discourse -- or my two cents, whichever you prefer: some thoughts:
Ellen Moody This seems to me to be an important moment in the text. And as Ellen points out, there is an
admonition that the story wants to point out: history will repeat itself. It has with respect to
women and culture and the subjection/subordination of women. I agree with Ellen that women
who find themselves in the position of Dipti usually do so for complex psychological reasons. Let
me add to this: I think culture reinforces this subjection/subordination role. Here's my theory for
what it is worth: As humans, we need (Maslov's hierarchy of needs) attention, affection, love,
nurturing and the ability to mate as well as the ability to have sex. This is the body animal.
Okay, so we have these natural instincts. We live in a culture where we are bombarded with
photos of scantily clad women; we have preteens (as someone pointed out a few weeks ago)
buying sexy apparel because they want to be liked/loved and who do they see getting this
affection? Women/teens in sexy apparel. It makes sense that girls/women do this -- often
without thinking (because the desires on on a primitive level) because the body animal needs to
be loved and if the only way to get love is to don certain apparel and act in certain ways -- what
choices does one have?
Couple this reality with the fact that many of us, like Dipti, see our mothers in unhealthy
relationships at worse or at times allowing themselves to be subjected to their partners for
whatever reasons (often to keep peace and/or the family intact -- we all know what happens
when women leave with young children-- economic consequences.) So, even if a mother
eventually leaves an unhealthy situation, a female child (and a male chld has witnessed this so
he thinks he can get away with unhealthy behavior) is likely to have witnessed her mother
succumbing to some subjection prior to the moment when the mother leaves. And we learn
through watching behavior -- it is one of the strongest learning methods -- among others, of
course.
While I see Ellen's argument about "A New Delhi Romance" as satire -- and I hadn't thought
about the story that way, but yes, I can see how it might be read that way, I didn't read it that way
-- the story is too tragic to be satire, in my opinion, although Ellen's definition certainly applies to
the story. I see the story almost as a Shakespearean tragedy -- although we could argue that his
tragedies where satirical in some way. Nevertheless, because I am not trained in literature
before the mid 1900's -- I cannot help but to read the text through that lens -- correctly or
incorrectly, and this story seems to be a social comment about caste, society, and the subjection
of women. I agree with Ellen -- this story is about materialism as well as the repetition of the
vicious cycle of materialism as well as the subjection of women. And the satire element certainly
adds a level of intrigue for me.
Finally, in response to Ellen's statement: "I don't agree with the argument that people who
don't
"belong" to a group somehow oppress..."
I agree. But nevertheless, it is an intriguing argument about appropriation and the text and
how language creates culture, perception, etc. In some ways, Jhabvala's use of the third person
is almost, at least to me, some careful acknowledgment of appropriation -- although I can't
assume to know her intent and further, the third person POV has other uses in the story -- it is
the narrator reporting what he/she (it's a genderless narrator but nevertheless a character - albeit
a reporter character) sees. And it is interesting to note, that most of the narrators we have read
to date in these stories have a strong "authorial" feel to them -- authorial in all levels of the word.
So, appropriation or authority becomes interesting within the context of the narration of the
stories.
One final thought, in some ways, in "A New Delhi Romance" the older generation of females
subjecting the younger female generation -- and the subjection of women by women is
something that needs to be talked about more, or at least in my opinion.
Again, some insightful readings, Ellen -- thank you, and I'm looking forward to reading how
others have read the text -- always insightful, provocative, and useful. Valerie
Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 IN response to Valerie,
I wanted to quote the scene from Naomi Wolff's Promiscuities where
she tells of how she got down on her knees and sucked a guy's penis
in front of a crowd of teeneages in a basement of one of their parents.
(The parents were at work). This was liberation she was told. At that
moment she knew it wasn't.
Alas she doesn't go into the complex psychology either. Jhabvala
riled me a bit: she seemed to me to reveal how she never had any
problem with self-esteem, much less female-self-esteem. I remembered
George Eliot's scathing use of the phrase "woman's pride" with respect
to another female character who gives in.
But aargh! I couldn't find my book. Books do not behave in our
house. Whence another kind of rant:
About a week ago Jim and I discovered a book that had snuck in
to our library. Not only that it alphabetized itself. The title is
Perdido Street Station and the author China Mieville.
Mieville's photo on the back presents him as a coarse teen-thug.
Not a book either of us would buy. We asked Isabel if it was
assigned by her fashionable English professor at Sweet Briar.
No. (I believe his egoistic approach to teaching her literature
put her off majoring in English -- as Pangloss says, "C'est
tout pour le meilleur ... " but maybe not). We wondered if it
was Laura's: but it's very long and would probably not have
reached her radar as it's actually elite niche (radical chic) stuff,
though to be fair on Wednesday she chose a great movie for
her and I which I hadn't heard of Leon. I recommend it and
hope to write about it later tonight.
Well we can't figure out how this flashy looking vulgar book
got there.
And today Naomi Wolff's Promiscuities has gone missing.
I had two copies. I was so charged by the candor and revelation
of what women's liberation actually was to experience sexually --
sucking a young man's penis in front of a group of young people
all laying about in a basement when the parents are gone to work --
that I gave Laura a copy. I wanted her to read it. To understand
here was the embodiment of what Dworkin meant.
I fear she left it alone in New York City (with Wally who will
not keep it company). In effect homeless.
I don't think it will make its way here. But then what happened ot the
second copy? Where did it go?
Jim thinks it's in one of the many piles and baskets of books
which litter my workroom floor and are also on tables in the
front room. But no. It's not in the attic either.
This is the real problem with books. They won't stay put.
They misbehave.
Ellen
Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 Valerie's point about language is well-taken. Language
limits and shapes what we can say: it makes worlds.
Thus Achebe finds himself stifled to write in English.
The realities of power and money lead writers outside
the European marketplace to write in English originally,
not just translate their works afterwards. The Pacific
Rim prize which tries to compete with Booker often
ends up with quite similar books: in its rules it suggests
the writer write his or her works in English originally.
Mahfouz, the Egyptian writer who won the Nobel, wrote
a powerful insight essay on this for the _New Yorker_
shortly after he won his prize and was accused by
people who lived in the same country as he as selling
them out. The motives for such accusations are central
to them. But he ignored this (tactically) and talked
about the problems of translators and translations in
our culture too, their invisibility -- which of course
interested me.
All this to say that while Penny will probably tell us Dipti
is a common name in India, like Pushpa it has allegorical
vibes in English. She dips for men. Dips down. Drinks
it (the sperm as it comes out). Pushy and Dippy.
I did think of a line that often shocks Janeites who turn
Austen into cloudcukooland. She congratulates
Mrs Musgrove on the death of her useless, and preying-
upon-everyone else son Dick as a way of pointing out
satirically that Mrs Musgrove's absurd unreal grief
is unreal and how deeply we are hypocrites before
ourselves. Her view of Dick is Jhabvala's view of
Adun. And for those who've read MP, Raju is
another Henry Crawford many years later -- except
Crawford would've had the brains to take care
of his property.
Ellen
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 On Sunday, February 6, 2005, at 07:37 AM, Ellen Moody wrote:
I don't know how common it is (it's the weekend, I can ask my co-op
friends tomorrow), but Dipti (like many Indian names) means
"brightness," and specifically it can refer to the flame from a small
ceremonial lantern. So, in addition to the English vibes Jhabvala may
have intended (as with Pushpa), this name may carry additional Hindi
vibes about a flame burning bright and fast, as Dipti is such a flame
for Arun.
BTW, Indu means "moon"--it's the short version of longer names
(Indukala, Indulekha, Indumati) that mean moonlight, fullmoon, etc., so
it might be read as a truncated name--a name, like the character, that
has lost something. It's also a cold, white light, to meet Dipti as a
hot flame, reading in the metaphors of their names.
There's something in their relationship as older woman/younger woman
that seems to reflect what I've seen of Indian
mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationships in general--much more
frankly adversarial and territorial than we generally expect in the
West. So beyond the generational older woman vs. younger woman dynamic
Valerie identifies, I see also a more specific in-law tension between
them, even without Arun ever marrying Dipti--they still share him,
share living space, and share meals.
Penny
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 In The Bookseller of Kabul Anne Seierstad makes explicit the
theme of women preying on other women (adversarial,
territorial), and especially the older woman or "first" wife on the
later ones and younger women, daughters, and daughters-in-law.
Seierstad puts this down to having an all-powerful male. Everyone
is vying for his attention; everyone wants to curry favor, to be seen to
be serving him. In Jhabvala's Heat and Dust the mother-in-law
of the nameless narrator's landlord lords it over her daughter
by serving the son hand-and-foot. In western culture where
there is no such central power figure, human relationships
around him do not become so twisted. I found in The Bookseller
of Kabul the story of the daughter peculiarly painful and think
I was expected to. The girl was deprived of any way to
develop her real talents. All she was allowed to do was
clean up garbage. She was kept in the back of the house,
no one to talk to, and sneered at meanly by the oldest
brother who himself was enraged by his father's
exploitation of him. The father would not let him go
to university because it suited the father to have the son
keep the shop while the father travelled.
Thus (as can be seen) Seierstad makes a corresponding
comment about the sons of such a man with respect to
him and the older brother. Everyone preying on everyone
else. Everyone getting back. It reminds me of how primogeniture
operated in Europe before the French revolution and in England
until the later 19th century. The theme of the younger
son is found in many novels.
Another of her insights is how the economic and social
structuring of these family-networked societies works
to prohibit and thrown scorn upon open acts of kindness.
But you can see the same kinds of violations and
perversions in the novels of the 17th through 19th
century where families are the central networking
mechanism for material and prestige aggrandizement.
I remember how in Austen's unfinished fragment,
The Watsons, the four sisters prey on one
another, are desperately betraying one another
-- they must marry and they have so little material
things to offer. That's another reason for the antagonistic
relationships of women which is still with us but
is as much outside families and more among cohorts,
though one of the "great" themes of literature is
the mother and daughter's struggle over the
same man. And I've actually seen that in real
life more than once: the man goes at first for
the older woman, then he comes into the house,
sees the daughter and has little trouble switching.
He's such a prize or so needed.
Ellen
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 This kind of antagonism seems to be particularly fostered by the Indian
system of marriage whereby a bride becomes an often very subordinate member of
the husband's parent's household and may be seen by the mother-in-law in
particular as an interloper in her hearth and home and rival in the son's
affections.
In a conversation with my Italian teacher a while back, she happened to
mention that this kind of scenario is quite common in some parts of Italy, too,
where a lack of affordable accommodation often makes it necessary for a young
married couple to move in with the parents with similar accompanying tensions.
Having a one-track mind, when I saw your header I thought at first you were
going to mention the intrasex antagonism between Sabine and Maud in the
Brittany sections of Possession that we have just been talking about. Though
postively disposed towards Maud at first, Sabine grows more and more hostile to
her, partly because of Maud's own rebarbative attitude to her overtures and
seemingly incomprehensible behaviour, but mainly because she comes to believe
Maud is an interloper and rival for the affections of her beloved father (The
general theme of trespass and intrusion is a very strong motif in
'Possession, by the way).
This is of course another common literary scenario in which it's the
children who react with hostility to what they perceive as displacement.
Has Jhabvala been accused of misogyny in her often very negative portrayals
of women and their inter-relationships? I've seen that Byatt has, for example.
Fran
Sorry, did an idiotic thing (not the first), kept saying Maud and Sabine and
it should have been Christabel and Sabine, of course. All that doubling no
doubt having its effect...
Fran
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 I'd agree The Bookseller of Kabul is an excellent book. The author has come in
for some
heavy criticism for "betraying" the family, which is an interesting
label. Had she identified herself as an "undercover investigative
journalist", as a man might have been more likely to do, then no one
would be complaining.
And what she does is exposes the myth of the gentle, nurturing
extended family - for which Germaine Greer, among many others - fell
for. It is almost unbearable to think how many women - in the Middle
East, on the Sub-continent, in southern Europe and (happily with
decreasing frequency) in China and South-east Asia, are made
near-slaves by the structure.
It has been read chiefly as a criticism of Islam, but I think it
should be taken much more broadly.
Natalie Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 I've been thinking as I read these stories (I'm half-way through the
New York section) that it's no accident Jhabvala's husband is an
architect--or rather, that it's no accident that she shows a continuing
awareness of built spaces, how rooms work to shape human interaction,
how location within a town signifies so much more than the practical
concerns of distance; and mostly, how the (perceived) necessity of
sharing space with people, whether we've chosen them or not, inevitably
leads to conflict.
It's apparent from the first story: the room that Bablu and his friend
share is explained in detail, the way the narrator and his siblings are
split about whether to leave behind the old neighborhood. This week's
stories, again, find territoriality within the home--when Indu finds
the flower from Dipti's hair on her pillow, it brings down a cascade of
thoughts, some of them nostalgic (the scent of the flower contributes
here, as scent often does), some of them far from that. "Husband and
Son" also involves domestic spatial arrangements--the husband lives on
the roof, the wife indoors with her friend; that her window or balcony
looks into the building where the dancing school is held becomes a key
fact.
The New York stories bring these interiors out more--and also the
mother-daughter antagonism we've already identified (very strong so
far, in the first few stories there). If folks haven't looked in the
table of contents at the titles recently, I'll just note that one of
the stories in the second half is named "Parasites." In an Andrea
Barrett book, I'd expect some entomological exploration from a story
with that title; from Jhabvala, I'd instead expect something more about
living space and how we share it.
Penny
To WWTTA
February 8, 2005
Re: Intrasex Antagonism Among Women/Lack of Space&Decent housing
First yes, Jhabvala has been accused not so much
of misogyny but of not being feminist, of lacking
real sympathy for women's causes. Sucher
writes that her screenplays pander, e.g.,
the film adaptation of A Room with a View,
includes a cast of "slightly chubby, rather silly
heroines ... opposite lean and twinkling heroes."
Sucher points out that Jhabvala herself chose
to adapt James's Bostonians which is misogynist
when it comes to female sexuality that is
lesbian and emancipated women. Gooneratne
attempts to defend Jhabvala from the charge
she's conservative by showing that Jhabvala
does not erase the gender source of women's
miseries: it's that one is a woman that cause
the powerlessness or seeking revenge on
other women once you get into power. I think
this is right: the intrasex antagonism in
Jhabvala is put down to women's own personal
histories twisting, thwarting, perverting their
healthier kinder impulses, histories they had
because they were women. But Gooneratne
is defending Jhabvala here because Jhabvala
does need some defense.
I agree strongly with Natalie that the criticisms
of Seierstad are obfuscating and if followed
would prevent people from bringing out into
the open what had been hidden for centuries.
It's precisely this attitude which prevented
women from telling how their husband
beat them in the 19th century. You are betraying
your family. More: the argument assumes
the family is the male. The one betrayed is
this allpowerful male. Are not the women in
"his" family equally the family? She's trying
to bring their stories before us and some of
them wante this (particularly the genuinely
oppressed young women), need it. Those talking about
it seem to think the women don't count,
the home is not the women's home too.
I also agree the book is about far more than
Islam. I feel it was Seierstad's language
which led me to think about the patterns of
behavior in Europe when primogeniture reigned.
She talks of how patterns of custom and
habit can work to inhibit kindness, tact,
decency, courtesy and encourage jeering
and triumph and violence.
If GMU ever gave me a course I get every
once in a while, 302SS: Advanced Comp in
the Social Sciences, I'd do Nafisi with
Seierstad.
An important theme in Jhabvala is the lack
of decent affordable housing for most Indians.
In her "Myself in India" she dwells on how
several families must live together in tiny
spaces. There is no government program
to build houses; rents are fantastically
high. This comes out strongly in the two
novels, Heat and Dust and A Backward
Place. The close promixity prevents
loneliness of the kind the heroine Judy
suffered when she lived in class-bound
England, with its nuclear family arrangements,
but it allows people to take advantage
of one another so the indulged male (Bal)
and his family will will live off another
sibling and his family (Bal's wife and
brother work to provide the money
for the family's rent and food). We
see how people curry favor and become
instruments of other people in order
to find a bit of clean space to sleep and
live during the day.
Germaine Greer can be extraordinarily
insightful and she has strong common
sense, but every once in a while she
goes over the top. Her book on
non-western women reminded me of
Mary Wortley Montagu's naive celebrations
of harem life. Sometimes a woman
writer will exhibit a strong tendency to
want to idealize women's communities.
Ellen
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2005 Hi everyone,
I'm a bit behind with Jhabvala, but have just read the second of
last week's stories, 'Husband and Son', which is one of my
favourites so far.
I tried to see if there was any critical discussion of this story on
the web but didn't come up with much - however I did find a fairly
brief mention by Samrat Upadhyay in an article from SINHA (Studies
in Nepalese History and Society). This is a piece about a special
issue of The New Yorker, devoted to Indian fiction in English, where
this story first appeared:
http://www.asianstudies.emory.edu/sinhas/kprb0208.html
Upadhyay writes:
I also felt that Vijay is being reminded of her own past and the
lost relationship with her husband through her sort-of romance with
the son figure, Ram. Something that struck me about this story is
the way in which the title is entirely focused on the men, 'Husband
and Son' - yet the lonely woman at the centre ot the tale, Vijay
doesn't really have a husband or a son in the sense she longs for.
The real son has no time for her except to check through the account
books and lecture her on her spending, and the husband has withdrawn
into his ascetic existence on the roof. It's also plain enough
that both Anand and Ram are really after money - Anand wants it
there in the bank, while Ram wants it as jewellery and trinkets.
Ram, the temporary son, only really shows her how much she has lost -
although they are powerfully drawn together, they are always the
old woman and the much younger man.
Ellen quoted a couple of Larkin poems - this story also reminded me
of another one, 'That Was a Pretty One':
It seemed to me as if that is what the young man does to Vijay - he
shows her what she has, the weary relationship with that old man on
the roof, as it once was. At the end she does turn back to her
husband and they are still tender towards each other, as Upadhyay
suggests in the reading I quoted above, but I think there is no
feeling that they can really rebuild any kind of life together - too
much time has passed and they have grown too far apart. They also
never really understood each other - there is that jokey comment he
made early on about women having only to bother about what to wear,
where to go and what to do, which for Vijay becomes all too real and
painful. All there is for her is to pour herself into a relationship
with a man. As with Farid and Farida, the love between them is still
there at bottom, but love isn't enough. I don't feel that Jhabvala
casts blame either way in this story - this is just how it is
between Vijay and Prakash.
Something I'm left wondering about from this story is just what
happened to Prakash to turn him into this lonely figure, the old
man. There are suggestions that he was once full of fire and then
suffered - he was one of the leaders of opposition to British rule
and then he was in prison. Jhabvala just hints at his past without
filling it in, and leaves me wondering.
Just a few early-morning thoughts on this story.
Best, Re: Jhabvala, "Husband and Son"
This is to thank Judy for her comments and for pointing
out the paragraph on the story as it appeared in the New
Yorker. I have a book of Larkin's poems, but it does
not include the one Judy quoted.
I went back to see what had been said. I noted that
Valerie and I both went into detail, but both concentrated
on "A New Delhi Romance." I did mention "Husband
and Son" but only to say that I felt I was supposed to
feel for Vijay but couldn't. Under the impetus of Judy's
reading the story as filled with compassion, I reread
it. I can see it's filled with pity for the old man who
loathed the corruption and worldliness, the fatuity of
the way he was treated by the powerful and hangers-on.
I'm still struck by Vijay's disgust: the free indirect
speech of the third person narrator makes us see
the old man from Vijay's eyes and the text is filled
with lines like "his toothless smile that was so painful
to her that she turned her eyes away." In his aging
she sees him as obscene; the closing scene has
vibes like this.
I'm leading up to the feeling I had and still have that
Vijay is as vile as her cold worldly biological son only in a
different way. The life she had with the older husband
was for her based on the same values the people
he rejected had. When she laughed she never
thought about what he was laughing at -- nor
his bitterness. She has no idea what he is retreating
to. It's true she has been made to give up her position
in the world because of him, that she is powerless
(but for the son he would have gotten rid of their
property and they would have been homeless,
dependent on this son) and therefore pathetic,
but she seems to be as appetitive and hollow as
Sumitra. My demonstration for Jhabvala wanting
us to see this is not just her attitude towards the
husband and incomprehension of him, but how
she treats Ram when she discovers he was
telling lies. First, she should have know he
was lying. I think we are supposed to see this
(and thus that she is without perception once
again), but even if we are not, she throws a cruel fit.
That screaming fit is of a piece with how she
has used him: as a sexual substitute, a
pet. Instead of seeing that he was reaching
out for something as she had (she wanted
sex from him as a substitute for love or
some contact as he has been led to), she
abhors him. All she wants is for life to be a
treat. The word "treat" echoes throughout
the story.
I also suggest she is some of a
caricature. It's improbable that a presence
should be so without insight. Jhabvala
has done that in order to withhold the
definite information that Ram is guilty.
But she wants the woman to be read
as a naif imitating the strange perversions
of social obligations and puzzled by
the perversions people act out in
response to these obligations. For
example she just registers that the
school now takes wealthy girls where
once it took on illegitimate girls.
I thought that a brilliant touch: it
reminded me of our discussion of
cosmetics. At the opening of the 20th
century only unchaste women wore
cosmetics, now all women do, and
rich ones very sophisticated makeup.
We endow Ram and Anand with more depth
but in fact we don't see them from within
at all. We are clearly to dislike Arnand --
though but for him (an irony) she'd be
in the street. So his way -- like Mr
Collins in P&P is vindicated by
what's called common sense in the society
she must live in.
Yes there is a larger criticism of Indian society
or society in general which deprives the woman
of any understanding or never offers her any
means of getting it -- though she is improbably
imperceptive. This society is one which
instead of creating a new Indian culture is
anxious to imitate the English, and just
takes on different snobberies. In that sense
we are clearly to pity her: her life has been
a blank waste except as a child eating
sugar candies when they were being given
out and giggling at the man who mocked
its rituals and nonsense.
I thank Judy for writing because she has helped
me to clarify or say to myself what is puzzling
here. There is compassion and much pity
for all the characters, but there is equally
a very strong distaste for all of them. Both of
us thought of or picked out Larkin poems,
the same vision, but with a different emphasis
in the perception. I think there is a norm
being tacitly applied throughout and the
real shaming that's going on and is directed
at Vijay, the "old man," Ram and Arand
is reinforced by the heavy penalty all are
paying but Arand.
Effective morality depends on social exclusions
-- whether you agree with the values the
morality is enacting or not. We see Vijay
and her husband excluded -- because he
wants to be. We also see her reinforce
exclusion cruelly on the (admittedly fatuous selfish
indulgent drone type of a male, typical
of Jhabvala) frightened and probably
lost and homeless teacher.
I find a cold clinical identication of amorality
going on throughout the story which is at odds
with the apparent pity. Now I like that cold
clinical identification and am tempted to see
the pity as a mask in the same way I saw
Nabokov using irony as a mask for him
to release his sexual appetites. But I don't
think so really. I think the story is at heart
sincere -- so to speak -- not performative.
Jhabvala is angry yet feels very sorry for
the deluded child-woman. I can't. I can
feel for Indu because she has an understanding
of what's happening and the story as
presented can be seen as an attempt to
raise standards. She's inviting us to wallow
in "Husband and Son". There's something
nasty in that honey. Rather like what
Aunt Aida is said to have glimpsed
in Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm.
I guess I'm saying that I think Judy
is making the story to be pleasanter,
nicer, kinder, easier than it is.
At the same time I admit I know
I'm probably supposed to pity
Vijay more than I can. I
realize I'm probably supposed
to like her on some level. But she still
wants sashay around in the
admiration of those who rejected
Ram. She threw him out screaming
screaming screaming.
Or so I am thinking tonight. I do find the
title intriguing: it's a reverse of many
a 19th century tale where we have titles
like "Wives and Daughters." Poor Vijay.
Never had a chance because she
was not given a husband she could
understand and grow up a little with
and now she has this heartless son
and threw out her toy.
I do agree that Prakesh is a figure
of real pathos. But we are not allowed
to get near him. Jhabvala seems not
to believe in the effectiveness of any public
politics to do good (at least in these stories):
maybe that's why she tells us so
little.
Ellen
Re: Jhabvala, "Husband and Son": Time
Another thought: is the theme of the story
time's passing? If we look at the verbal space
and details, it seems that most of the story
focuses on Ram and Vijay and the present
and Ram's troubles provide the climax and
denouement.
Not that time passing is not there, but that
it's more marginalized and a function of
the comparison between what Vijay remembers
of her happiness and what is now.
All the stories are complex pieces of art
and it's hard to isolate these things. The
story is suffused with a deep feeling of
loss, snatching at things and then
helplessness.
Ellen
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 Many thanks to Ellen for the detailed response to my posting
on 'Husband and Son' and the further thoughts on this story.
Ellen may well be right that I am making the story somehow
nicer/easier than it is - I am aware there is a lot more there than
I have managed to focus on, and will think further on the many
points Ellen brought out, in particular about the satirical edge and
the coldness of the narrator's voice. Still I do feel there is an
undertow of melancholy and feeling of loss and loneliness running
through the story.
I've read the story again today, and it seems to me that there are
many references to time passing, and contrasts between how the
couple's life is now, and how it was in the past.
One sentence which struck me was:
This reminds me of scenes I have seen in films where a bereaved
husband or wife clings to clothing of the dead loved one. Although
here the husband is still alive, Vijay has still lost him in some
way. I'm not sure quite what she is regretting here - partly perhaps
the wealthy past and the relics of empire, but also there is the
feeling of longing for physical closeness. Her husband doesn't want
to touch her now, so she clings to his jacket.
Later, when Ram fondles her feet, she is reminded of how her husband
used to do this. The memories keep on being woven into the present-
day narrative.
I don't feel she is disgusted by Prakesh as much as sad for him - a
line like "as threadbare with age as he was" suggests how thin and
frail he seems to her. There is also the comment "... she understood
him less and less but accepted him wholly in all his eccentricity."
I wouldn't defend Vijay's treatment of Ram, the way she turns away
from him when she learns that he has slept with a woman, and lets
her sexual jealousy lead her to abandon him. I think she does
realise what she has done and does feel regret - but, of course,
that is too late to help Ram.
All the best, Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 On Monday, February 14, 2005, at 02:44 PM, judegeuk wrote:
I like this reading, Judy. I found the story melancholy, too. The
passages you quote above suggest that it's too late for anything much
to change between them--that not only does Prakesh *refuse* to relate
to Vijay physically, he's probably no longer *able* to do so, frail
(and perhaps mad) as he is. The clothes are the closest she can
get--or maybe they're showing their age too, like Prakesh, wasting away
in a closet, threadbare, maybe moth eaten, a shadow their former
beauty. She must stay distant, perhaps both from a sensory revulsion
AND from a genuine concern for his well-being--she wouldn't risk
hurting him with an embrace, or alarming him with a close approach.
The dancing school here is echoed by mentions of traditional dance in
one or two other stories in the first half--the revival of folk arts,
classical poetry and dance-drama was hailed as a return to Indian arts
in the wake of Independence--such schools sprung up as parents hoped
their daughters would be the first of a new generation to embrace the
beautiful elements of their own classical arts, without comparing them
to colonial English imports. Like most ideals associated with the
first flourishing of Independence, it didn't quite work out that
way--and the school Vijay can see from her window (deck?) is more of
the disappointing reality we've seen throughout the first half's
stories.
Penny R
Subject: [Womenwriters] Jhabvala, "Husband and Son" I found the poem Judy cited. I was confused over the
title. "That was a pretty one" is the first half of the first
line; the title is "Reference Back."
I did say when looking for some emphases on time
passing I found "an intense sense of loss, snatching
at things, and helplessness." Not of time passing
itself (Vijah has no long perspective in her mind)
so much as contrast between fragments remembered
and the present. And the emphasis in the story
line is on the present and Ram. That's where
the action of the story lies.
On the passage Judy quotes, to me it's hilarious:
note what Vijah is "stroking;:
I laughed in a kind of grimace.
Look at the actual words. What she misses is these
English objects which have status in her eyes -- and
those of the people she and her husband when young
couldn't stand: "Her eyes blazed when he spoke
of the necessity of throwing out the English ...
all of whom, far from throwing out the English,
only wanted to be like them and to be allowed
to join their clubs."
She's absurd. She mourning over the filthy smells
of cigarettes which the man chain-smoked. Think
of the image, the smell, the rotting coat. Reductio
absurdum. Jhabvala is sending up the English empire
slyly.
Judy quotes a sad line about the husband but the
one I quoted showed disgust. The old man at
the end is shown as obscene: the language reminded
me of Chaucer's description of old January leering
over May (in one of his tales). There's even a
ditty January sings.
Probably the crux of the interpretation depends on
how we are to take this heroine. She lives at a distance
from "the old man" (which is what she calls him) now.
She remembers times of intense satisfaction, animal
satisfaction and regrets intensely the loss of physical
things with him: that's why the massaging of her
feet is stressed. It seems he was in charge of
her totally: when he goes ascetic, there's no sex
anymore though "there had been several years
before her menopause, and those had been difficult
years for her." I just don't see any intense emotion
in her towards anyone but herself. She resembles
Indu in having given up high prestige and material
things for a man -- in her case an idealistic one
-- and now she regrets this intensely.
With Ram she has a sexual toy she can indulge
her appetites over without endangering herself.
She uses him; she doesn't see him clearly
ever and then like the rest of the world ejects
him. I see no regret in the final paragraphs when
he calls him "Liar! Liar!" She didn't look at
him as her son and she never wanted him to
look at her like a mother. We are given
not one thought in that last paragraph (p
131 of my edition) to suggest she feels
any remorse or regret over him. He leaves
with a red mark on his cheek. In this pair I
see a replay of Mrs Stone and her young
prostitute male -- who by-the-bye she throws
out at the end too, only she really grieves
though not for him. At the close of the story
I see the first real relenting of Vijah towards
her husband. She shows some affection,
but it's because she's worried about what
will happen to "me."
Over a half century ago, Wayne Booth wrote a book as
classic as any of Leavis's: The Rhetoric of Fiction
where he formulated the the phrase "unreliable narrator"
in the way we used it today and argued that there was
a real problem in the use being made of the figure and
stance: one of understanding what the stance of the
author is. He formulates a number of "signals"
and devices whereby the reader can tell what the
author wants us to feel (generally of course), but
says this are easily misunderstood or not paid
attention. He was right even if nowadays his assumptions
about certainty and moral judgement are no longer
our own (as he was a universalist of the I. A. Richards-Leavis
close reading school). I'd say right this is one of those
narratives in the book where the signals are not clear
or mixed and muddled. I'd put this down to ambivalence
in Jhabvala about the woman: she feels sorry for
her though she uses her satirically.
One way I have been reading these stories which
does seem to me to offer objective or signals of
a sort is to look for the traditional romance archetypes
Jhabvala uses. She has many of them. She's an
astute manipulator of romance novels and knows
what's she doing with these types. This goes back
to my own theory of romance. For example, I'd
say that the vulgar philistine woman who grates
on the heroines nerves, is coarse, embarrassing,
misses out important intangible things in life,
is unself-consciously leeringly selfish is a common
type going way back. The most famous of the
earlier version is Mrs Elton in Emma. Since
Fran has brought this romance up, I'd say we
find this type again in Leonora Stern in Possession,
and the relationship of Maud to Leonora parallels
that of Susie to her vulgar Mother Bea (Golden
Oldie, just as made-up and bejewelled and
overdressed): both heroines are withdrawn,
mortified by the woman, but also overpowered,
and recognize -- ironically -- that she thrives
in the world because she is so thick-skinned
and obtuse, aggressive, and obstinate.
Thus I read "A Summer by the Sea" as a play
on this pair and that provides some grounds
for interpretation. Susie is such another
as Maud Bailey: we are to sympathize with
both: their alienation and dependencies
are justifiable, understandable. Whether
one is better off with a Wolf (remember the
man Maud has as the story opens) or a Boy is a
matter of taste. In fact by the end of Possession
Maud has opted for a Boy in the person of
Roland Michell -- who was played by someone
who plays the sensitive brother-hero in films.
In this story, "Husband and Son," we have a naif
at the center. Vijah is very dumb -- improbably
so. She's mindless, something of a caricature,
but it's done subtly, slight enough so that the
sleight of hand makes us endow into the tale
sufficiently. (What Austen tried to do with
Catherine Morland but felt she had not quite
pulled off at the opening of the novel.) D. W.
Harding has an essay on fully realized, rounded,
two-dimensional and flat characters in Austen
and other novels. Vijah belongs more to the
two-dimensional type -- as does her "old man."
Jhabvala has a fine gift for the precise detail for
shadings of character played out on small stages,
which we latch onto. These details are suggestive
of humanity. Nonetheless they are often very
funny as part of the tapestry of themes, and
I'd say Vijah would not be out of place in
a Thackeray caricature.
A second way is to return to the what the novelist
herself says of her art outside it. Outside her
art Jhabvala does not talk in reverential or
sympathetic ways at all of the traditional arts
of India or the new wealth and sophistication.
She has no equivalent of Vijah (she can't), but
she does of Sumitra and she says that when
she encounters such people she is driven to
want to talk to them in ways that fill the
with "horror." They "set her teeth on edge."
She shows sympathy for people genuinely
engaged in trying to improve actual conditions
of life for people in India and says these
plus the people who can simply accept what's
around them without getting coopted are
acceptable to her. Only she can't pull that
off. She can't accept what she sees. She
says she turns away, shuts her blinds, turns
on the air conditioner and writes.
Not only have feminist critics attacked her,
she has been subject to a number of vitriolic
pieces by Indian writers. For my part I like
her lack of sentiment towards all. In Heat
and Dust she has Indians selling their
rich objects as quick as they can to
equally mercenary English art dealers
who would take fakes just as quickly --
as long as they can sell them.
So that's how I resolve or try to get beyond
the use of an unreliable narrator.
Imagine this story told by the husband. After
all it's Vijah who sees him as an imbecile.
Imagine if we could have our author take
us back in time in his memory to how he
saw her when he retreated from the power
corrupt types. Imagine it told by Ram.
Don't imagine it told by Arand :) If Jhabvala
could get herself to enact this point of view,
you'd probably end up with an ironic Ayn
Rand tale.
I do think that Larkin is an apt poet to bring
to bear on Jhabvala's fiction. I find myself
remembering Graham Greene in his later
political fictions.
Of course one must rely finally on one's
own ear for tone and read out of one's
character. We will all do differently there,
but I have presented what I hope is a
reasoned group of grounds for interpretations
from the point of view of archetypes
in the genre and Jhabvala's own vision
as described by her to support my view
-- which is that this story is a chilling
unresolved piece.
Cheers to all, Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 Hello Ellen and all,
Ellen Moody wrote:
Sorry about that - I was basically quoting from memory, though I did
manage to find the passage on the web to check the wording, and I
gave what I thought was the title.
Many thanks for your further thoughts on the story and the
interpretations, and the reliability/unreliability of the narrator.
I like the contrast you draw between Vijay's thoughts when she
strokes the jacket and Prakesh's own comments on what he feels about
the English and Indians trying to be English - I did feel there was
satire of the Empire here, but couldn't quite work out how. The
contrasting between the two passages draws this out.
I do still feel there is a suggestion that she regrets her dismissal
of Ram -
Thank you also to Penny for the thoughts on the dancing school in
this story.
All the best, Jhabvala: "Husband and Son"
In response to Judy,
It was my fault not finding the poem. I was writing
very late at night and somehow failed to register
the first line in a first line index I looked at. I do
like the opening stanza:
Oliver's Riverside Blues, it was. And now Truly, though our element is time, Very dry, no? Dry in tone until the end and then
what we get is very muted emotion.
Yes the passage Judy picks out shows regret at
the loss, but is again a self-regarding regret.
She does not regret for Ram that he's in the
streets; she has no sense of the hypocrisy that
has been inflicted on him. No affection but
a sense of the bad taste. There is a strong
vein of disliking things in bad taste throughout
Jhabvala. She has a distaste for vulgarity
and the sordid. Note how once again (as in
the passage about the jacket which still
smells of chain-smoked cigarettes after
all thes years) we get a detail which presents
human beings as vile:
Ugly, squat pockmarked. And in case we are
inclined to feel sorry for young girls who have
to endure such ugliness, we are told they
tease him. Nastiness all round here.
It's a matter of tact as you know. You have to
be able to distinguish in a given utterance
by intuition which is the narrator, which
the character presented through
free indirect speech and which part of a tapestry
which itself is the meaning of the story.
I stepped back to suggest through looking at
romance archetypes we see repeated in
Jhabvala's and other women's romances from
the 18th century until today and through
looking at what she says about her attitudes
and how we see her present Indian and
modern customs and types in other fictions.
But maybe it's important also to suggest why
such fiction is worthwhile -- what is its value.
In a way I'm regretting the word chilling I
ended my posting last night with. It implies
something negative while I think these
stories are strongly salutary. Looking at
Larkin's poem, it's salutary not to present
emotionalism since emotionalism is
so often faked -- particularly in women's
forms (melodrama) -- and used to wrap
women in an imagined iron mesh. I'm also
thinking about the article on Yourcenar I
read this morning and her hardness of approach.
It refreshes and frees us by waking us
up to our own selfishness. Part of the
story's strength is how utterly self-
centered is Vijay -- and Ram. Here are
the two lovers of romance seen for real.
The story presents all the characters living
in their own worlds, driven by their own
egos, Prakesh too. After all he accomplishes
nothing by retreating and had he given
away all (not been stopped by the cold
mean son), what would've been gained?
What would he have gained by ending
up in the streets? He wanted to cut
off his nose to spite his face.
I'm writing another defense of ironical
cool romance and Jhabvala's own strong
sceptical stance. There's no soppiness
in her stories. Even when the character is
clearly to be sympathized with and is
justifying emotionalism and defeat,
our attention is called to the content
or the argument of the character.
Ellen
From: jgill
Subject: [Womenwriters] "A New Dehi Romance"
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Womenwriters] "A New Delhi Romance": Jhabvala's cruelty/Excluding the
"other" (and Austen brought back)
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
Ellen
Subject: [Womenwriters] "A New Delhi Romance": Jhabvala's cruelty/Excluding the
"other" (2)
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Womenwriters] "A New Delhi Romance": Jhabvala's cruelty/Excluding the
"other"
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
"Even in her own mind Dipti had veiled the scenes
she had witnessed since her childhood ..."
Subject: [Womenwriters] Naomi Wolff's Promiscuities
Subject: [Womenwriters] Dipti: she dips
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Womenwriters] Dipti and Indu
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
All this to say that while Penny will probably tell us Dipti
is a common name in India, like Pushpa it has allegorical
vibes in English.
Subject: [Womenwriters] Intrasex antagonism among women
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Womenwriters] Intrasex antagonism among women
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Womenwriters] Intrasex antagonism among women
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
London
http://philobiblion.blogspot.com/
Subject: [Womenwriters] Jhabvala and space
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Womenwriters] Jhabvala: 'Husband and Son'
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
Of the several pieces of fiction published in the magazine, the
most impressive one is by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who shows that she
still remains a master of the short story form. The story she tells
in "Husband and Son" is of an aging married woman who befriends a
young male dancer as her husband increasingly turns ascetic. The
woman, through the young dancer, is transported back to the old days
of her own romance with her then-young husband. Although the dancer
ostensibly treats the woman like his mother, there are strong sexual
overtones throughout their association. When finally the dancer
leaves the area after a scandal with a tutoree, the woman realizes
that the real target of her desire is her husband and not anyone
else. "Husband and Son" is a beautiful story about misplaced desires
and our perennial search for love.
Truly, though our element is time,
We are not suited to the long perspectives
Open at each instant of our lives.
They link us to our losses: worse,
They show us what we have as it once was,
Blindingly undiminished, just as though
By acting differently we could have kept it so.
Judy
Subject: [Womenwriters] Jhabvala, "Husband and Son"
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
"To her regret, he never again wore the suits he had brought form
England, but she kept them hanging in her wardrobe - they were still
hanging there, and she touched them sometimes, stroking the sleeves
of tweed and wool and sniffing at them for the last aroma of the
English cigarettes he had chain-smoked."
Judy
Subject: [Womenwriters] Jhabvala, "Husband and Son"
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
I don't feel she is disgusted by Prakesh as much as sad for him - a
line like "as threadbare with age as he was" suggests how thin and
frail he seems to her. There is also the comment "... she understood
him less and less but accepted him wholly in all his eccentricity."
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
"the sleeves of tweed and wool and sniffing
at them for the last aroma of the English cigarettes he
had chain-smoked."
Ellen
Subject: [Womenwriters] Jhabvala: "Husband and Son": Some grounds of interpretation:
Larkin's "Reference Back"
Reply-To: WomenwritersThroughTheAges@yahoogroups.com
First I did find the poem you cited. I was confused over the
title. "That was a pretty one" is the first half of the first
line; the title is "Reference Back."
"During the following days, there were times when she wanted to call
him back. She had no idea where he had gone, and when she went to
the school to find out, it was as if he had never been. A new
teacher was taking his class, an ugly squat pockmarked man whom the
girls teased till he lose his temper with them. Ankle-bells still
tinkled, drums and lyres played, but now all this was unbearable to
her."
Judy
That was a pretty one. I heard you call
from the unsatisfactory hall
To the unsatisfactory room where I
Played record after record, idly,
Wasting my time at home, that you
Looked so much forward to.
I shall, I suppose, always remember how
The flock of notes those antique negroes blew
Out of Chicago air into
A huge remembering pre-electric horn
The year after I was born
Three decades later made this sudden bridge
From your unsatisfactory age
To my unsatisfactory prime.
We are not suited to the long perspectives
Open at each instant of our lives.
They link us to our losses: worse,
They show us what we have as it once was,
Blindingly undiminished, just as though
By acting differently we could have kept it so.A new teacher was taking his class, an
ugly squat pockmarked man whom the
girls teased till he lose his temper with them ...
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