K.R .Meera’s Aarachar presents
a piquant mapping of Calcutta, explores the life of a powerful female character
and leads the reader into the psyche of Chetana Grddha Mullick, the hang woman.
By presenting a number of strong female characters, Meera makes an attempt to
bring out the various elements and inspiring qualities that shaped the
memorializing character Chetana. The novel’s protagonist is the first woman
executioner in India. The novelist’s spectacular and powerful imagination
transforms the story of Chetana’s life into a powerful female epic.
A female becomes a woman gender wise,
through a process of phallocentric social accreditation. Simon De Beauvoir’s
statement regarding women is very much pertinent in the reading of the Hang
woman. As she puts it in, “The Second Sex” one is not born a woman;
but becomes one” (267). Patriarchy makes use of sexual differences so as to
maintain an inequality between man and woman. Indian patriarchal society
renders a female submissive by ignoring her desires and needs. Both the society
and family denies and disregards her freedom. As a subjugated figure, she is
always supposed to live within the four walls of her family. Though there are
numerous women emancipatory movements that tend to strengthen their position,
politically they are still thwarted towards a corner. Though a working woman
enjoys a better position, the better element is only marginal.
Hang
Woman is predominantly Chetana’s story; the story of her growth into adulthood
and into a deeper awareness of her own self hood. It is also the story of her
transformation from a quiet, timid 22 year old to a professional hang woman
capable of taking a human being’s life. The novel is sensitive portrayal of a
woman living in a male world where value systems are always advantageous to man.
This is totally different novel in the sense that it explodes the myth of man’s
unquestionable superiority and the myth of woman being a martyr and a paragon
of all virtues. This would be considered a protest novel provides good
acoustics for women’s voice and establishes that women too have choices in
life. Executioner is also a job which demands both physical and mental ability.
It is a scene where there is no woman at all in the whole world. And the
qualification for this profession itself is ‘to be a man’. The Indian cultural
set up makes it more badly.
The
refusal to be crushed to fight and voice of protest is the core of feminism.
The protagonist of Hang woman questions the validity of the accepted set of
values and rebels against the existing moral codes and social norms which deny
women the oxygen of freedom that nourishes individual self. Study of the
existential struggle of this hypersensitive and highly individualistic woman
amply illustrates the more or less feminism can be viewed as existentialism.
The novel focuses on a woman’s awareness of her predicament, her demand to be
recognised as a person than a woman and her desire to have an independent
social image.
Towards
the final chapters of Hangwoman Meera has created a woman who is stern and determined.
She is able to withstand the male attempts of suppression and to respond to
them with caution. As expected of the female archetype the protagonist was a
submissive character in the earlier stages of her life. But the Chetana we find
later if of a more assertive kind, who is adamant on decisions about her life.
This is apparently visible when she says my heart stopped melting and became
frozen again. ’No Sanjubabu , I cannot trust you any more… my voice had
suddenly become hard( 304)
Chetana
takes the control of thread into her hands. We can see that male arrogance
shudders before the woman of courage. This is clear from these comments
“Sanjeev Kumar Mitra was…fairly sequinning wit un ease and dis trust (322)” I
took his hands in mine and began to stroke it gently. He took fright and shrank
into him -self (323) Sanjeev Kumar’s brow furrowed. The cord of suspicion was
tightening further. I enjoyed the un- ease and anxiety on his face.
Male
gaze offered through the eyes of Mitra becomes mild when Chetana starts to
return stronger looks. She says “when he looked at me again no lust but fear
shone in his eyes. And then he stopped looking” (388). In this key scene of the
novel Mitra swaps positions with Chetana and becomes the object” of gaze, pity
and scorn. Chetana has robbed him of the illusion of perpetually irresistible
maleness that all men cherish. She could withstand piercing looks even from the
Inspector general.” His eyes board in to mine. I could not pull away mine
either. We stood there for a while like fighting cocks, locked in each other
(389).
“I
wanted Chetana to not only hang the perpetrator of a heinous crime but also
male arrogance in general” (Ghoshal), said Meera in an interview.Mithra was
trapped in her gaze and then she tightened the noose and pulled the rope. This
can be seen as her protest against the “exploitation of woman”. Chetana watches
Mithra in his attempt to hold on to life. It is not an individual who is
hanged. Instead Sanjeev Kumar is the representative of male arrogance which is
hanged by “bangled hands”, which have come forward to conquer.
Meera
like many writers of novels of mainstream has chosen self- discovery as the
central theme of her novel. Self-discovery is guidance for realization of one’s
own interests through assertion of self. Focusing the attention on reading the
images of women and re-constructing them, Meera attempts to change the stereo
typed role of images of women in an androcentric set-up from a docile
acceptance to asserting herself. There is a revisionary approach. This novel
revolves around a woman who comes in terms with the physical self as well as
her persona, resisting the male gaze and lustful clutches of eyes on woman’s
body.
In
Hangwoman, Meera makes the readers view everything through Chetana’s
consciousness. This is a novel of progress and development: Meera describes the
different levels on which her protagonist Chetana has to progress in order to
attain her own individuality from outside the world. Though most of the time
she appears passive in action or words, she is able to attain herself towards
the end of this work. Chetana picks up her bag and leaves the studio saying “I
walked out… what the world gave me, I returned to it. I kept moving like the
ilish fish swimming into the Padma, Passing Sanjeev Kumar’s desperately
thrashing limbs…” (431). This dramatic situation has a clear parallel in
Ibsen’s play “A doll’s House”, when Nora steps out of the house in to the
street, slamming the door behind her”… the theme of this play was need of every
individual, whether man or woman, to find out the kind of person he or she
really is, and to strive to become that person” (A Doll’s House.206). This is
the same in the case of Chetana who has grown into her individuality, she walks
out and begins her journey to the future, to her Bhavishyath”(Meera432).
A question which Meera asks towards the end of
the novel is very relevant she exclaims “…how terrible that gentle and mild
woman are locked up in house, and men, who are indeed dangerous, are allowed to
roam outside.”(428). This novel attempts to analysis how an individual can come
to terms with self. The novel becomes an assertion of self and emancipation of
womanhood. Thus Chetana, as her name suggests, has become a conscious and
intelligent girl who follows her own dreams and gets self –actualization
through love and death her name becomes immortal not only on the walls of
Calcutta but also in the history of Indian fiction.
An Extract from "Female quest for Identity"
Anamika
