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