Examensarbete Kandidatnivå Rahel A Study of Self-Image in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things Författare: Emma Johansson Handledare: Joakim Wrethed Examinator: Carly McLaughlin Högskolan Dalarna Ämne/huvudområde: Engelska 791 88 Falun Poäng: 15 hp Sweden Betygsdatum: 2013-01-07 Tel 023-77 80 00 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Rahel’s Self-Image before the Tragedy 8 Estha and Rahel as Siamese Twin Souls 18 The Tragedy and its Consequences 20 Theories of the Long Duration of the Separation 23 Conclusion 25 Works Cited 27 1 Introduction The behaviour of literary characters can sometimes be both puzzling and thought- provoking. As they are creations, any strangeness or inconsistency could obviously be blamed on the author, but there is also the possibility that clues in the text have passed unnoticed due to the reader’s lack of knowledge or experience. Therefore thorough analyses of characters may be rewarding. Apart from understanding novels better, new perspectives and important insights can be gained on other subjects during the process. In Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things it may seem strange that the protagonist Rahel lets twenty-three years pass without contacting her brother as they are described not only as intimate, but as Siamese twin souls. Although this obscurity per se might not be of high significance, the attempt to explain it led to an exploration of self-image formation and its consequences. This topic becomes especially interesting if self-image is viewed not only as an outcome of arbitrary circumstances in an individual’s life, but also as a consequence of societal structures. In a study of self-image in relation to society, Rahel makes a fruitful object as her child perspective illuminates the process of social construction, making issues as gender, traditions and colonial heritage transparent, but despite this there is little written about Rahel. Indeed, most essays on Roy’s novel concentrate on the liaison between Ammu and the untouchable Velutha, and its ‘transgressive’ nature. The main discussions concern whether the erotic scenes are politics or conventional elements to satisfy a Western audience, and whether the book does or does not give voice to marginalised groups such as untouchables and women. Other articles centre on trauma, the binaries of big God and small God and what they represent, or language and narrative techniques. This wide 2 variety of articles gives a hint about how multifaceted The God of Small Things is and previous work provides valuable and divergent perspectives on the novel. Something that becomes clear is that the interpretation depends largely on how the narrator and the narratee are perceived, which is by no means unequivocal due to Roy’s style. As Elisha Cohn points out, Roy “differentiates between two modes: a public narrator who decries pollution and sardonically comments . . . and a private narrator who harmonizes with her characters” and the borders are sometimes unclear (162-63). Furthermore, Roy shifts perspective between various characters, although Rahel is the principal reflector. Nevertheless Rahel receives little attention in previous work and her self-image is not the main issue in any of the articles referred to in this essay, “Rahel”1. However, some articles give clues to how Rahel is perceived. Anuradha Dingwaney Needham calls Rahel “a particular kind of child who became a particular kind of adult” and suggests that she “is represented as relatively unsocialized, . . . without friends and caring relatives whose concern would draw her into a network of social relations and the values that govern those relations” (381). Needham claims that Rahel represents “a consciousness relatively unhampered by (dominant) society’s ideological determinants” and argues that this gives Rahel “relatively open access to, and sympathetic identification with, the subaltern . . .” (381). Needham’s observations describe important narrative functions Rahel has in the novel, but when seeing Rahel as “a particular kind of child”, Needham fails to acknowledge the reasons for Rahel’s character and social situation. Needham portrays Rahel as someone who walks through life unaffected by society rather than someone who is formed by and almost destroyed by it, which is the stance “Rahel” will take. Symptomatically, articles dealing with trauma share the latter view of Rahel. Joanne 1 To avoid misunderstandings this essay will hereafter be referred to as “Rahel”. 3 Lipson Freed observes that the separation of the twins reinforces the trauma and contributes to their feelings of “complicity in Sophie Mol’s death and Velutha’s murder” and that “Rahel’s vacant eyes, serves as a continuing testimony to the personal damage that can be done by the social and political forces . . .” (225). Thus, Lipson Freed recognises society’s part in Rahel’s character. Furthermore, she stresses that Rahel and Estha feel rejected even before the tragedy and exemplifies this with The Sound of Music episode, where the twins measure themselves against their cousin and the children in the film (225). Amar Nath Prasad concurs with these views, going even further back: “They see the quarrels between their mother and father in Assam [and] in the Ayamenem house, they are treated as outsiders. [Baby Kochamma] constantly remind[s] them of their isolation, their sinfulness etc” (188). Like Lipson Freed and Prasad, “Rahel” will look at a wider context than merely the tragedy and its aftermaths. The latter dominates the articles of Elizabeth Outka and L. Chris Fox. However, Outka and Fox certainly contribute to significant observations. Outka claims that although Rahel is more functional than her brother, she is still “haunted by recurring memories [and t]he ‘Loss’ is alive for Rahel at every moment, following her – and even chasing her . . . from school to school, from childhood to womanhood . . .” (27). Also Fox notices that Rahel is more functional than Estha and assumes that “[m]ost criticism focuses on the effects of trauma that Estha displays because his complete silence is the more dramatic deviation from societal norms of ‘healthy’ behaviour” (54). Furthermore, Fox analyses Rahel’s actions at school and deduces that “Rahel is an ‘acting out’ sort of traumatized person” and he states that the “‘emptiness,’ that impoverishes her intimate relationship with her husband 4 . . . is also typical of trauma” (55). Hopefully, “Rahel” with a focus on Rahel’s self-image can contribute to a more developed picture of what previous work has already observed. In a study of Rahel, it is hard to neglect the controversial incest scene. Besides, this scene can be related to Rahel’s self-image. However, the majority of critics concentrates on the transgression of social rules and links the incest to Ammu’s sexual relationship with Velutha. Although most critics perceive a sense of healing, only some attribute that to the reunion of the Siamese twin souls, either as the lost parts being found, or as a metaphor for the union of body and soul. Brinda Bose argues that Rahel “offer[s Estha] her body as an unnameable balm” (59). These interpretations are challenged by Outka and Laura G. Eldred. Outka claims that Roy “records the permanent damage caused by trauma and asks the reader to face – and to bear witness to – this destruction . . .” (37). Eldred suggests that the incest is the result of the child’s “balancing between family and individual identity” and the wish to eliminate these tensions “through a return to origins”, but since a return is not possible, incest is only destructive (61). She rejects any interpretations involving the Siamese twin souls, claiming that Estha and Rahel have separate identities (71). “Rahel” will question Outka’s and Eldred’s conclusions and show that the incest is not only a balm for Estha, but therapy for Rahel as well. However, although this essay will analyse the incest scene, it will mainly focus on Rahel’s self-image and the separation of the twins. The definition that will be used for ‘self-image’ is: “the idea that you have of yourself, especially of your abilities, character, and appearance” (“Self-image”). As self-image is created in a social context, which in this case is postcolonial India, postcolonial theory will be the theoretical basis. 5 Postcolonial theory specifically looks at countries that are or have been colonised by Europeans and despite its name “it addresses all aspects of the colonial process from the beginning of colonial contact” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 1). While stressing cultural differences, postcolonial theory also identifies common phenomena emerging from the colonial situation, such as hybrid identities, cross-cultural interactions and ambivalence regarding language. Furthermore, it questions the Eurocentric universalism, which takes for granted that European norms are superior and valid independent of context; norms against which every individual, society or culture can be measured (Barry 185-86). Colonialism caused rupture (Hall 435) and it is impossible to recreate pre- colonial cultures after independence since the effects of colonial domination cannot be ignored (Tiffin 99). The colonisers controlled the colonised via the education system, imposing language and culture on the children, hence alienating them from their family and community as explained by Ngũgῖ wa Thiong’o: “Since culture does not just reflect the world in images but actually, through those very images, conditions a child to see that world in a certain way, the colonial child was made to see the world and where he stands in it as seen and defined by or reflected in the culture of the language of imposition” (197). In Roy’s novel the ‘colonial children’ are the older generations, but the ‘damage’ lingers. This damage made Ngũgῖ reject English (198), but other writers have chosen to subvert it (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 261). Roy, for example, is praised for her revival and “decolonization of the English language . . . shattering all linguistic orthodoxies at the levels of phonology, morphology and syntax” (Kunhi 3). Thus, Roy displays that “English is no longer the exclusive language of the men who live in England”, but also belongs to people of other nationalities and what they “do with it is their own business” 6 (Lamming 17). However, Roy also exposes the negative effects of the colonisers’ language policy in her novel. Another negative effect of colonialism is described by Frantz Fanon: The Antillean does not possess a personal value of his own and is always dependent on the presence of ‘the Other.’ The question is always whether he is less intelligent than I, blacker than I, or less good than I. Every self- positioning or self-fixation maintains a relationship of dependency on the collapse of the other. It’s on the ruins of my entourage that I build my virility. (185) This self-positioning seems to be reflected in several of Roy’s characters, most notably in Baby Kochamma. Finally, as Charles Larson emphasises when challenging the idea of universality in literature, there are various ways to interpret novels and “when we read a piece of non-Western literature we [should] realize that the interpretation we make of it may be widely different from what the artist intended” (79). “Rahel” can necessarily only be a European’s attempt to understand the influence of colonialism on self-image. During this attempt the following postcolonial theoretical terms will be used: ‘Eurocentrism’ as defined above; ‘cross-cultural interactions’ which refers to different cultures interacting with each other, for example how the Hindu caste system interacted with Christianity resulting in one church for touchables and another for untouchables (Roy 74); ‘hybrid identity’, which can be defined as an identity consisting of several cultures fused together, for example an identity that is neither purely traditionally Indian 7 nor English, but something in between. Roy allegorises ‘hybridity’ in the novel, letting the Food Products Organization ban the family production of banana jam “because according to their specifications it was neither jam nor jelly. Too thin for jelly, and too thick for jam. An ambiguous, unclassifiable consistency, they said” (30). Many postcolonial authors and critics celebrate hybridity, but Roy stresses the problems it causes. In Rahel’s case, as Silima Nanda observes, the hybrid identity is further complicated by ethnicity and religion as Rahel’s father is Hindu and Bengali while her mother is Syrian Christian and Keralite (4). Society’s view on this mixture is something that contributes to shape Rahel’s self-image. However, self-image creation can also be understood as psychological processes. Consequently, and analogous with the hybrid identity of the novel’s postcolonial characters, “Rahel” might appear to have a hybrid identity of post-theory; thus, “neither jam nor jelly”. The essay will start by looking at Rahel’s self-image before the tragedy, how it is formed mainly by postcolonial phenomena, but also by abuse, other dysfunctional relationships and some psychological phenomena. Then it will look at the special relationship between Estha and Rahel; thereafter continue with the tragedy and its consequences. After that, it will discuss and discard some theories of the long duration of the separation. Finally, it will put all pieces together and show that it is Rahel’s negative self-image, her loss of self-worth that is the real barrier to the reunion of the twins and that when the reunion finally takes place; it opens up for a change of this self-image from someone who is unlovable to someone who can and deserves to be loved. 8 Rahel’s Self-Image before the Tragedy To understand Rahel’s self-image it is necessary to look at her family members, who are all marked by dysfunctional relationships, hybrid identity and cross-cultural interactions. One of the most influential characters in Rahel’s life is Baby Kochamma, her grandaunt, who is unmarried. Marriage is regarded as the ‘natural’ purpose for women in India and traditionally women move to their husbands’ house after marriage. Thereby, “their responsibilities and obligations are transferred to their husbands’ families” (Bose and South 998). As women are expected to get married and leave their natal family, daughters’ right to inherit parents is as recent as the 1950s (Banerjee 92). Consequently, Baby Kochamma’s brother and later her sister-in-law inherit the house and everything with it. Thus, Baby Kochamma is economically dependent on her brother and in addition to that has to suffer the stigma of being unmarried. However, being divorced like Ammu, is even more stigmatising (Bose and South 998). Baby Kochamma was keen for [the twins] to realize that they (like herself) lived on sufferance in the Ayemenem House, their maternal grandmother’s house, where they really had no right to be. . . . She subscribed wholeheartedly to the commonly held view that a married daughter had no position in her parents’ home. As for a divorced daughter – according to Baby Kochamma, she had no position anywhere at all. (Roy 45)