The Peasant
Woman by Russian poet Nicholai Nekrasov, the story of Sita in Ramayana and
the writings of Ali Sardar Jafri inspired Anand to write his tenth novel Gauri. It was first published in 1960 under the
title The Old Woman and the Cow and later re-issued by Orient Paper-back
in its present name. Anand, who is the creator of memorable male characters,
portrays for the first time a woman in her tenderness and resilience. In the
author's own words, Gauri is "my offering to the beauty, dignity
and devotion of Indian women." The novel fore-grounds the issue of gender,
apropos of the rebellious behaviour of a young rustic Punjabi wife, first given
in a marriage to a poor and violent villager, then sold off by her mother to an
aged merchant and finally rescued by a benevolent medical man.
This novel, as indeed all Anand's
fiction, expresses his indisputable concern for suffering humanity. It forces
one to ask a few questions about the Indian character. We do call our woman
'Devi', 'Mata' and 'Luxmi' and claim that our society has always been giving
due respect to women. But at the same time, we also beat them, set them ablaze
or turn them out of the houses. Gauri eloquently exposes the hypocrisy
of our society. It not only voices a strong protest against the ill treatment
of women but also explores through the example of a poor and illiterate girl
what woman in India should do for her emancipation.
Gauri is depicted by Anand as a
female subaltern, subjected to an inferior status in a male-dominant society.
The removal of the disabilities of the Indian woman and her freedom from
various forms of oppressions and suppressions has been an unending process. It
is true that the law of the land does not admit of inequality on the basis of
sex, but old social and psychological habits and reactionary resistance of the
orthodox sections of society initiate against the law. The conventions of
society create a subordinate status for a woman who is denied the freedom to
take decision, even with in a family. Anand's novel presents his deep concern
for the subaltern status of women which renders them as slaves "bound and
fecund for the service of the hearth."
Through the pathetic character of
Gauri, Anand has shown that suffering is inevitable lot of women like that of
any other subaltern. He attempts, in Gauri, to subvert the patriarchal order
which perpetrates marginalization of woman. Like a true feminist, the writer
opposes sexism and endeavours to arise and transform 'false consciousness'
which subjugates women.
Woman in the Indian society has to
play the traditional roles like a submissive wife, procreative agent or an
incarnation of sacrifice and so on. Gauri fits into the category of the
submissive wife in the beginning of the novel. When Panchi, the bridegroom
rides her pony to the wedding place to the accompaniment of Angrezi music, he
tries to imagine his would be wife "for there was the prospect of the
prize of a girl whom he could fold in his arms at night and kick during the
day, who would adorn his house and help him with the work on the land."
(p.11) He remembers how his parents- in- law kept up the constant refrain during
the negotiation that "Gauri is like a cow, very gentle." (P.11) The
metaphor of the cow easily brings to our mind the docility, sublimity, harmlessness, virtue, holiness and such other
properties attached to the animal in Hindu religion. Panchi felt like a holy
bull going off to marry the little cow Gauri (P.13).
The metaphor of "holy
bull" and "Cow" easily bring out the contrast between the
dominating party and the submissive party respectively. Eventually the wedding
between Panchi and Gauri takes place in spite of the incidental problem of
dowry hindering the matrimonial procedure. Panchi is able to have the first
look at his wife only after the marriage when she is ceremonially received into
his family. Gauri begins her matrimonial life as a docile wife. She has,
obviously, accepted all the norms of the patriarchal society and therefore,
tries to conform to them as far as possible. She nourishes all the rosy dreams
about her future and tries to be 'Sita' as her mother advises her.
But life is not as simple as she
thinks. The familial as well as societal environment seems to be very
antipathetic to her. After the marriage, Panchi, a chauvinist, rules over her
like a master over a slave. He forces her to submit to his impatience and
pettiness without protest. Her duties are to cook, to clean, to please her
husband's libidinous desires and to submit herself humbly to his male
chauvinism and physical violence. He asserts again and again his male prerogative
to beat and 'chastise the wife if she goes wrong' in the name of 'Dharma'.
There is draught and famine for which Gauri is blamed as she is considered an
inauspicious bride. Panchi’s joint family life breaks up. This mishap too, is
ascribed to her evil presence.
Away from the joint family and
undisturbed by Kesaro (aunt of her husband), Panchi and Gauri come closer. He
slowly begins to understand her love and affection for him.
But one day the wicked Kesaro visits
again and poisons Panchi's mind against Gauri. Hearing the destructive words,
Gauri picks up unexpected courage and catches hold of Kesaro by the bum of her
hair and pushes her out of their house. After her departure, the idea of
Gauri's evil stars injected in him by Kesaro continues to possess Panchi. Above
all, Kesaro's accusation of Gauri's liaison with Raj Guru in his absence
arouses suspicious in him over her character. Gauri's devotion and ardent love
for him makes his mind oscillate between loving and hating her. One morning she
tells him shyly: “I am with a child and we shall have another mouth to
feed." (P.101) but instead of getting excited by the news, he kicks her
shouting: "Go, go, and get out of my sight. Go to your mother, the whore...."
She fells at his feet, begged with hand joined before her for head. "Do
not send me away."(P.102) But he kicks her left and right.
Gauri, broken hearted due to
unexpected behaviour she gets from her husband, prepares to leave the house
because mother in her makes her realize her responsibility of protecting the
child in her womb. Nothing can, perhaps, be more pathetic for a woman in our
country than to be driven out by her husband, to go back to her parent's house,
to be considered an unnecessary burden. Anand portrays this single episode in
two ways. In his short story 'Lajwanti', Lajwanti comes to her parents' home
after being beaten by his brother- in -law Jaswant .But her father takes her
back to her parents- in- law's house and says, "Kill her if you like."
The poor Lajwanti has no option but to commit suicide. She jumps in a well but
is saved to suffer more humiliations. In
Gauri, the poor Gauri is sold by her parents "in lieu of cash and
wiping out of the mortgage on house as well as the cow, Chandari."
She is bought and brought by force
the Hoshiarpur by Seth Jai Ram Das. The Seth tries to win her heart by putting
up a garb of religiosity and also by offering her jewellery. Gauri resists his
advance through her hysteric fever. Sensing her illness, Jai Ram Das calls
doctor for her medical treatment. Jai Ram Das tries again to woo and win her
heart with several gifts, but Gauri is very firm in her rejection of him as her
husband. She tells him that she could be his servant rather than his wife. As
he has bought her he wants to have his money's worth. Although she has been
trapped into a dire situation by the contingencies of her life, she grows very alert about her goal of life. It
is her belief in wifely loyalty to Panchi and chastity which enable her to
retain her integrity against all the odds of life.
When her physical illness becomes
problematic, she is hospitalized in Col. Mahindra's Nursing Home. The Nursing
Home proves a turning point in her life. Dr. Batra, the partner of the nursing
home is strongly attracted towards the young and pregnant Gauri. He wants to
help Gauri and he also has his own axe to grind. He warns Seth Jai Ram Das,
"I hear this girl has been bought by you for cash from her guardians. I
shall report this matter to the police" (P.140).The Seth tries to defend
himself by clarifying the fact that "I have put ‘chaddar' on the woman and
married in that way"(140). With the helps of doctors and by the assertion
of Gauri, it is finally arranged that Gauri should be retained in the hospital
as an employee. The Seth grows helpless and gives up the idea of possessing
Gauri any more.
But a wife living away from her
husband is never safe as she becomes the object of temptation for the lusting
men. A sophisticated womanizer, Dr. Batra pursues Gauri systematically. Gauri
is not aware of his elaborate plan of seduction. One day, when Dr. Batra is
about to seduce Gauri in the hospital room, Miss Young prevents it by bringing
it to the notice of Col. Mahindra. Thus, Gauri undergoes a hell of trouble on
account of her youth and gender. She like Tess suffers on account of the
predatory male attention to her beauty. The admirable quality in Gauri is her
sterling integrity.
Meanwhile, Gauri's husband Panchi
repents on having abandoned his wife. He goes to the parents'-in-law's house to
bring her back. Laxmi (Gauri’s mother) repents her sin and brings back Gauri
from Mahindra's Hospital. But when she comes back to Panchi, he is again torn
between his desire for her loving presence and his suspicion of her chastity.
Gauri's warmth, however, strengthens him and he is able to give a befitting
treatment to the gossip-mongers. But the strength again wanes when he has to
face the people of the village who are bent upon making him realize that he has
made a mistake by accepting his wife after her being stayed in somebody else's
house in Hoshiarpur. His suspicion of the wifely chastity in recognition of the
social opinion is easily comparable to the archetypal situation in the Ramayana
where Lord Rama has to clarify the washer- man’s doubt about Sita's chastity by
abandoning her. Panchi wants to test his wife, he asks her, "Tell me the
truth, bitch......What is the proof of your purity." (262) .She says,
"I have been true to you." The suspicion in Panchi about her is so
strong that he behaves very irrationally. He kicks her saying, "You have
cut my nose, bitch from Peplan Kalan! What curse upon my fate prospered in my
marriage with you, daughter of a whore?"
Gauri is so deeply hurt by his
irrational accusation that she does not want to be cowed down by it. Her stay
in Dr. Mahindra's Hospital has awakened her sense of identity and courage of
conviction. The courage born out of her inner purity enables her to defy the
irrational husband and the gossip-mongering society. She asserts, “And if you
strike me again, I will hit back" (263) When Hoor Banu tries to console
her she says, "They are telling him that Ram turned out Sita because
everyone doubted her chastity during her stay with Ravna!....I am not Sita that
the earth will open up and swallow me. I shall just go out and be forgotten of
him..." (264)
Panchi has behaved like Rama by
listening to the loose tongues of the village but Gauri refuses to be like
Sita. She has obviously, grown from the stage of docility to that of defiance in
spite of being uneducated and rural. "Her face shone from the pressure of
her stricken heart, transfigured from the gentle cow's acquiescent visage of
the time when she had arrived in Panchi's house, to that of a woman -with a
will of her own." (264) She knows that she is carrying the child of Panchi
in her womb, but she cannot accept his atrocities any longer. She wants to go
to Dr. Mahindra's hospital to deliver her child so that" her child would
not be the coward the Panchi was or as weak as she had been." (264)
Gauri is not presented as a meek and
docile woman, as most of the heroines of Tagore are. She shows her real vim in
the circumstances when they become seemingly uncongenial. The cow-like gentle
Gauri presented in the first chapter, under goes epic transformation mainly
through suffering and at the end of the novel, she succeeds in vindicating her
right to an independent life free from the Violations and abrasions of male supremacy.
Gauri is, definitely, not a ‘revolutionary woman’ but an individual who has
convincingly succeed in becoming a human and whole and refuses to be a
subaltern.
REFERENCES
Anand, Mulk Raj. Gauri. New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann; 1981
