Blog Par 3:

Salman Rushdie’s Shame

            Sufiya Zinobia embodies “Beauty” and “Beastly” in Rushdie’s novel Shame because the shame of Pakistan is the disjunction between the powerful and powerless in gender.  Rushdie identifies Zufiya as being a “sort of idiot,” which is the direct result of a fever, but before her idiocy Zufiya is born into shame because she was not a boy.  Her innocence is what houses her “beauty” and her condemnation by her family is her first venture down a dark road as Rushdie states, “a miracle-gone-wrong a family’s shame made flesh” (144).  The shame the Zinobia’s feel in regards to their daughter’s gender does not relate directly to them, but rather the conscience of Pakistan.  Zufiya exists in two ways and this “in-betweeness” is an example McCloud uses in his text to describe the divisions in a country (83).  Zufiya’s shifts from beauty and beast describes the Pakistani women’s shifts from a passive and innocent gender to ones that can no longer suppress the violence denied to them.  Rushdie constructs Zufiya’s “beastly” person from three situations that connect gender with shame as stated, “humiliate people long enough and a wildness bursts out of them” (119).  Zufiya’s beast constructs itself through the girl that was killed by her father, the shame felt by the girl who was raped and made to feel ashamed, and the truth that shame will always outlive women.  The situations that plague women in Pakistan construct a woman of beastly form that can challenge gender images and the dominant gender system.  

I found this interview on youtube, and Salman Rushdie discusses the history and the oppression that women face, concerning the issues of honor and shame.  Rushdie notes, honor is always associated with man and anything shameful or dishonorable falls on the women.  He uses the example of women's dress as being dishonorable and shameful, enticing men to commit shameful acts.  The men have no dishonorable flaws in this nation, and tradition and culture tells them that if they commit shameful acts, they may find a woman to blame or turn the problem around on women.  A point that Rushdie discusses concerns the idea of sin and redemption, a part of many western religions.  If a woman or man sins in this religion, than their soul has the opportunity to be redeemed and forgiveness allows the people to be responsible for their own actions.  In India, there is only honor and only shame, two binaries, good and evil. According to Rushdie, a woman can be dressed from head to toe and one can only see her eyes, but an act of adultery or loss of virginity to a man who rapes her falls back to her 'actions.'  I find the shamefulness to be a way for Indian culture to not be held accontable for their own actions and a way for men to use excuses.  The safest route for a woman to take is to sit at home because going out causes her more grief and leaves her more vulnerable for 'shameful' acts. 

Blog Paragraph #2

Cracking India

    Bapsi Sidhwa uses the term "cracked" to describe India.  By using this word she is juxtaposing the importance placed upon a country's history and the physical boundaries that have been long established to parallel the difficulties a new nation faces when identifying themselves.  When one considers a nation's foundation, one envisions a strongly bonded community and finds the struggles in other nations.  Sidhwa displays the internal struggles of India through the a neighborhood, places people associate civility with, "My world is compressed.  Warris Road, lined with rain gutters, lies between Queens Road and Jail Road; both wide, clean, orderly streets at the affluent fringes of Lahore"(11).  A physical alienation is depicted, a girl is born into division and an understanding that highlights her otherness and denies her an affiliation to her surrounding barriers.  Nations are connected because the past has a collective and celebrated meaning among its inhabitants and when this powerful body becomes isolated parts boundaries become physically visible and differences are easily recognized.  By separating a nation one loses a solid foundation and this in turn transposes a solid history into one of fragments, "they'll dig a canal...this side for Hindustan and this side for Pakistan-cracking India with a long, long canal" (101). Nations are difficult to dispose of because of long standing tradition and landmarks that have become permanent staples to economic and daily life.  

 

 During a class discussion, concerning boundaries and the infringement of boundaries in the book, Cracking India, we looked at the partition of India.  In her novel, Sidhwa portrays the partition between the Hindus and the Muslims and the battle of religions that forms the country, Pakistan.  According to an article published by Emory University, "Hindu revivalists also deepened the chasm between the two nations.  They resented the Muslims for their former rule over India...many are still in search of identity and a history left behind beyond an impenetrable boundary" (Keen). The article focuses on the history of the partition, but what interested me most about this article was the religious persecution both sides faced and practiced on one another. http://english.emory.edu/Bahri/Part.html

Sidhwa uses the servant, Ayah's sexuality to explore the issues surrounding partition.  Typically, people view countries in relation to the female sex.  Traditionally, men left the home to fight wars to protect their women and they refer to their country as female; something fragile that needs protection.  The right to claim India as their own, emerges in the novel between the Hindu Ice Candy Man and the Muslim, Masseur. In the beginning of the novel, Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus sit together discussing politics and fawning over Ayah.  They enjoy one another's company and do not see one another as the enemy, but as a group of friends. Ayah is the center of the groups affections and the men treat her as an object, a prize to be won.  An aspect that intrigues me, is the idea that men fight over the women, imprison Ayah and women like her through prostitution, and their family's denounce them after they have been defiled.  If woman is a prize to be coveted, than one would expect their virtue and beings would be more respected.  During Partition, women were subjected to numerous forms of prostitution and the opposing sides violently raped and abused each others women.  The women, doing nothing but existing, had no way of defending themselves and have no voice in religious and political matters, but were the ones who suffered the most violent punishments at times. At least this seemed what Sidhwa was portraying when she wrote Ayah's character and the women who were with her in the 'prison' because they had been shamed. In Lawrence James' book, The Raj, The Making and Unmaking of British India, he recounts the brutality towards women with violent rapes and the dismembering of women's breasts and the breasts being carted off so that all of the Hindu men could see what the Muslim men had done in a retaliation.

Blog Paragraph #1 "The Overland Mail"

Blog Paragraph #1 "The Overland Mail"

         Imperialist nations are formed upon the basic understanding that there will always be a subject and master and through this order will be maintained and a prosperous, subservient nation will be born.  However, by giving knowledge to and molding a subject much like the "runner" in Kipling's "Overland Mail" those in power are creating what Bhabha refers to as "mimic-men"(66). When an imperial power chooses to transfuse power through their subjects, whether it be language, religion, education, they are empowering the colonized with the notion that they too can have the same access to power. To act in a desired manner elicits a positive response from those in power; this gives the colonized the impression that they too can subvert their masters power.  Fanon's idea concerning "black masks" are employed in Kipling's poem to that of the "runner" and his efforts to please the Empire and keep his "otherness" at bay.  The lines between the colonizer and colonized have become intertwined and the balance of power is threatened through evidence of the speaker's demanding tone, "He must ford it or swim/ He must climb the cliff" (13-14).  The colonizer now feels the effects of his doing and the fear that he could be losing control over his subject because the subject has subverted his authority through performances reified by his master.  Kipling affirms this threat for power in his last line with the ambiguity concerning the speaker, "in the name of the Empress, the Overland Mail" (30).  As expected, the subject has mimicked his speaker and has adopted the same ideologies; granting the subject access to the same power to those who enforced his mimicry, while highlighting his "otherness."  Empowering minds and producing a universal image one should expect these "mimic-men" to aspire to achieve the same means as their creator because they have been given only one path to follow, one universal vision.  

     
     Orientalist stereotypes regarding women depict Indian women as sexual beings.  Within Orientalist ideology women function in two ways: the role of wife and mother and the women who brings aesthetic and physical pleasure to men.  Like the 'runner' in Kipling's poem, "The Overland Mail," Westerners and colonizers fashion a specific image when describing the world in which Indian women embody.  Indian stereotypes aligns itself with words relating to sexuality, femininity  exoticism, and eroticism.  The sexualization of the culture allows for those like the British to invent images that parallels Indian culture with a barbaric, savage, and undeveloped country.  One associates the British with a prudish view relating to sexuality and men of the British culture found this lack of sexuality difficult to cope with. British women were mothers, not bed mates, during the period of colonialism in Britain.  Young, British men heard tales of the exotic nature of Indian women and their openness with sexuality and their 'knowledge' that their bodies function to serve men and are to be admired.
      The image above, artist unknown, affirms the views the West prescribe when imagining Indian women.  Her body is the focal point in a room comprised of men.  A woman's duty, as described in McLeod's text, was to meet the needs of their men, or any man (of an accepted background) seeking the pleasures that women provided. From the painting, one concludes that the dancer enjoys what she is doing, her expression does not hint of disgust or shame, but rather as a comfort to her duty, an enjoyment of her actions.  The painting depicts a world of prostitution, the selling of sex for economic gain, a business that colonizers partook of while in India and in their home country, England.  Indian women believed themselves to be a sharer of pleasures to their men, according to accounts of men returning from India.  One could interpret this painting as a tasting of the forbidden fruit.  A fantasy that men choose to indulge themselves.  According to Penzar, in Lawrence James' book Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India, "...to his British readers, one of those Hindu temples to which families brought daughters to be prepared for what they considered an honourable profession.  At the age of seven or eight the girl began training as a dancer and singer, and at the onset of puberty was initiated into sexual activity by the temple priests" (James 211).
     A girl was condemned to servitude and stereotypes the moment she was born.  Her duties resemble those of servant and in many instances, the job of a sexual servant.  Englishmen in India easily deduce the importance Indian culture places on women's sexual roles and it is through this that the stereotypes are born. Painter Theodore Chasseriau connects Indian women's sensuality, allure, and erotic stereotypes in his painting. (Below)  The women in the painting exist for pleasure and entices viewers to join in the celebration and excitement of her sexuality. Chasseriau emphasizes her physical qualities, like most do when representing Indian women.  Her brain and her needs are of no concern, her life is centered around her duties for men and the exploitation of her body.